The Dr. Josh Axe Show - Stop Playing the Victim. BE THE HERO | Mindshift 5

Episode Date: April 1, 2024

Are you living life as the victim or the hero? We all face challenges and setbacks in life that can make us feel like victims of our circumstances. But what if you could rewrite your story and become the hero instead? In this powerful episode, Dr. Josh Axe reveals how to transform your mindset and take radical ownership over your life's journey. #ThinkTHIS: I can own my story and edit my role. You'll discover: The 4 key characters we all play in life's story: victim, villain, hero, and guide Why staying stuck as a "victim" will strain your relationships and keep you from reaching your potential How to summon the courage of the "hero" and create an epic life story The 8 stages of the hero's journey that you can apply to your own life 4 ways to become a powerful "guide" who inspires transformation in others Don't resign yourself to being a powerless victim any longer. Tune in to this eye-opening episode to learn how to step into your heroic role, overcome adversity, and craft a life story worth telling. You have the power to rewrite your narrative and become the hero you were born to be! Want more of The Dr. Josh Axe Show? Subscribe to the YouTube channel. Follow Dr. Josh Axe Instagram Twitter Facebook Tik-Tok Follow Leaders Instagram Twitter Facebook Email Newsletter ------  Links:  Head over to https://joshaxe.com/ to order a copy of my new book!  https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=WNgtDwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PR7&dq=victim+mentality&ots=U6o1EHZKhe&sig=Zg4A4zlpmDHc84Nt0vW0Zj2Qo2E#v=onepage&q=victim%20mentality&f=false Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, everyone, welcome to the Dr. Josh Axe show where each and every week I explore the science and principles of how to grow in body, mind, spirit, and take your life to the next level. On today's episode, I'm going to be diving deep into how to experience a breakthrough in your life and how to stop sitting on the sidelines and start living out your best life story. Now, this is important in your health. I'm going to share with you a friend of mine who lost, actually he weighed 400 pounds. He lost 200 pounds. and how he did that and also how other people have experienced breakthroughs in their relationships, their mental health, their physical health, their career, and more in today's episode and a personal story as well. But let me start off here asking you a question. Have you ever felt like life is just

unfair or like the cards are stacked against you or the world is against you? Well, if you felt that way, oftentimes we get to the point where we start acting like we're a victim. And what happens is if you put yourself in that position where you allow yourself to play the victim or have a victim mentality. It sabotages every area of your life. And I want to share with you, I felt that way at one point in my life. A couple years ago, when I was diagnosed with a spinal infection and told I might never walk again, I was in the position where I felt like a victim. And I mold around for a few days. And one of the things I realized when I was in that state of feeling bad for myself was, This isn't serving me.

It's not making my life better. It's not making the life of those around me better. And so I decided that I wanted to build and have a better life story. You know, what I started doing was watching people who got these diagnoses like they would never walk again or be permanently impaired. And they went and they beat the odds. Right. Don't we love those stories where somebody is told you can't do it and they do anyways? And so you may be that person where someone in your life has told you, you can't do this.

and you want to prove them wrong. You want to go out there and show the world that you can. Well, that's what today is about, is breaking through the odds, becoming the hero in your own story. Here's the big problem, though. Most people today are sitting on the sidelines, not experiencing life to the full, because we've allowed somebody to say something negative to us

or someone has told us we can't do it, and we believe them. We believe the lies. And one of the first things you have to do, if you want to live the best life possible, whether that's a health breakthrough or life breakthrough, is you have to uncover the lies and discern the truth. And know, this is the truth about your story. You have the capacity to heal.

You have the capacity to do great things with your life, whether we start the business, write the book, do the art, have the great relationship. You have to know that if you want to experience a breakthrough. You know, a close friend of mine, a leadership expert and just a phenomenal writer, Donald Miller. You may heard of Donald Miller. He wrote a book called Blue Like Jazz and another great book called Story Brand, but I was out to lunch with him and a friend of mine, Rory Vaden. And I asked Donald, I said, hey, how do you live a great life story? And he said, you know what, here's the key to living the best story possible. And think about your life this way. Here's why I ask him the question.

If I were to take your life and turn it into a book, how would you rank it? Would it be an F, A, a, a, a, a, a, where in that range would you rank your life in terms of if we were to grade it as a book? Like for myself, Lord of the Rings is an A plus, right? That's an amazing book. And I've read other books that get enough. Where would your life rank in that, in terms of it being a great story? Think about that. And here's the thing that Donald told me.

He said, if you want to live the best life story possible, if you want to create a breakthrough in your life, you have to put yourself into a challenging life situation. and do a challenging story. Because he said the best stories are where the hero overcomes these insurmountable odds of saving the world or destroying the one ring or beating the dark forces or saving the princess or slaying the dragon. Right. So you have to put yourself in difficult situations. And most of us are addicted to comfort.

You know, we sit on our smartphones and just scroll and scroll and scroll our entire life away rather than actually living our lives. It's not to say that you can't bed. benefit, if you're smart about it, from being on social media and especially watching videos on YouTube and podcasts. These things are tremendous for learning. But also, you want to make sure that you're just not watching life, that you're actually taking part in life. And so here's what Donald did. Here's an example. Donald weighed almost 400 pounds. He'd just written his first book, Blue Like Jazz, had tremendous success, made probably close to a million dollars. And he was miserable.

