Stop Playing the Victim. BE THE HERO | Mindshift 5

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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 gonna 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 gonna 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, again, 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've felt that way, oftentimes we, we get to the point where we start acting like we are 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 wanna 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, I, I mulled 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 were, 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 wanna prove them wrong.

You wanna 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 wanna live the best life possible, whether that's a health breakthrough or a 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 and do great things with your life, whether it be start the business, write the book, do the art, have the great relationship. You have to know that. If you wanna experience a breakthrough, you know, a close friend of mine, a leadership expert and just a phenomenal writer, Donald Miller. You may have heard of Donald Miller.

He wrote a book called Blue Like Jazz and another great book called StoryBrand. 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 asked him the question.

If I were to take your life and turn it into a book, how, how, how would you rank it? Would it be an F, a D, a, a, a, an A? Where, 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+, right? That's an amazing book.

And I've read other books that get an F. 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 wanna live the best life story possible, if you wanna create a breakthrough in your life, you have to put yourself into a challenging life situation and do a challenging story.

'Cause 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 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 wanna 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 Light 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 this money. He made really bad investments. So at that point, he had lost almost $1 million. And he decided, he said, you know what? I'm gonna change my life by putting myself in a story. 'Cause he, he was great at writing stories.

So he said, I'm going to take a, a bike ride from California all the way over to the other coast. So he was gonna, do a bike ride across America for a great cause, for raising money for a charity. I think it was, I think it was clean water in Africa and, and supporting orphans. And, and, and so he said, I'm gonna put myself in this 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.

Wow.

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, um, you know, uh, I'm, 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. All right, 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. Form in the training process as you strive towards this goal you're trying to reach.

Now I wanna dive in, and by the way, I, I saw this very often in my clinic and I want, and I wanna hit on this. A lot of times people get into what I call a victim mentality. And by the way, there's 4, there, there's 4, 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. Okay. He, it's, it's, 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, uh, in the Lord of the Rings. The villain, of course, is Lord Sauron and those dark forces. A hero, we see that could be Aragorn. It could be Frodo. And then of course, a guide, that's Gandalf, right? It's the mentor of the story. It's the Yoda, it's the Obi-Wan Kenobi. It's that mentor that's helping the hero succeed and win.

And I want you to think about yourself right now. Which one of those, 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've, they're very self-focused. They're trying to just help themself 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 it's li— and here's what happens. Either they actually can't change because they're, they're truly a victim, right?

Like, so there are true victims out there. So if somebody. Has been kidnapped in, in, you know, sex trafficking is a real thing today. That, 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, they've really embraced what we call a victim mentality.

And it's something psychologists call learned helplessness. It's a theory, uh, by actually Martin Seligman. 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 wanna say we need to be empathetic to the needs of others.

And if you are experiencing pain and suffering, and let's say it goes on a few days or even a few months, that's, that, that's understandable. Or it's periods of time. But to live in a victim mentality year after year after year, day after 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, 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, and, and it's woe is me living in this state constantly. Now, again, I wanna be empathetic here.

Let's say for instance, I'll give you an example. When my mom was just diagnosed with cancer, um, That was hard. And for her, you know, she, she had to bear being that victim, uh, for, 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 where with Chelsea where I said, hey, can I just, and I would preframe it.

I'd say, listen, I'm having a hard, you know, 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 and I said, okay, I feel better. Okay. You know what? Let's talk about the positive things. Let's talk about how great our life can be and, 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 a void 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 that, 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, 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 gonna 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 gonna walk. I don't care what the doctor said. I'm gonna walk. I'm gonna beat this thing with my— When my mom had 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, in great health. And maybe you've experienced that yourself where you've gone through a struggle, you've been able to break through.

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 experience this a lot with patients. Sometimes I would have a patient come in. Let's say 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 this was fifteen 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. And the other thing I started realizing was is that her disease became her identity. Identity.

