Your hero’s Inner Journey is one of transformation. They go from living in fear to living courageously. 

When the story opens, this character is stuck. They desperately long for, or need, something that will lead them out of pain and toward success, happiness and fulfillment. 

But they are holding themselves back, tolerating some negative situation, or in denial that life could be better than it is right now.

So as the storyteller, how do you decide or discover what your hero’s fear is? What is so terrifying to your hero that it will prevent her from going after her longing, desire or destiny?

Dan Henry was an early member of Russell Brunson’s Two Comma Club – someone who made more than a million dollars (in his case more than 3 million) using Click Funnels to market his course on achieving wealth through Facebook ads.

When Dan contacted me, he wanted my help creating a story for the webinar that would launch his new venture. This one would help people earn up to 7 figures by creating their own online courses. (A course on creating courses, if you will.)

Dan had to convince thousands of people to invest in this new product. So he needed a powerful origin story that would give his target market the emotional experience of achieving his earlier success.

Dan and I were able to write a vivid, emotionally involving story about the steps he took, and the conflicts he overcame, that had resulted in that $3 million response. 

And to add the persuasive power of the Inner Journey to his story, I asked Dan if he was ever afraid when he was creating and launching his earlier course. 

The short clip above, lifted from the webinar story Dan and I created, reveals his answer.

As you can see, Dan was constantly afraid. He told me how worried he was that he would fail again, that the course wouldn’t sell, that he would lose all the time and money he’d invested, and that he’d let his students down if the course didn’t work. 

So in crafting his story, I pointedly asked Dan, “Did you ever share these fears with your wife?”

“All the time,” he told me. “And she always stood by me.”

“Then I want you to add a specific instance of vulnerability to your story, so we can experience you confessing those fears to her. And I want her to tell you how much she believes in you.”

The result was what you see in the video clip. 

This one additional scene gave the story’s Inner Journey its essential turning point – when his wife’s support allowed Dan to experience his transformation from fear to courage. Courage that would lead to his huge success with the course. And in my opinion, this was the scene that gave this new webinar his most successful response ever.  

This Inner Journey process is the same in a marketing story like Dan’s as it is in thousands of blockbuster movies or bestselling novels. Their heroes are held back by some deep emotional wound, they reach moments of vulnerability where they own their fears, and then - often with the support of those closest to them- they find the courage to move forward toward a positive resolution.

Notice that the fears that form the basis of the Inner Journey are universal. We’re all afraid of risk, failure, loss, abandonment and rejection, and of shattering the image of who we think we’re supposed to be. 

We all want to stay in our comfort zones, even if the risk of moving into the unknown might bring us everything we long for, or that we won’t even allow ourselves to dream about.

Because given a choice between safe and fulfilled, we’ll pick safe almost every time.

To discover the fear that stands between the hero of your story and that character’s success, just ask yourself how your hero would complete this sentence:

And here’s something even scarier, and even more powerful…

If you’re courageous enough to fill in that blank for yourself, you're well on the way to taking your own Inner Journey, achieving the success you long for, and becoming the hero of your own life. 

Allowing the inner conflict to emerge, as I did with Dan Henry, is one of the things I love most when working with clients. And it’s one of the elements clients repeatedly say they find most fulfilling about my coaching.

I know filling in that blank can be challenging, and reliving it can sometimes seem frightening. But by simply asking you questions about what happened during your journey, I can gently help you discover the fear you already overcame, and the courage you were able to exhibit. 

If you’d like my help guiding you through that process, then consider enrolling in my new Story Launch Package for Business and Story Launch Package for Film & Fiction where we will begin exploring your Inner Journey in our very first session.

In the short excerpt you saw from Dan’s origin story, I included some of his backstory, so you could hear the reasons he was so afraid of failure. 

That’s what we’ll explore in detail when I talk about a hero’s WOUND in my next newsletter: The Inner Journey #4: Why is Your Hero So Afraid?