(Why your “Call to Adventure” oftens feels like a crisis)
What even is a call? And how do you hear it? What happens if you hear the call and you don’t respond? Does it go away, or is it going to call again?
These questions sit at the heart of the Hero’s Journey framework, and they’re far more relevant to your daily life than you might think. Whether you’re navigating a business that suddenly feels like a cage, facing chronic health challenges that seem to appear from nowhere, or simply waking up with the creeping sense that something needs to change, you’re likely receiving a call right now.
But here’s what most people get wrong about the call: it rarely arrives as an exciting invitation to adventure. More often, it shows up as profound discomfort, as endings, as the slow erosion of what once worked. The call is less about being summoned toward something shiny and new, and more about being pushed away from what’s no longer sustainable.
🎧 Listen to Episode 1
To hear the full breakdown of how to recognize the call and why your body might be staging a rebellion, hit play below.
The Cliff’s Notes
Core Themes:
- The call often manifests as discomfort, tragedy, or loss rather than excitement
- Expansion requires contraction; feeling like you’re regressing may actually signal readiness for growth
- The call comes from within, not from external circumstances
- Your calling is about becoming more authentically you, not reaching a fixed destination
- The call keeps calling—you can’t miss it, but you can delay answering it
Key Takeaways:
- Recognize the disguises: Your call might look like chronic health issues, business burnout, relationship endings, or an inexplicable sense that you’re capable of more.
- Understand the rhythm: Just as nature moves through seasons, your life operates in cycles. What feels like regression is often contraction before expansion.
- Know what you’re being called to: The destination isn’t a specific job or achievement. You’re being called to shed layers and become more authentically yourself.
- Accept that stability invites deeper work: When your nervous system finally feels safe, that’s when shadow work and buried parts of yourself may surface for healing.
- Trust the persistence: The call will keep calling. Ignoring it doesn’t make it disappear; it just makes it more insistent.
Want a personalized Mythic Map of your own hero’s journey? That’s why I created Mythic Journey.
Your Gene Keys profile reimagined as a literal map that will reveal your most challenging internal obstacles to overcome, protective patterns to disrupt, and the gifts that are waiting for you on the other side. Over the course of 75+ minutes (in a pre-recorded video you can watch over and over again), I’ll operate as your very own guide as we weave the new narrative for what you’re being called to and how to step into your full potential.
Intrigued and want to know more? Click here for all the deets!
The Call Rarely Looks Like What You Expect
We need to start at the very beginning of the Hero’s Journey framework, which begins with the hero receiving a call. When you hear “call to adventure,” it probably sounds dramatic, positive, specific. You might assume there’s clarity about what’s next and confidence in a happy ending.
But consider one of the most famous hero’s journey stories in film: Star Wars. Luke’s call came in the form of losing his parents. His home was destroyed forever. Everything he’d known had changed, and life wasn’t going to be great anymore if he did nothing. He could have chosen to accept defeat, to do nothing about it. Eventually, he decides to take action, to go on a quest, even though he didn’t know exactly where he was going.
The pattern is clear: our call does not always look like a new career opportunity on the horizon or a clear vision of the next version of our business. We don’t get a neat before-and-after picture with a roadmap connecting them.
The Many Faces of Discomfort
So often, a call comes in the form of discomfort, disappointment, sometimes heartbreak. Sometimes the call is being rejected for something you thought you really wanted and believed was meant for you. Sometimes it’s the ending of a relationship, a project that doesn’t work out, a layoff, a business that’s no longer viable.
And sometimes, the call shows up in the form of trouble internally—what could be defined as mental health challenges, physical health challenges, chronic issues.
Two years ago, chronic fatigue that had been lurking under the surface suddenly went from being manageable to completely impacting everyday life. Digestive issues meant favorite foods had to be eliminated as the body rejected them. Sleep disturbances, a feeling of being out of control of the body—it was a mess. A really trying period that lasted about a year, maybe eighteen months, before major breakthroughs emerged.