She believed that her— the biggest part, the most important part of her identity to 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 and 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 gonna feel radically different. And so she started saying, I'm healing, I'm feeling better. I'm moving in the right direction. 'Cause you don't wanna lie about it either, but you do wanna believe and know 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.

Wow.

I mean, she experienced a massive breakthrough. It was about 3 months after care. It was like, you know, something happened and she just started feeling much, much better. And so just know you wanna 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 and 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 2, 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 Sauron.

We've seen in the Harry Potter series Voldemort. We see, you know, President Snow in The Hunger Games. I'm, I'm just going through some positive, some stories that we're, 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, you know, just, it, it's a, it's a disdain for the person. It's, it's, it's, you're not good enough. It's you, you have a superiority complex. Or, or you sort of, uh, it's, it's a, it's more of a subtle, I hate you. And this happens a lot in relationships, by the way.

Uh, I was watching a lecture by a psychologist recently and he said, I can tell if somebody's gonna get a divorce and if they're gonna 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, those both embody a level of resentfulness. And so if you do that as a spouse or to friends or family, know that, that you're being a villain. You're being evil in that way. And so you wanna do everything you can to nix resentfulness. Narcissism, of course. Everything's about you. You know, you're always trying to one-up people. Um, 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, 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 the saying, hurt people hurt people. That's what villains do. They're hurting other people. I wanna give you an example, just sharing kind of something that I did personally where I was being a villain. I was on a, uh, I was— this happened, I, I want to 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, you know, I, I just, I got really frustrated and kind of went on this rant about how bad the customer service was, 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, uh, necessarily. And so, but all that being said, a lot of us, oh, listen, all of us play one of these 4 roles, uh, at every point in the day.

If you're a parent, you're playing the guide almost at, at, at every point in the day. So all that being said, most of us are playing these roles all day, but villains.

Yeah.

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. Victim— 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, you've— let's say you've got a medical condition like Lyme disease or hypothyroidism, and you just, you're tired all the time, or you were abused even in a, in a, in any way in your life, and you're still living with that today.

Yeah.

Your life will become the best life possible if you use that pain and use that pain to help others. That, 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 and then going and working hard to overcome that pain by transforming yourself. Now, number 3 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, he's, he's a little hobbit, but he's like, I am going to go and confront the dragon Smaug. I'm going to leave my comfy hobbit hole and I'm gonna go out there on an adventure. Most of us are not living an adventure. If I were to ask 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 3-month-old baby right now. Okay. Would I say that the past 3 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, maybe it's not quite as.

Yeah.

But we have some other adventures scheduled for this 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, we do have some exciting things we're up to. Okay. Some, a new business we're launching, things we're writing. So, so, you know, we, we, we do, 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 the characteristics again of a hero: willing to transform, accepting responsibility.

This is huge. Heroes say, you know what, I'm, I'm a little hobbit. I, I'm this little person with billions of people on the planet. Yeah, I'm gonna take responsibility. For, you know, feeding the hungry in this area or starting up this new company that's gonna 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 wanna take blame, you should take as much blame as possible. You should take responsibility, take ownership in the ex— in an extreme way. I wanna give you an 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 my whole, 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, had an overdose of aspirin or, or, or something like that, I thought to myself, gosh, I, you know what, that's, 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 gonna get on a radio show, which I was able to get on a 3-hour radio show and speak to, you know, uh, tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people on a regular basis, a podcast, a YouTube show.

My mentality was, I'm gonna save, I'm gonna 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 and mindset medicine. And I took responsibility. And so really, there's this 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 wanna 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. We, we, you know, you know, you know, we, we, we see these people.

Yeah.

Who are, they tend to be small and timid and bullied in their life and lacking courage. And through this big goal, this, this 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 gonna grow in character through this in order to achieve it. You, 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, if you're, 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 outta life. I want to get to the end of my life and know I ran the best race, race possible, that I made a difference.