And he decided, you know what? He said, I'm not happy with my life. He said, you know, weighing 380 pounds does not feel good. He had actually lost a lot of those money. He made really bad investment. So at that point, he lost almost a million dollars. And he decided, he said, you know what, I'm going to change my life by putting myself in a story. Because he was great at writing stories. So he said, I'm going to take a bike ride from California all the way over to the other coast.

So he was going to do a bike ride across America for a great cause for raising money for a charity. I think it was clean water in Africa and supporting orphans. And so he said, I'm going to put myself in the story of riding across the entire country. He's like, I've never biked more than a few miles. And so he started training and he did this bike ride. Well, in doing that, he lost 200 pounds, not just in a single bike ride, but over the next several years. And here's what he says. He says, when a story demands transformation, you are much more likely to transform.

And so, for instance, if your life story, if you don't put yourself in a challenging situation, for instance, if you don't say to yourself, I need to be able to be in the type of shape to bike across America. Or I want to, you know, I'm going to force myself to say I'm going to write a book this year no matter what. Or just quit your job. Or something like that. So you want to put yourself in a challenging situation that allows yourself to grow and that allows you to experience a breakthrough. So here's what I want you to think about. What could you do?

What is a big goal that you could set, a big vision that would, that you're going to go after, that by simply going after it, your body is going to transform. For instance, maybe you've never ran a marathon or done a triathlon. And you say, I'm going to do that. And so you start training and doing everything you can to do that. And so you naturally transform in the training process as you strive towards this goal you're trying to reach. Now, I want to dive. the way, I saw this very often in my clinic, and I want to hit on this. A lot of times people get into

what I call a victim mentality. And by the way, there's four, we'll call them identities that most people operate in. You can operate as a victim, a villain, a hero, or a guide. When you look at the best stories out there, people play almost every single one of those roles. I'll give you an example of this. When you watch a movie like Lord of the Rings, okay, you've got a victim. That could be Gollum. I mean, he has really been tortured and tormented by this ring and by other evil forces. He's been an outcast. And so he's really a victim that you'll see there in the Lord of the Rings. The villain, of course, is Lord Soron and those dark forces. A hero, we see that could be Aragon. It could be Frodo. And then, of course, a guide that's Gandalf, right? It's the mentor of this story.

It's the Yoda. It's the Obi-1 Kenobi. It's that mentor. helping the hero succeed and win. And I want you to think about yourself right now. Which one of those identities do you play? Do you play a victim more, a villain, a hero, or a guide? And I'll probably surprise you with sharing you what the villain actually looks like here in a minute. But a victim, here's the reality, a victim is helpless and powerless. Some of the characteristics of a victim is they're very self-focused. They're trying to just help themselves out of this crisis and situation. They're helpless.

They're full of excuses. And they're really typically in a point to where they don't change. And here's what happens. Either they actually can't change because they're truly a victim, right? So there are true victims out there. So if somebody has been kidnapped in sex trafficking is a real thing today, that's a true victim. But somebody that's in a situation where they can change but they're choosing not to, that's oftentimes because they've been able, they've really embraced what we call a victim mentality.

And it's something psychologists call learned helplessness. It's a theory by actually Martin Siegelman. He's a psychologist that coined the term in the 1960s. And basically it's this, it enforces the negative belief that if we can't do anything about our situation, we might as well give up. And so living as a victim, here's the thing you need to know, though, as well. If you live as a victim, it will strain every relationship you have because every single person around you is forced to cater to your emotional needs, your condition, your disease,

your pain, your loss, your heartache, your void. Now, I do want to say, we need to be empathetic to the needs of others. And if you are experiencing pain and suffering, and let's say, goes on a few days or even a few months, that's understandable, or it's periods of time. But to live in a victim mentality year after year after year, day after day, you're actually harming yourself, you're making yourself worse, and you're making everyone around you miserable and making their lives worse in most cases. And again, you're not serving yourself. So if you're a person, and by the way, we all know these people, right? So you might not be that person, but we all

know those people. They're always talking about their condition, their disease, how bad life is. and it's woeys me, living in this state constantly. Now, again, I want to be empathetic here. Let's say, for instance, I'll give you example. When my mom was just diagnosed with cancer, that was hard. And for her, you know, she had to bear being that victim for a period of time, but long term it did not help her to stay in that victim mentality. By the way, my mom was one of these people.

She had a victim mentality for many years. And she was eventually able to completely break free. of it or for the most part break free of it, and her life got tremendously better, right? When I was diagnosed with a condition where I might not walk, and I didn't walk for a year, when I was in that situation, I could have lived in that state. But even after just a few days, I said, I will not live in the state. Now, that doesn't mean that I didn't have times with Chelsea where I said, hey, can I just, and I would pre-frame it.

I'd say, listen, I'm having a hard few hours here, a hard day. Can I just vent to you for a minute? She said, yeah. I'd vent for a minute. I said, okay, I'd feel better. Okay, you know what? Let's talk about the positive things. Let's talk about how great our life can be and what's going on good right now. And so, listen, if you have something on your heart and you are suffering in some way and you're experiencing pain or disease or heartache or avoid in your life, let it out. You should. But it shouldn't be a 24 hour thing days and days and weeks and a constant thing or it takes up the majority of your mind frame in life because it will make your life worse.