That extreme discomfort, to the point where living with it was no longer possible, made it clear that something needed to change. But here’s the critical piece: at that point, there was already a sense that something new was coming in terms of business or showing up in the world. But the path forward wasn’t clear, and the equipment for making changes wasn’t there yet, because these internal issues showed up first.
When Success Starts Feeling Like a Trap
This same pattern plays out in business. A client who’s been doing what they’ve been doing for a few years might have loved their business initially. It was a dream. This version of the business was once the future version, the result of evolution and change.
Then things start to get really difficult. Slowly but surely, resentment creeps in. Boredom follows. The business that used to give them a sense of freedom and empowerment feels like a trap, like a prison. It takes things getting really bad—losing sleep over it, dealing with terrible clients that need to be fired—before they finally make a change and realize this business isn’t for them anymore. Something needs to be let go.
The Paradox of Stability
Then there are those who’ve overcome the absolute worst of something—a period of stress and distress, sadness, heartbreak through divorce or major life changes. They feel like they’re over the worst of it. Life has straightened out a little after a massive storm.
But there’s this sense that things should be getting better right now, but they’re not.
A new normal has been established, but there’s no good feeling in it. It’s as if the mind and body have new expectations. They want a lot more than they used to have. They don’t want to just fall into an old rhythm. So anxiety appears, or a sense of apathy and almost depression. It feels like regression, like going backwards, which creates confusion and frustration.
How is this possible after overcoming so much? After doing the inner work?
From patterns observed over years of working with clients, this is actually the most common form of a call received. The call is so much more often an extreme discomfort and a need for change than it is excitement about walking toward something in the future.
That’s not to say the vision and future excitement doesn’t exist at all or will never appear. But very often, this sense of having gone backwards in life is not actually regression.
The bar has been raised. There are now inbuilt expectations of wanting more from life, and that is perfectly okay.
Understanding the Natural Rhythm of Expansion
Before expansion comes contraction. This is normal. This is actually part of the natural rhythm of life.
Think about the seasons. A plant, a flower, or a tree doesn’t go through its whole life in a steady, linear progression. It doesn’t just sprout and continuously add more leaves, more green, more fullness. Plants open and close. Leaves fall off and grow back. A forest fire leads to devastation, which then prepares the forest for regeneration. Sometimes the forest comes back stronger and more beautiful after the burning.
This is how our lives are meant to actually play out.
We’ve been taught to find one thing and follow that thread, building on it and building on it, climbing the ladder in a very linear sense. But this is unnatural because we are part of nature. We are animals, and every single thing in nature has rhythms.
Look at the ocean and the tides. They come in, they go out. That’s how we know things are working. We’d be concerned if they didn’t have that flow. We have winter, we have summer. We have seasons where things need to die, and then they come back renewed. We have day, we have night. The hours awake, the hours asleep.
All of these cycles are built into nature, and humans have them too. But we’ve been fighting them for so long. We’ve been trying to live unnatural lives where it’s one foot always in front of the other, which is why we get so scared if it feels like we’re regressing.
When Your Spirit Leads Before Your Life Catches Up
First, our spirit leads us to something new. Then we must go on a journey to make sure our minds, our bodies, and our lives around us can expand to match this new expansiveness of ourselves.
Every single time we do that, we hit threshold points. A threshold is when we reach a point where we’re about to step into the new, but we realize that some parts of us are going to have to be left behind, shed, or changed in order to even step across that particular threshold.
Here’s another layer that’s been observed frequently: what happens when we’re ready to cross that threshold? Often it means we’re already in a new phase of life—more mature, more grounded. Certain parts of life are stable and better than they’ve ever been before.
Maybe the relationship with a partner is better than it’s ever been. Maybe there’s never been such a sense of friendship and community. Maybe there’s financial stability. The job might not be loved, but it’s predictable and gives a feeling of safety. There’s probably been some level of inner work happening too, so emotions aren’t as wild as they used to be. There’s more groundedness as a person.