I raised the best kids. I was a great spouse. That I just, that, that my life mattered and was incredibly meaningful and I was significant. That's, that, 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 what, 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 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, stacked against you, You know, you have to take ownership. And this is, this is the case always. It's, it's, it's mission impossible, yet they accomplish the mission, right?

And so you wanna think about that as much as possible. Here's the other thing. The hero, the, the villain is always thinking about themselves and how to get things to serve themselves. The hero's mindset is totally removed from themself and they're focused 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 wanna share with you.

If you are living in a state of a victim where, you know, this has been you, you're full of excuses, you complain a lot, you've, you, you, you're always tell— talking about your condition, or you're a villain to where you know that you've been resentful, you've, you've harbored unforgiveness. You've hurt 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 most people, 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 wanna go through how anyone can stop playing the victim quickly. Okay? Um, if you consider yourself a victim, first know you have 2 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 6 months in and I, 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, that, that is outta 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 outta your control, but you want to impact everything that is within your sphere of control. And there's a great graphic for this. I wanna 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, and Jesus says, today I'll see you in paradise. Okay? So, so, so, so the victims, the villains, the thieves, they can be redeemable and 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 are 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 wanna 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 wanna become a hero? You decide that you're not gonna be the victim anymore and that you are going to Change your life and do good in the world. Really, it goes from this. You start, you, 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 happen, here's this, 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, woe is me. Instead, you start saying, you know what? I'm gonna go and fight and do everything I can in my power to positively influenced my life, but more so influenced the lives of others. You know, I wanna 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 to 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 characteristic 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, symbolic of Christ's crucifixion. And then we see Gandalf in 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, 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, you know, biased against any race whatsoever, like so many people are today from, 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 same. And I want to share with you here on this chart The 8 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, you know, closer to 20 stages. I simplified this for us to be able to see this for ourselves, but there's really 8 stages to you becoming a hero. And the first one is getting outta your comfort zone, saying, you know what, I'm not gonna play the victim anymore.

I'm not gonna just live a life of comfort, of scrolling on, on 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, maybe we hear something. Maybe someone says something where we realize, gosh, this isn't good. I, and I'll give you an example of this for myself.

I remember going, uh, when I, I decided to become a doctor because first off was when 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, um, could, could I, 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 overprescribing of medications, the side effects of 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 wanna do something about this. I wanna help people get off medications and start using supplements and food and chiropractic care and acupuncture, natural holistic treatments. Like I was awakened.

And I remember being in church, you know, this happens 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.

We, you think about Gandalf and he goes to, with, 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, that's the biggest thing, it's gonna 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 diminish. Now, 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 gonna 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 are virtuous, doing good things in the world, and, 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 3 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 gonna share it with Chelsea and share it with our kids. We're gonna do it as a family.

Or if Chelsea feels the same way and shares something and I get awoken, I'm gonna say, Chelsea, I love that mission. I'm gonna go on your mission. Let's do that together. But heroes assemble a team. They're not, 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 even love our favorite TV shows like Friends and Seinfeld, right? We love our, and it tends to be 4 or 5 people, the size of a family or a small group outside. But you wanna assemble a team to fulfill your dreams. Okay? That's number 3 is who's your team?

This is where you can build out a community of purpose, other people around you that are passionate, wanna change the world, who are gonna 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 gonna 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 4 here, this is big. Find a quest. Accept responsibility and embark on a mission, right? With Donald, it was, okay, my mission is— it was twofold. One, I do wanna 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, 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, um, one mission could be. To raise great kids. That's a mission.

And so maybe because of it, 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, that really, uh, that 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 wanna spend time around that way they influence our kids. So I'll give you an example of this. Like we have Stephanie and, uh, and Isaac Meek, this incredible couple. They've got 5 daughters. In fact, well, one of 'em babysat our, our daughters the other day cuz they're a little bit older.

But we get around people like them because, uh, we wanna, we, we wanna grow in our marriage. We want our kids to grow. We have, uh, uh, 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 be, get our kids around and to spend time around, uh, on, on, on a mission.

