Page 119 - Ray Dalio - Principles

universe. He uses his timeless perspective to see the present
and the likely future more clearly.

Being around such people, especially if I can help them, is
thrilling to me.

RETURNING THE BOON

Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces, one of
the books I gave to Wang as well as a number of other heroes I
know, was introduced to me by my son Paul in 2014. While I
had seen Campbell on television nearly thirty years earlier and
remembered being impressed by him, I hadn’t read his book.
In it, Campbell looks at large numbers of “heroes” from
different cultures—some real and some mythical—and

describes their archetypal journeys through life. Campbell’s
description of how heroes become heroes aligned with my
thinking about shapers. And it gave me powerful insights
about the heroes I know and the patterns of my own life.

For Campbell, a “hero” isn’t a perfect person who always
gets things right. Far from it. A hero is someone who “found
or achieved or [did] something beyond the normal range of

achievement,” and who “has given his life to something bigger
than himself or other than himself.” I had met a number of
such people throughout my life. What was most interesting
about Campbell’s work was his description of how they got
that way. Heroes don’t begin as heroes; they just become them
because of the way one thing leads to another. The diagram on

the following page shows the archetypal hero’s journey.

They typically start out leading ordinary lives in an
ordinary world and are drawn by a “call to adventure.” This
leads them down a “road of trials” filled with battles,
temptations, successes, and failures. Along the way, they are
helped by others, often by those who are further along the

journey and serve as mentors, though those who are less far
along also help in various ways. They also gain allies and
enemies and learn how to fight, often against convention.
Along the way, they encounter temptations and have clashes