Now, the first person I typically go to this is God. God hears you. He's experienced your pain and he knows what you're going through. And so that's a person who can handle that sort of negativity in the moment. And then those people close to you. But then as soon as you can, again, you need to really go and say, you know what? I'm going to have a resilient, positive mindset and knowing that I can take this on. When I was told I might not walk, I decided, you know what, I am going to walk. I don't care what the doctor said. I'm going to walk. I'm going to beat this thing when my mom cancer. It was the same thing. She decided, even though the doctor gave her a 40% chance to live. So in all likelihood, the doctor said, you're going to die. She believed that she was going to

live. And now 25 some years later, my mom is, you know, in her 70s and great health. And maybe you've experienced that yourself, where you've gone through a struggle, you've been able to break three. But it's important to understand if you or the other people around, you are living in a victim mindset, it's not benefiting you or them at all. And I experienced this. a lot with patients. Sometimes I would have a patient come in. Let's say, and I'm thinking about one patient in particular, and she came in to see me and she had chronic fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue. And I also want to say, this was 15 years ago, at one point she was diagnosed with Lyme disease. And she just felt terrible. Her joints ached. She was tired all the time. And she had

came in, but every time it was negativity, negativity, negativity, negativity. And the other thing I started realizing was, is that her disease became her identity. She believed that her, the biggest part, the most important part of her identity of her was her condition, her fibromyalgia, her chronic fatigue, her being a Lyme victim. And I had to sit down with her and I said, listen, I want to let you know that I feel for you. This is incredibly hard. You feel bad. Your joints hurt. But you're actually hurting yourself in your own body if you continue to believe this. And here's what, and I told her this. I said, I don't want you to say you have fibromyalgia again. I want you to say, hey, you don't feel the best today, but you're getting better. You're getting better. You're healing. You know, a year from

now, you're going to feel radically different. And so she started saying, I'm healing. I'm feeling better. I'm moving in the right direction. Because you don't want to lie about it either, but you do want to believe and no, she was under care. She was doing great things. She was changing her diet. She was moving in the right direction. And when she was able to do that, by the way, a year later, she didn't feel 100% better, but she felt about 80% better. I mean, she experienced a massive breakthrough. It was about three months after care was like, you know, something happened. And she just started feeling much, much better.

And so just know you want to have that mindset. But most people, many people live with this victim mindset a big part of their life. And here's the big thing about victims is the victim mentality is they don't believe they can change. It's actually tied to a limiting belief. They believe that I'm stuck like this or they get a dopamine hit like this positive dopamine hit because people feel bad for them. that gives and they're getting attention that way. So some people are doing it because they actually want attention. Now, most people wouldn't admit that, but that's the reality and that's actually what the

psychology shows us is that they're actually, that they find that as a way to help ease some of their pain when they get attention when people feel bad for them. But it's not helping anyone. So don't play the victim. Number two, don't play the villain. A villain is akin to the evil dictator who aspires to control no matter how many might be destroyed in their path, right? Now, we know the quintessential dictator that we've talked about the past 100 years in Adolf Hitler. Of course, he was a dictator, Joseph Stalin, Mao. I mean,

there are a lot of evil dictators. We see these in the movies, right? I mentioned Suron. We've seen in the Harry Potter series, Voldemore. We see, you know, President Snow in the Hunger Games. I'm just going through some stories that some of us are likely familiar with. So we know who the villain is, and most of us never think of ourselves as the villain. But if you embody any one of these characteristics, you are playing the villain, being resentful. Resentfulness is looking at somebody and just thinking, you know, it's a disdain for the person. It's, you're not good enough. It's you, you have a superiority complex. Or you sort of, it's a, it's more of a subtle, I hate you. And this happens a lot relationships. By the way, I was watching a lecture by a psychologist recently, and he said,

I can tell if somebody's going to get a divorce and if they're going to have a bad relationship very early on in a marriage. And he said, it's based on this. If a spouse ever rolls their eyes at another spouse, or if they look at each other kind of like with a side eye, like, what are they talking about? Those both embody a level of resentfulness. And so if you do that as a spouse or to friends or family, know that you're being a villain, you're being. You're being. evil in that way. And so you want to do everything you can to next resentfulness, narcissism, of course. Everything's about you. You know, you're always trying to one up people. Not changing. If you are in a place in life where you're just not changing, you've kind of been the same 10 years

ago as today you're not growing. That's a characteristic of a victim, but also of a villain. That's really victims and villains. They don't change. Now, victims basically stay frozen in the corner without changing. Villains take their pain and inflict it upon others. We've heard this saying, hurt people, hurt people. That's what villains do. They're hurting other people.

I want to give an example, just sharing kind of something that I did personally where I was being a villain. I was on a, this happened, I embarrassingly want to say about a month or two ago. I was on the phone with somebody from an airline, and they passed me to the third person after I waited on hold for an hour. And they just kept passing me off. And finally, I just, I got really frustrated and went on this rant about how bad the customer service with, everything else. And I realized afterwards, I realized this is not this woman's fault. This is my fault. And by the end of it, I said, you know what?

