Hero on a Mission: A Path to a Meaningful Life

Victims and villains do not create meaning for themselves or for the world. Heroes and guides do. We build lives of meaning by stating an ambition, by enduring challenges, and by sharing our lives with others.

Pain, then, is often the teacher that transforms the hero into the guide. That is, if their attitude toward pain is accepting and redemptive.

Meaning is only experienced in motion.

If we are tired of life, what we’re really tired of is the story we are living inside of. And the great thing about being tired of our story is that stories can be edited. Stories can be fixed. Stories can go from dull to exciting, from rambling to focused, and from drudgery to read to exhilarating to live.

A hero wants something in life and is willing

Pain, then, is often the teacher that transforms the hero into the guide. That is, if their attitude toward pain is accepting and redemptive.

Meaning is the same. You accept your own agency. You move your locus of control from outside yourself to inside yourself. You go on intentional adventures, and you get to experience meaning. You have a goal, you overcome challenges, you put another page in the typewriter. You wake up each day and you push the plot forward. The more I lived intentio

Frankl’s formula to experience a life of meaning was pragmatic and threefold: Take action creating a work or performing a deed. Experience something or encounter someone that you find captivating and that pulls you out of yourself. Have an optimistic attitude toward the inevitable challenges and suffering you will experience in life.

The idea that fate writes our story is a lie. We do not suffer fate. We partner with fate to write a story generated from our own God-given creativity and agency. And that story can be more