What happens when in this state is that the nervous system is more regulated. The body notices that things are pretty good right now, that there’s stability. And that’s when it decides: it’s probably time to do some of this work that wasn’t possible before.
By “work,” I mean the inner work. Facing those inner parts of ourselves—those shadows, the parts we locked away, the conflicting beliefs or limiting beliefs that are holding us back. They so often come to the surface when we’re in a relatively good place.
When going through seasons of turmoil and upheaval, seasons of survival mode, the focus is on getting through each day as best as possible. That takes all available capacity. Shadow work and deep journaling aren’t happening. Meditation might be used to try and stay calm, but there’s no guided journey work to uncover hidden parts of self. There’s no examination of resentments held about family, trauma from upbringing, the way parents treated you.
So what happens when it feels like one second everything is fine and now it feels like the wheels are falling off? Take a moment of self-inquiry. Ask: Is it possible that because I’ve created a certain amount of stability and safety for myself in my life in enough ways—that I have more than I used to—that maybe I’m potentially ready to face some of that deeper stuff that’s been avoided?
Maybe there was no awareness it was being avoided, but maybe the nervous system is saying, “Hey, now’s a good time.”
If that’s the case, then it’s very normal to actually have more anxiety, more worries, more emotional distress than previously. Maybe feelings of rage. Maybe a lack of patience for what’s going on around you. All of these things are clues.
If it feels like there’s a part coming out to explode, like there’s concern about keeping a lid on it anymore, that’s a clue. That’s a call.
What the Call Is Actually Calling You Toward
There are so many shapes and sizes that a call can take. But more often than not, it’s probably going to involve some discomfort, and it definitely does not mean there’s been regression. It means being actually further ahead than ever before, and being ready to take it further.
But what is it actually calling you to?
Our calling is not about getting us to a particular destination. These cycles we go on in life—think of life as one big television series with many seasons. Each cycle is like a season of that show.
What’s great about watching a television show versus watching a movie is that characters actually have the chance to develop and change. Who they were in season one, episode one is quite different from who they are at season five, episode seven.
What’s happening as you go on these cycles or through these seasons is that new versions of you are coming online.
Ultimately, each time, another layer of the onion is being peeled back. We’re getting closer and closer to the real you. As these layers are shed, the real you is able to expand, to take up more space, to be more you.
Right now, maybe ten percent of the real you gets to have a say in how life is being lived, or the authentic self is felt a certain percentage of the time. What we’re wanting to get to is that being much closer to one hundred percent of the time, with the authentic self—the true you—having decisions, actions, and vision all coming from this very authentic place.
A place that right now is probably hidden, distorted a bit by messages received when growing up. There were things taught about the world, about potential. Coping strategies were learned to stay safe. It was learned that expressing the true authentic self would lead to being shamed, rejected, or not accepted. People didn’t understand.
So all these layers were put on in order to survive life. Fair. We all need to do that. This is a natural part of life.
But once a certain point is reached and the call starts being heard, it’s because there’s a calling to now shed those layers and get back to the real you.
The real you is capable of so many different things. You are this multifaceted, multidimensional being who could play out so many different storylines in life now.
There is no fixed destination. There’s not a way to win versus lose at life. The point of life is the process, is the journey.
There are going to be many temporary destinations. Maybe we see them as milestones. There may be specific jobs or creative projects or ways of expressing yourself that are meant to be explored, but they are still not the end destination. They are just a tool or a vehicle to get to know yourself better.
So this journey being called to—the call isn’t to say it’s time to find the career that will be done until death. Even though that could end up happening, there’s no right or wrong way to do this.
Just as likely is that this will call to a certain set of explorations and experiments, and some of them may involve doing the exact same thing being done today, but doing it in a totally different way, because it’s about you. It was never about the job.
The calling is a call to authenticity, to true desires, to finally hear the voice that’s maybe been heard a little bit in the past but has mostly been ignored. It’s the part that has been denied for so long.