I'm taking my frustration out on you. I'm sorry. But I realized in that moment, I realized I'm being a villain right now. I'm being unnecessarily mean to somebody. It's not her fault necessarily. But all that being said, a lot of us, listen, all of us play one of these four roles at every point in the day. If you're a parent, you're playing the guide at every point in the day. So all that being said, most of us are playing these roles all day.

But villains, here's the other thing that's so interesting. Villains and heroes both start off as victims. Think about Harry Potter and Voldemort, okay? They're both orphans. Voldemort is an orphan and uses his pain to inflict pain on others. Harry Potter is an orphan, and he takes his pain and uses it for purpose to do great things in the world and to help others, right? And so it's all based on this. Villains basically live in their pain, victims of heroes go and use their pain for good in order to heal and help others.

And so if you ever go through anything trying in life and you're in a victim, let's say you've got a medical condition like Lyme disease or hypothyroidism and you're just, you're tired all the time. Or you're abused, even in any way in your life and you're still living with that today. Your life will become the best life possible if you use that pain and use that pain to help others. That's the reality. That will help you live your best life story. But it takes getting uncomfortable. Sometimes it takes going back and facing that pain. pain and then going and working hard to overcome that pain by transforming yourself.

Now, number three is the hero. The hero is the person who summons the courage to make the change in their life. The one who storms the castle or topples the evil regime. The characteristics of the hero are, number one, they are willing to transform and they believe they can transform. So they're willing. They're willing to go on the adventure. Think about Bilbo Baggins, right?

He's a little hobbit. But he's like, I am going to go and confront the dragon smog. I'm going to leave my comfy hobbit hole, and I'm going to go out there on an adventure. Most of us are not living an adventure. If I were asked you, is your life adventurous? Is it exciting? Now, listen, sometimes we're at phases in life. Chelsea and I just went through one of these where we have a three-month-old baby right now, okay?

Would I say that the past three months have been, like, exhilarating and crazy? Well, I'd say our home birth was awesome and almost like this supernatural experience. And so actually that was pretty awesome. But, you know, maybe in the past couple months of staying at home and ordering food in more and that sort of thing, maybe it's not quite as. But we have some other adventures scheduled for the summer like a trip to Europe and, you know, serving, you know, serving our community, some things we're doing at church. And so we do have some exciting things we're up to. Okay. So a new business we're launching, things we're writing.

So, you know, we definitely have some stuff coming, but my point is not every single minute of every day or every month or even every year has to be the big adventure. But we should have some things we're really excited about and some big things we're up to. One of the biggest things you could be up to is raising great kids, which I'll get into next. But here are their characteristics to get of a hero, willing to transform, accepting responsibility. This is huge. Heroes say, you know what? I'm a little hobbit. I'm this little person with billions of people on the planet.

Yeah, I'm going to take responsibility for, you know, feeding the hungry in this area. We're starting up this new company that's going to help save and transform lives or raising these great kids, right? But accepting full responsibility, if you're a person and you're always passing responsibility onto other people and you never want to take blame, you should take as much blame as possible. You should take responsibility, take ownership. in an extreme way. I want to give you example of this. When I first opened up my functional medicine clinic in Nashville, Tennessee, I had the mentality that anyone who got sick or died of a chronic condition in the whole city of Nashville

or Franklin or Brentwood, just the whole area or Hendersonville, that was my responsibility. When I saw somebody who had an overdose of aspirin or something like that, I thought to myself, Gosh, you know what, that's partly my responsibility. And it wasn't in an unbearable way to the world. It was, I'm taking full responsibility for the city, and I'm going to get on a radio show, which I was able to get on a three-hour radio show and speak to, you know, tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people on a regular basis, a podcast, a YouTube show. My mentality was, I'm going to save, I'm going to help save lives of people like my mom

who could have avoided cancer if they knew how to use food as medicine and lifestyle medicine. mindset medicine, and I took responsibility. And so really, there's a saying in Spider-Man that we all love, with great power comes great responsibility, and that's true. But I also think the more that you embrace responsibility in the right, in a healthy way, the more power it gives you. You cannot, if you don't take responsibility for anything, you have no power to influence anything in a way.

versus if you take on a great responsibility, you have a greater ability to impact the lives of others. And so if you want to make the biggest change you can in the world and live your best life possible, you have to live the life of a hero. Here's another big thing about the hero is they grow in character and virtue. They become along the story, we see this with whether it's Harry Potter or Bilbo Baggins or Frodo or Luke Skywalker. You know, we see these people who are, they tend to be small and timid and bullied in their life and lacking courage. And through this big goal that they're trying to accomplish, they become more loving, more courageous, they have more wisdom. They grow in their character and virtue along the way. And that's what I mean putting yourself in a tough story.

If you have a big goal and you say, I'm going to grow in character through this. in order to achieve it, you will grow in that way. Again, heroes use their pain for good. And here's another big thing about heroes. They have great desires. They want more out of life. That's one of the starts. If you're kind of sitting around and you're thinking, you know what, I'm happy just to scroll the internet and watch TV and just live a ho-hum life, then maybe you're not cut out to be the hero. But if you're saying to yourself, you know what, I do want more out of life. I want to get to the end of my life and no, I ran the best race possible, that I made a difference. I raised the best kids. I was a great spouse. That my life mattered and was incredibly meaningful and I was significant.

