The Path of the Everyday Hero: Drawing on the Power of Myth to Meet Life's Most Important Challenges

The authors of this guidebook are both professors at Stanford University. They state their aim as follows: "This book invites you to take a new path. It assumes that all of us are on a journey, charting a direction for our life, whether we are aware of this or not. By being conscious about your path rather than a specific destination or goal, you can live every day with greater joy, intuition, will, strength, and compassion. The Path of the Everyday Hero shows how in each moment you can be a hero to yourself. And the secret is that if you can be a hero to yourself, then you can be of your greatest value to others and to the world" (p. 3). Specifically, this book offers a personalized course for developing greater personal power and fulfillment and in using practical creativity to resolve five significant challenges of adult life. It assists the reader to see challenges not as hindrances, problems, or failures, but as tests in the school of life, opportunities to call on and use personal strengths and wisdom perhaps unrecognized. The authors attempt to provide the tools one needs if, in the words of mythologist Joseph Campbell, you are to "follow your bliss [and] actually feel the rapture of being alive" (p. 4).

How does this relate to exceptional human experiences? We propose that EHEs are markers, indicating our personal path. Works like this one can help people to learn how to follow these pointers or the personal meaning of our EHEs.