That's, 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, I, 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 wanna 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 in 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, to help our family grow in, in, in, in, in our character.

Um, 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 5, know this about heroes, is heroes face trials. You're gonna 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, when I started draxe.com, uh, which eventually grew to be the number one natural health website, that was a quest I had. I said, I want draxe.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 and 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, we were, 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 2 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 gonna do a lot more video content, focus more on podcasts, and do everything I can to grow the shows, not just my show, but other shows alongside me and build out a leader, a, a media network that's really focused on virtue and character and helping people break through in their health.

In their personal growth, in their leadership, and spiritually, and other areas of life. So, and I'm in the middle right now of this, and it's hard, but I'm gonna 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, it's like putting your muscles under stress. If you're doing bicep curls, right, with, with dumbbells over time, It's stress, it's hard, it's a trial, but they're gonna transform, grow larger, stronger, leaner. You're gonna lose more weight, uh, get leaner. So it's the same thing.

Know that what's gonna happen is you put yourself in difficult situations, whether it be through working out or eating healthier or, or diving into difficult situations, you're gonna grow through it if you have the heroic mindset. Number 7 is triumph. That's stage 7. 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, and most, 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, your blood sugar levels drop to a certain point, or you, you know, your Oura Ring says you get a certain, you know, 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 then number 8 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, or, or a leadership or personal growth podcast, and you share some of that wisdom. So become the guide. There are really 4 powerful ways to become a guide. Become the Gandalf, the Yoda, the Obi-Wan 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, so that, 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, 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 2, 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 entrepreneurs. And what I will do is I will, 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, and I let the— and by the way, it's not flattering and everyone's is 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, where, where, where, where Gandalf, where, where, uh, Thorin Oakenshield, one of these dwarves, says, you know, Master Baggins is no, you know, is no, um, burglar. He's this, this, and this.

And then, and then, uh, you see Gandalf says, if I say, you know, if I say he's a burglar, a burglar he is. And eventually he says, I believe in him no matter what. I believe in him. Then of course he goes and, and, 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, of skill that they have. Number 3 thing you need to do to become a guide, model it. Model it. This is how kids learn. It's how everyone learns. They— my daughter right now, who's about to turn 4 years old, she watches what I do and what my wife does, and she does the same thing.

You wanna 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 20, 25%, 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 4, inspire the hero to sacrifice. And transform. I wanna 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, cuz you do this exact same thing.

This is exactly what you need to do with your kids. If you're an older sibling, you're a guide. Even, even if you're in your 40s and you have a, 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 4 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 8 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, you've gotta get the new book. It's the best book I've ever written. Um, and if you go to amazon.com, just search Think This, Not That, or Dr. Axe Think This, Not That, it'll come up.

When you buy on Amazon, if you go then to joshaxe.com and you plug in the code from which you bought this in the area of the book, um, you're gonna get a lot of free stuff. In fact, you'll get the workbook for free. I did a mindset masterclass for free. I have these growth cards you get for free, uh, hundreds of dollars worth of free things.

And the audio bonuses, those are free as well with people like Dave Ramsey. Um, I mean, just amazing power says the psychologist, Shadé Zarahi, and others. And so, I wanna encourage you, when, if you get the book, make sure to get it and then go to joshaxe.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 awaken stage? Maybe I've been able to be the guide right now and awaken 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's syndrome, which some people would say that, that, that, that could hold him back in certain areas of life.

But he became one of the 3 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 wanna let you know too, in chapter 5 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 to go much deeper into figuring out your heroic journey and your story.

And you can get a copy, just go to joshaxe.com, J-O-S-H-A-X-E.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 wanna say, Hey, 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, anytime 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 what? I've got guests coming up like Gary Brecka. 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 to 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 the, this entire world by changing ourselves. Um, so again, thanks everybody.

I can't wait to see you on the next episode.