That's the first part of being a hero, is you have a desire to do something and contribute to the world with your life. That's really where it starts. And the hero knows that, well, here's the other thing, the hero knows that while they can't control everything, they can control something, they can control certain aspects of their life. And they want to have a good impact on the world. And here's the other thing. Even if the odds are stacked against you, you know, you have to take ownership. And this is the case always.

It's mission impossible, yet they accomplish the mission, right? And so you want to think about that as much as possible. Here's the other thing. The hero, the villain is always thinking about themselves and how to get things to serve themselves. The hero's mindset is totally removed from themselves. and their focus almost fully on serving and saving others. The villain is depressed. The hero is full of joy and hope because they've shifted from self-focused to others focused.

That's another key quality of a hero. Now, here's the good news I want to share with you. If you're living in a state of a victim where you know this has been you, you're full of excuses, you complain a lot, you're always talking about your condition, or you're a villain to where you know that you've been resentful, you've harbored unforgiveness, you've heard others, or you do that regularly in order to make yourself feel good. Here's the good news.

Both characters are redeemable. You know, think about Anakin Skywalker, who became Darth Vader at the end, he's redeemed, right? And many people are redeemed much, much earlier in their stories. You have the power to change. With the right mind shift, you can become the hero or the guide who leads the hero, facing the trials, and doing big things with your life. And I want to go through how anyone can stop playing the victim quickly.

Okay? If you consider yourself a victim, first know you have two choices. You can continue to play the victim. And by the way, here's one thing that I think about when I felt like I was a victim, that there is a Persian proverb, and it says this, I cried because I had no shoes until I met a man who had no feet. When I was in my situation where I was in bed six months in and I didn't, I hardly felt like I was any better.

And I was thinking to myself, this is very unfair that I had this happen to me. There's a lot that is out of their control. There are certain things that are within their control and they do everything they can to change those things. So just know, there are certain things out of your control. But you want to impact everything that is within your sphere of control. There's a great graphic for this. I want to show you right now.

So you can look at this as an example, the inner circle, the middle circle, the outer circle of what's going on there. Now, here's the good news for both victims and villains. Both characters are absolutely redeemable. I mean, think about Darth Vader at the very end being redeemable. Think about the person on the cross next to Jesus, the thief. And Jesus says, today I'll see you in paradise.

Okay, so the victims, the villains, the thieves, they can be redeemable in change. their life, those are some of the most empowering stories. So if you know you've been operating as a victim or a villain, you're redeemable. And just knowing either you can stay a victim or you can let your experience and your pain help others. That's the key. Now, I want to say, when you accept responsibility for your circumstances and take radical, massive action to change, you automatically step into the shoes of the hero. That's really it. You want to become a hero? You decide that you're not going to be the victim anymore and that you're going to

change your life and do good in the world. Really, it goes from this. You start, you stop focusing on yourself and your problems to start focusing on the problems of others and help resolve those things. And when bad news comes or bad things happens, here's the thing when you're a hero, you still fight through it. You don't cower in the corner. You don't say woeys me. Instead, you start saying, you know what, I'm going to go and fight and do everything I can in my power to positively influence my life, but more so influence the lives of others. You know, I want to give you some examples here, like The Hunger Games.

Katniss Everdeen evolves from a young girl, barely able to take care of herself and her family to a powerful leader who started a revolution overthrow an empire. Think about Iron Man. We see Tony Stark as this obnoxious billionaire playboy, but over the course of this movie, we see him grow in maturity to the point to where he literally gives his life for others,

in the first Avengers movie. Now, I want to say this as well. This is a key characteristics of a hero, and that is self-sacrifice. They're willing to sacrifice themselves, this greatest form of love, agape love, sacrifice themselves for the lives of others. We see this in movies like the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, where Aslan, the Lion, gives his life for the kids, specifically Edmund and the entire world, of course, is symbolic of Christ's crucifixion. And then we see Gandalf and Lord of the Rings, you know, he falls into this pit, he gives his life and is resurrected. And that's what happens. It's a pattern of the world. When you give your life in a way, when you sacrifice something you want or need, you think for like focus, when you sacrifice focus for yourself to

focus on others, what tends to happen is new things are birthed and reborn. You give up something, something dies to yourself, but now you're reborn in a stronger way to have a bigger influence and a better influence on other people. You know, there's a great example of this in history with Harriet Tubman. And you may not know this, but she was, of course, enslaved, abused. She was actually disabled. She got hit over the head and had a speech impediment her entire life. And she was an unlikely hero.

She was born into a time of oppression, injustice. And if anybody could have an excuse and keep a victim mentality, it was her literally. she was a slave, the entire world against her. And during that time, being a woman, specifically a black woman, you know, that wasn't, of course, everything was stacked against her during that time. Yet she was able to take on the mantle of a hero. You know, she was able to escape and find her freedom. Now, here's the thing.

