Hero on a Mission

“Hero on a Mission” is a book by bestselling author Donald Miller.

The book focuses on the four roles we play in life – victim, villain, hero, and guide – and teaches readers how to recognize when they are playing each role, with the goal of guiding readers towards playing the hero role more often.

The hero on a mission life plan

The Hero on a Mission Life Plan is based on two ideas: the first is Viktor Frankl’s logotherapy, and the second is the elements that drive an interesting story. This life plan is not about productivity, though it will certainly help you become more productive. This life plan is designed to help you experience a deep sense of meaning.

Guides: Heroes who kept going

In a story, heroes cannot overcome their flaws on their own and need a guide to help them. The guide is a character who has empathy and confidence, gained from their own hero’s journey. Guides pass on valuable knowledge to the hero and sacrifice themselves for the hero’s sake.

yoda

Yoda and Haymitch are examples of guides in stories. Sacrificing oneself for another is the essence of a guide, and this is where each hero’s journey will lead.

Hero want something specific

The Hero want something specific contd

Once the hero defines what they want, the story begins. And why does the story begin? Because, again, when a hero defines what they want, a story question is posed. The audience, and for that matter the hero, are engaged by a single interesting question: Will the hero get what they want?

The Hero want something specific

A storyteller must define the exact thing the hero wants. They want to win the karate tournament. They want to save their father’s company. They want to marry their sweetheart.

Four primary characters contd.

The victim is the character who feels they have no way out.

The villain is the character who makes others feel small.

The hero is the character who faces challenges and transforms.

The guide is the character who helps the hero.

These four characters

These four characters exist in stories not only because they exist in the real world but because they exist inside of you and me. The problem is that these characters are not equal. Two help us experience a deep sense of meaning, and two lead to our demise.

The Villain

A villain makes others small and cannot bring meaning to a story. Heroes learn from their pain and help others, while villains seek vengeance against the world. Villain energy has negative consequences in stories and should not be taken lightly.

Reducing others in our minds is akin to dancing with the devil.

Four primary characters

There are four characters in every story: the victim, the villain, the hero, and the guide. These four characters live inside us. If we play the victim, we’re doomed to fail. If we play the villain, we will not create genuine bonds.

But if we play the role of hero or guide, our lives will flourish. The hard part is being self-aware enough to know which character we are playing.

Playing the hero improves our stories dramatically. If we want to take control of our lives and bend our story toward meaning, we can surface more hero energy and less victim and villain energy.

The hero should have a want: Narrative traction

When an audience can’t determine what a hero wants, or when what the hero wants is too elusive for the audience to understand, the audience loses interest and becomes bored.

Narrative traction refers to the feeling that our personal story is so compelling that we cannot turn away, even if we do not always like it. It keeps us interested in our own lives, even if it exhausts us and we find ourselves complaining about it.

In order to create a story, we must take action and “put something on the plot” every day.

Intentional Living

A victim has no plan. They are waiting for a rescuer.
A villain has a plan for destruction and strategizes vengeance on a world that has hurt them.
A hero creates a plan that is mutually beneficial for the world and sticks with it.
A guide has lived a great life and turns around to help heroes find and live meaningful stories of their own.

The character we play

Our story’s quality depends on the character we play. If we operate from a victim identity, we believe we are helpless and at the mercy of fate. If we operate from a villain identity, we believe others are small and should do as we say.

heroic energy

However, when we surface our heroic energy, we realize that our lives are not completely in the hands of fate. We have the power to change our circumstances with courage. Although fate may send challenges, we have the power to shape our own stories. Who we are determines our story more than anything or anybody else.

Villain energy

We know we are surfacing villain energy when we dismiss other people’s comments or when we think of them as lesser. We know we are surfacing villain energy when we reduce others to their outward appearances rather than taking the time to understand their point of view.

The hero cannot be a victim at the same time

The story’s hero cannot act like a victim, as it ruins the story. Victims do not accept challenges and believe they are helpless, leading to a lack of forward movement. Heroic characters must want something difficult to achieve to create an engaging plot.

Victim energy must not surface in a successful story.

A hero chooses a life of meaning

Meaning is existential. To be more precise, it is an emotional state you experience under certain circumstances, and those circumstances can be created by us, and they are relatively easy to create.

To experience meaning, a person simply needs to rise up, point at the horizon, and, with deep conviction, decide to venture out toward the hope of a meaningful story. Meaning is something you experience while on an adventure.

Donald Miller

Meaning is not an idea to be agreed with. It is a feeling you get when you live as a hero on a mission. And it cannot be experienced without taking action and living into a story.