The Call Keeps Calling
Here’s the good news about this calling: in the words of Michael Meade, an incredible mythologist, the calling keeps calling.
You can’t actually miss the call. You can continue to ignore it, but it will keep ringing.
That’s because there’s no expiry date here. There would be if it was thought that one really specific job needed to be landed, and that was going to take you till the end of days, and if that job wasn’t landed, the purpose was missed, the bus to purpose was missed.
But the calling is about just becoming more you. The soul, the spirit wants that. It’s what it came to earth to experience, at least in one belief system. So it’s not going to give up.
It is you. It’s there. It’s not locked away in some warehouse somewhere that has to be found. It’s right inside. It’s just buried often under a lot of junk—heavy beliefs and ideas and narratives and masks and patterns.
It gets easier and easier to ignore through a period of life when caught up in all the noise. But what is happening right now, if anything is being heard, if there’s extreme discomfort and a thought of needing to do something, of not being able to be like this anymore, or not wanting to replay that pattern anymore—it means it’s calling right now.
There’s a choice to do something about it right now. Or the response can be that it’s just not possible right now.
But here’s the point: it will not stop calling.
Don’t expect to just get better at turning it off. It will keep finding ways to make itself known.
The longer that voice is ignored, the more determined it’s going to become to be heard. Imagine a little child who’s hungry. At first it might be, “Hey, can I have a snack?” Then, “Mom, can I have a snack? Mom? I’m hungry.”
Eventually, if that kid gets hungry enough—and this isn’t a comfortable example because no child should go hungry, and acknowledgment to the reality that so many children and adults do—kids, when they don’t get what they want, find really creative ways to make their needs and desires known. This can include throwing major tantrums.
Our inner self can do the same. If it’s starting to get really desperate, if it knows that the way life is being lived right now is making you miserable, if it’s harming you in some way—not just the spirit, but if it knows it’s really messing with the head and messing with the body—then often it’s going to throw a tantrum in ways that are pretty upsetting and uncomfortable.
Case in point: the body starting to shut down. Suddenly not being able to eat the way eating used to happen. Suddenly being in pain so much of the time, being in bed a couple of days a week, barely able to function. It was drastic. And it caused listening to happen.
That is the power of the call.
Your Turn to Listen
Hopefully it’s clear now that the call doesn’t come from outside at all. It’s not calling to go anywhere specific. It’s calling inward, because the call is coming from inside. The calling is coming from inside the spirit, the body, and it wants to be heard.
So the question right now is: What kind of niggles have been received recently? What kind of signs that there needs to be a change?
Those signs could range from discomfort—physical problems, mental challenges, emotional challenges—through to absolute boredom or frustration in what’s being done. It can also just be a lack of spark in life. It can be a general feeling of dullness, of apathy, of “here we go again,” like Groundhog Day.
Take stock of those. All that needs to be done is to ask: Are you ready to listen?
This does not mean suddenly overhauling an entire life. We’re going to talk about all of that. There’s a map. We’re going on a really specific journey together, and it’s one that does not involve burning life to the ground in order to find yourself. We can do it in a much more civilized manner.
But there does need to be a decision about whether something is going to be done about this. If the answer is yes, if done is the feeling, then all that really needs to happen next is to keep listening.
Because next we’re going to talk about what happens once the call is accepted. To be honest, it’s not rainbows and butterflies. But when we are prepared, when we are aware of what can potentially unfold next, it makes the journey so much more pleasant, much less scary. And then there will be the tools and the resources to know what to do with what comes up.
Want a personalized Mythic Map of your own hero’s journey? That’s why I created Mythic Journey.
Your Gene Keys profile reimagined as a literal map that will reveal your most challenging internal obstacles to overcome, protective patterns to disrupt, and the gifts that are waiting for you on the other side. Over the course of 75+ minutes (in a pre-recorded video you can watch over and over again), I’ll operate as your very own guide as we weave the new narrative for what you’re being called to and how to step into your full potential.
Intrigued and want to know more? Click here for all the deets!