She didn't just escape and find her freedom. She then went back to help others escape and rescued her loved ones. amazing. And so that's just a prime example of someone in history who could have said everything stacked against her. And this is a question I would have for you. Did you have it worse and more things stacked against you than Harriet Tubman? Most of us are going to say, no, absolutely not. Yet she never said, I'm a victim. She never had resentment. She was never, you know, biased against any race whatsoever, like so many people are today from differing angles. She just decided that she was going to take on the mantle of hero and save her loved ones. And we want to do the saying. And I want to share with you here

on this chart the eight stages that can be applied to us in terms of becoming a hero. Here's what becoming a hero looks like. Now, this is modified from Joseph Campbell's A Hero's Journey. And he goes through closer to 20 stages. I simplified this for us to be able to see this for ourselves. But there's really eight stages to you becoming a hero. And the first one is getting out of your comfort zone. saying, you know what, I'm not going to play the victim anymore. I'm not going to just live a life of comfort of scrolling on the internet. I am instead going to go out and do something adventurous. And what tends to happen before that or after that is we're awakened.

And maybe we hear something. Maybe someone says something where we realize, gosh, this isn't good. I'll give you an example of this for myself. I remember going when I decided to become a doctor because, first off, Well, my mom had cancer, but I kind of lost some of that motivation and purpose just over time a little bit. And I got into school and I started thinking a little bit more about, okay, how much money could I make or, you know, could I have plenty of freedom? And then I went into this doctor. He was giving a lecture, an hour-long lecture to potential patients.

And he went in there and he shared with me how terrible our medical system was in terms of the over-prescribing of medications, the side effects. medications, the unnecessary surgeries, and he taught everybody that people could heal with food and holistic treatments and a number of things. And I remember sitting in that room and it was like a light bulb came on. I thought, you know what? Wow, I didn't realize this was this big of a problem. And it honestly broke my heart and I said, I want to do something about this. I want to help people get off medications and start using supplements and food and chiropractic care and acupuncture, natural holistic treatments. I was awakened. And I remember being in church. This happened sometimes multiple times for us and realizing, you know what, I'm not living my life to the full. I've been

selfish. I remember going on a trip as I've talked about previously to Ethiopia. And there were people there that lived in a dumpster and in a landfill and saying, this isn't right in the world. So oftentimes we see this. You think about Gandalf and he goes to with Frodo or Bilbo, they're sitting in their comfy hobbit hole, and then they're awoken to a bigger world and a purpose or something bigger than themselves. And that's such an important part of becoming a hero, is realizing the world does not revolve around you. The world is so much bigger than you. And if you keep the world to where that's the biggest thing, it's going to lead to depression, anxiety, mental health issues. You know why mental health issues are on the rise?

Everybody is focused on themselves, and you're so small. You have potential to do good things, but you're so small. the world is so big, God is so big. So when you focus on something bigger than yourself, your mental health issues like depression, they start going over here. And what starts to happen is you are more inspired and motivated than you've ever been. And most of those conditions diminished. I'm not saying 100%, but I'm saying most of them do completely if your purpose and your why is big enough. But you need to be awoken to something. And listen, if you haven't been awoken, then read more, experience more, do more. Because just living life on the sidelines,

on, you know, scrolling on TikTok, that's not going to do it for you. Like, I'm constantly trying to put myself in a position where I become more aware, attending conferences, listening to podcasts, especially people that have great character, listening to sermons and lectures of people that or virtuous, doing good things in the world, and then being aware of, okay, that's a problem. I need to help remedy that. I'm taking responsibility. This is what a hero does. Number three thing that a hero often helps do is oftentimes a hero doesn't do it alone.

They do it together with other people. Like for myself, if I feel passionate about something, I'm going to share it with Chelsea and share it with our kids. We're going to do it as a family. Or if Chelsea feels the same way and shares something and I get awoken, I'm going to say, Chelsea, I love that mission. I'm going to go on your mission. Let's do that together.

But heroes assemble a team. They're not doing life solo. They're doing it in community with others. So think about, you know, there's individual superheroes, but what do we love the most? We love the Avengers. We love the Justice League. We love our favorite TV shows like Friends in Seinfeld, right? We love our, and it tends to be four or five people, the size of a family or a small group outside.

But you want to assemble a team to fulfill your dreams. Okay? That's number three. is who's your team? This is where you can build out a community of purpose, other people around you that are passionate, want to change the world, who are going to go on a heroic journey with you. I mentioned this with Donald Miller. Donald Miller lost 200 pounds. How did he do that? He decided he was going to bike across the country with a group of friends. Now, I think he only knew one of those people maybe initially, and then over time he knew more and more and more, but he was doing it with a group.

Number four, here this is big. Find a quest. Except, responsibility and embark on a mission. With Donald, it was, okay, my mission is it was twofold. One, I do want to lose 100 pounds, but my primary goal isn't that. My goal is to raise money as much money as I can for this charity by biking across the country. So what is a mission or something you can help out with? Right? And I'll just give you some examples of this. Like I have a, one mission could be to raise great kids. That's a mission. And so maybe because of it, you you say, okay, well, one of my quests is to go and find other couples that have great values and morals and want to change the world, right? That really are willing to serve with us if we do maybe

once a year on a mission trip or give a certain amount or do philanthropic efforts. And this is something Chelsea and I've been conscious of. Who are the other couples? We want to spend time around. That way they influence our kids. So I'll give you an example of this. We have Stephanie and Isaac Meek, this incredible couple. They've got five daughters. In fact, one of them babysat our daughters the other day because they're a little bit older.

