Welcome and blessings. This is Ayn Cates Sullivan, host of the Wisdom of The Ages podcast show where we invite the sacred into modern day reality. Today’s show is going to be really fun. It’s about the hero’s journey. Now, we know the hero’s journey was made popular by Joseph Campbell, and in the hero’s journey a person, and now we can say either a male or female person, goes on a quest or an adventure, experiences a crisis or a challenge or we might bring in the loathly lady later on, but successfully overcomes the challenge, wins the victory, and then comes home changed or transformed.
Now, why does this matter now? On this episode, we’re going to talk about the new hero’s journey and the round table of conscious business. Business is really important for everyone, so stay tuned here.
Now, I’m going to introduce my wonderful guest, Bart Jackson, serves as a CEO of Prometheus Publishing and Bart’s Books, Unlimited Business Guides. He is also the founder of BIZ for NJ, online business journal. The Accomplished Professionals Breakfast in Manhattan and the International Prometheus Awards. His many books include, ‘Behind Every Successful Woman is Herself’. We’ll have to bring that on, that’d be fun. And there are many, many more books, which he’ll tell us about, right?
I’ve been on your show, Bart, The Art of the CEO Radio show where we already had some really fun mythical discussions, and our show I believe was entitled ‘Mythic Heroes For Today’s Business World”, which aired June 2nd, 2019, theartoftheceo.com. Am I correct there?
You are absolutely correct, Ayn, and that was a fabulous time because, here you have it, my friend, Ayn is in New York because she has just won one of her, I believe it’s 7.4 trillion awards for her. This was for ‘The Legends of the Grail’ as I recall. I could be wrong. My wife tells me I normally am. I had come, I said, Ayn, “Let’s do a show in your hotel room before you trot over to get your work.” And there was a jackhammer outside the hotel and Ayn very sweetly takes herself and her best beloved and moves across town and gets another hotel. And we had an absolutely marvelous show, in which we talked about the timeless ideas of character and heroic deeds and how they still applied to the way we get things done, and by that, I mean business.
It was really fun. Like he said earlier, it’s great when you can actually meet face to face, which we were able to do in this hotel room. Where we next, what, to Penn Station, I think? And it was great to meet you, actually receive a book from your hands and… Now speaking of which, we always have to invite the Bart onto this show with The Ages. Do you have a quote for the day?
Yeah, let’s try this. “One iron-willed, ambitious person can climb the highest mountain, but one compassionate person with all his supporters, can move it.” That was one my wife says and I came up with.
Very good, he’s a very clever guy. Tell me, I love King Arthur, the stories of King Arthur. Obviously, I’ve written this whole ‘Legends of the Grail’ series. That’s my thing, I love the round table. Now, we’re talking about fifth century stories, 12th century stories. Why does the hero’s journey matter now?
Well, because the hero is that special person who sees, opens and cultivates that divine spark within us all. We need the hero because he is the one who dreams large. He has an almost superhuman human, and in addition to the vision, he gorged his wine and he says about on our chest, quests to achieve them. And, and he doesn’t always make it. He doesn’t always succeed. Achilles didn’t conquer the Trojans and win the war, but he is someone who attempts to magnificent. And if this sounds a lot like somebody coming into business, I always felt it’s exactly the same. My definition of the entrepreneur is someone who has half do-er, half dreamer held together by the duct tape of stress and courage. Duct-tape cures everything this, this, I know. And that hero is, is what we need.
Just take a look at this. You’re walking to a city and you look in the city, and I was, I was in New York, I was in Manhattan yesterday and I’m in this office and I’m looking out and I see all these skyscrapers, I mean each one of them. Someone said, “You know, Joe. What we should do, we should take this empty spot right here and let’s put up a building of 40 stories.”
And he said, “No, Nope.”
“50 stories?”
“Okay, let’s do that.”
And think of all the work in the effort and the thought that go into it. And you have to have a drive and a passion and a spirit, and you need that kind of heroism if you yourself are going to become a self that you admire.
It’s true.
Yeah. Last week I had the idea of going with my mom to visit the statue of Liberty. It just felt like it was an important… with all the crazy stuff going on the planet, that it was really important to get back to a place that Lady Liberty, which to me represents hope. She’s, she’s, it is a heroine’s journey. Really, we went on a little pilgrimage to remember life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And, and I just saw my mom light up, I felt like going to Lady Liberty, we could stand underneath her… her torch actually looks like Aladdin’s lamp. You ever notice that? You know? So we went and rubbed a lot Aladdin’s lamp and it was like, “Please release some genius into this world, because we need it.” And there was something about, you were mentioning the divine spark, the hero’s journey.
I think when we go on that hero/heroine’s quest, we’re looking for something we think might be missing. It’s probably not, but for some reason we need that spark. We’re looking for that spark. We’re looking for the truth. We’re looking for what it takes to be a shining light in the world, to experience success, to be the great entrepreneur. And now, just standing there, I was like, “Gosh, now it’s the hero with eight billion faces.” You know, that’s kind of what came over me.
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Yeah, it is. We are looking, we’re always looking for the hero because the hero serves, serves two things; he serves the purpose of doing what needs be done. They’re coming over the gates and he’s the one who defends and sends them packing and wins that. But he also is that individual. He presents something that’s so important in this world. The role model, the person who wants to do that. And when you talk about the statue of Liberty, there is somebody who says, “I lift my lamp beside the golden door.” There is, you’re putting out hope and dreams.
And by the way, that statue was built at the time of one of France’s biggest stock market crash. They had an investment thing. It was a bad time, but the spirit of that age is what carried it forward. This was an age… There was a lot of reasons to throw out the Victorian bathwater, but one of the babies that got thrown out of it was the search for character and the other one that got thrown out of it was the grand vision of something of what mankind, humankind could do and what we could become.
That’s really exciting. Now, we’re going to go into that some more, but for right now, can you tell me where people can find your books and more about the Prometheus awards? What’s the website?
Well, you can find about my books at, just go to bartsbooks.com. That’s… Prometheus’s publishing is on there and my own books are on there. I would say I write stuff and publish other people’s stuff and that, you can go there and there is the Prometheus awards. I’m, I’m glad you very kindly unlocked that Pandora’s box because…
Yeah, we’ll do that after the ad break.
Yeah, but basically they can, they can find that if they want to find out about the Prometheus awards. Right now we are accepting calls for nominations for those exceptional individuals who have founded a social enterprise. You just go to bartsbooks.com and click on ‘Prometheus awards’.
Fantastic. Okay, so we’ve been talking with Bart Jackson. When we come back from the short break, we’re going to talk about the hero’s journey and why it matters now. Stay tuned, we’ll be right back.
To listen to the entire show click on the player above or go to the SuperPower Up! podcast on iTunes.
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