But we agree around people like them because we want to grow in our marriage. We want our kids to grow. We have Andrew and Sean Johnson East, an incredible couple that we would spend time with, Dan and Amanda Sullivan. So we have some great couples that we love to get our kids around

and to spend time around on a mission. So that's one. example of that, or it could be a mastermind group you join, or it could be a church, or it could be, there are a number of things, but think about what's a quest that you could have, okay? Now, this can be related to your career or non-career. So it could be for myself, early on, I wanted to teach people how to use food as medicine. And then I wanted to teach people mindset medicine. And then I said, you know what, I just want to help people reach their full potential in body, so their physical health, but also in their mind and in their spirit. And so that's a quest I'm going on to help bring others along with me

and learning and growing and living the best life possible. So think about what is a quest, it's a mission that you can go on. And sometimes we have multiple missions, right? I have a mission right now to help our family grow and in our character. I have a mission in my career to help people, as I just shared in that way. And we have other missions. So think about what your quest is. Number five, know this about heroes.

is heroes face trials. You're going to encounter obstacles and challenges that deter you from your quest, but you need to persevere and keep your focus on your mission. I mean, the reality is, I'll share this with you. You know, when I started Dr.ax.com, which eventually grew to be the number one natural health website, that was a quest I had. I said, I want Dr.ax.com to become the number one natural health website. And we had, you know, and it was challenging, like people quit, and it was hard to get a great

article at first, and I spent so much time doing things. I didn't feel like people could do things as well as I did, so I held on, but then I realized I have to let go and I have to hire great people and spend months training them. And it was hard. But eventually, despite all those things, it was able to grow. Same thing with my company, ancient nutrition. It grew. Same thing right now. I'm going through trials right now with, I have two businesses I own. One's called the Health Institute, and the other is called Leaders. It's Leaders.com. And Leaders.com, early on, the articles didn't do as well as I wanted them to. So now I've changed the model and said, okay, I'm going to do a lot more video content, focus more on podcast and do everything I can to

grow the shows, not just my show, but other shows alongside me and build out a leader, a media network that's really focused on virtue and character and helping people break through in their health and their personal growth, in their leadership, and spiritually and other areas of life. And I'm in the middle right now of this, and it's hard. But I'm going to I'm going to prevail because I have the heroic mindset. Here's another big thing that happens when you're on a hero's journey. Transformation. When you sacrifice yourself and you go through those trials, you transform. So think about this, it's like putting your muscles under stress. If you're doing bicep curls, right, with dumbbells over time, it's stress, it's hard, it's a trial.

But they're going to transform, grow larger, stronger, leaner. You're going to lose more weight. Get leaner. So it's the same thing. know that what's going to happen is you put yourself in difficult situations, whether it be through working out or eating healthier or diving into difficult situations, you're going to grow through it if you have the heroic mindset. Number seven is triumph. That's stage seven. You overcome, you reach your goal, you accomplish your quest, you slay the dragon. That's what heroes do is they're focusing on reaching that point of triumph as well. And then what happens after you triumph, you should celebrate.

You should have a lot of people don't do this, by the way. And by the way, I am not the best at this, but I'm trying to get better, is if I do have a big victory, celebrate it. If you have a goal in your business, if you reach that milestone in your health where your blood sugar levels drop to a certain point or you, you know, your aura ring says you get a certain, your sleep is better, or you lose a certain amount of weight or whatever it is, your body fat drops. Celebrate it.

Okay? Have that triumph. And the number eight is return with wisdom. Become the guide that help other people triumph over that same thing that you struggled with, help them do that. You know, when my mom beat cancer, naturally later on, she started teaching other women how to juice vegetables and create green smoothies and eat healthier to beat their cancer. A very similar thing.

So use your wisdom and pass it on to others. If you learn a lot from my podcast, maybe you start, your own and start, maybe you start a health podcast or a leadership or personal growth podcast and you share some of that wisdom. So become the guide. There are really four powerful ways to become a guide, become the Gandalf, the Yoda, the Obi-1 Kenobi, the Dumbledore. Here's how you do it. Recruit heroes and give them a quest. Look for people who are humble and hungry, okay? So that's what, this is what Jesus did, right? He was the guide. He brought in his 12 disciples. Are there people that you can bring in, you can mentor and give them a quest?

It's so fulfilling. It's one of the most meaningful things you could ever do in your life is not only being the hero, but once you complete your heroic journey, mentor others, disciple others into doing the same. Number two, see the potential in others, call it out and help them grow in it. And so if you have somebody who, and I do this a lot right now, actually, I do mentorship and discipleship. I do it spiritually.

So Chelsea and I lead growth groups. I do it with a group of others. entrepreneurs. And what I will do is I will sit with them. And by the way, the men that I've done this with, here's what they've told me, this is the most meaningful thing anyone is one of the most meaningful things anyone's ever done for me. And I'll put my hand on their shoulder and I'll say, I see this in you. I see that you're incredibly generous. I see that you have this skill of being able to communicate at a high level. I see. And by the way, it's not flattering. And everyone's as different. And I share with them what I see in them and what I think they're capable of doing.

And that's what needs to happen. I mean, there's this point in, you might remember this in the movie, The Hobbit or the book The Hobbit, where Gandalf, where Thorne Oaken Shield, one of these dwarves, says, you know, Master Baggins is no, you know, is no burglar, he's this, this, and this. And then you see, Gandalf says, if I say, you know, if I say he's a burglar, a burglar he is. And eventually, I mean, he says, I believe in him. No matter what I believe in him, then of course, course he goes and, and, you know, is the hero of the story. But you need to see the person, call out

the potential in them, and then support them in everything they can to grow in that unique area of skill that they have. Number three thing you need to do to become a guide, model it. Model it. This is how kids learn. It's how everyone learns. My daughter right now, who's about to turn four years old, she watches what I do and what my wife does, and she does the same thing. You want to model the behavior. If you want your heroes that you're teaching to be great, you need to be great. If you want them to be generous, when you're sitting down at the dinner table, you should be tipping to 20, 25 percent, or whatever it is, whatever number, okay? But you should be tipping generously. If you want them to be generous, you need to be giving and tithing. If you want to, if you want them

to be courageous, you need to show, you need to be courageous yourself. So you need to demonstrate it, model it for the hero. Number four, inspire the hero to sacrifice. and transform. I want to say this as well. You might think to yourself, well, I'm not a guide. If you're a parent, you are a guide. If you're a parent. Because you do this exact same thing.

That's exactly what you need to do with your kids. If you're an older sibling, you're a guide. Even if you're in your 40s and you have a sibling that's 36, you can be a guide to them. Okay, we all are guides in our life or have the opportunity to be great guides. So number four is inspire the hero to sacrifice and transform. You sacrifice yourself constantly. and show them how to, it's part of modeling, but sacrifice, and you are growing yourself,

which helps them grow and transform. You know, looking at this hero's journey of these eight stages is so helpful in creating a breakthrough. By the way, this is just one of the, I think, almost 30 graphics in my book I wrote called Think This, Not That. So if you want more information like this, you've got to get the new book. It's the best book I've ever written. And if you go to Amazon.com, just search Think This, Not That, or Dr. X think this, not that, it'll come up. When you buy on Amazon, if you go then to Joshax.com and you plug in the code from which you bought this in the area of the book, you're going to get a lot of free stuff. In fact, you'll get the workbook for free. I did a mindset master class for free.

I have these growth cards you get for free. Hundreds of dollars worth of free things and the audio bonuses. Those are free as well with people like Dave Ramsey. I mean, just amazing powers as the psychologist, Shaday Zarahi, and others. And so, I want to encourage you. If you get the book, make sure to get it and then go to joshax.com so you can get all those bonuses. Here's the thing. Recognize that template and recognize where you're at in your story. Where do you see yourself? Are you in the comfort stage? Are you in the waken stage? Maybe I've been able to be the guide right now and awakened you to let you know. There's a greater calling for your life. Stop sitting on the sidelines. Change your role.

If you've been living as the victim or the villain, become the hero or become the guide. I am really confident in this. If you're watching this, you are capable of so much more than you probably could think. I mean, when I think about some people, I mean, Elon Musk is an example of this. He was picked on. He had Asperger syndrome, which some people would say that that could hold him back in certain areas of life. But he became one of the three wealthiest people in the world and making a big impact, right? And there are so many other people.

Like, I myself was told, believed I wasn't smart. And eventually I had to overcome that. I didn't believe I was capable of anything. And later on, I realized I was. And so it's so important that you realize you are capable of so much. You just need to embrace the mindset of a hero and a guide. And I hope this has helped you do that. I know my book will help you do it in an even deeper and bigger way.

But remember this. Number one, discover your quest. What is that thing, that area in the world you can go out and make a difference in? And then take ownership and massive action. I want to encourage you to think this. You can own your story and change your role in the story. Listen, if your story up to this point has been boring, make it adventurous and exciting. Think about what is something I could do that's going to make a difference by putting myself

in the story is going to help me transform. Don't think this. I'm a helpless victim, and it's out of my control. Listen, it won't be easy. Nothing worth doing is easy, but it's worth it. And I want to let you know, too, in chapter five of my book, think this, not that. I go much deeper into this. And I actually have an exercise in there called Stars, S-T-A-R-S, that will allow you.

you to go much deeper into figuring out your heroic journey and your story. And you can get a copy. You just go to joshaxe.com, j-osh-a-xc.com, get the book. You can go right to chapter 5. Go to any of the chapters. But this will help you with all the exercises. The workbook has all of it for you to go through as well. And I just want to say, thanks so much for tuning in here to the Dr. Josh Axe show,

where each and every week I uncover the science and the principles of how to grow in your body, mind and spirit and take your life to the next level. Hey, if you're not subscribed, make sure to subscribe. By the way, any time you subscribe to this channel, you allow me to bring on better guests because the more popular the show grows, the more I can bring on great guests. You know, I've got guests coming up like Gary Brecker. I've had Carrie Underwood. We've had Dave Ramsey. I have Tim Tebow coming up and more. So we've got some absolutely amazing guests, Mark Hyman. But the more that you subscribe, like, and comment on the show and rate this highly, The more the show grows, the more I can bring in these amazing world-changing people,

then just take the show to the next level. So thanks so much all of you who are subscribing and being on mission with me to help change this entire world by changing ourselves. So again, thanks to everybody. I can't wait to see you on the next episode.