If your Hero’s Journey story is your ultimate life mission, then your Action Story are the actions you take to fulfill the aims set forth in your Hero’s Journey story. They are your concrete measurable evidence that you are acting on your story.

Inevitably, there are many changes you wish to make to turn your life into the story you want it to tell. It would be nice to think that all these changes could be made in one enthusiastic burst of self-transformation. But that does not happen. Pick a few changes and just make sure that each is:

• Important enough to you
• Realistically fixable
• Clearly defined
• Supportable by behavioral changes (rituals) that will do the trick

There is a training effect for stories. With each repetition of a story you tell yourself, that story travels your neural pathways more easily. Tell yourself that story again and again and again and soon enough pathways that were once unpaved roads, metaphorically speaking, have now become slick six – lane superhighways. Gradually repetition reinforces the primacy and value of that story – not to mention pushing away or ignoring alternative stories undeserving of your energy, which then atrophy or die, and the pathways they once traveled now narrow again, growing less supple with disuse. You become indoctrinated by your current story. You are training yourself to believe it and to live it.

Every story we tell has some effect. Stories move the needle every time we tell them. Because of this powerful story effect it is imperative that the story you tell be a constructive, not destructive one.  The effect of training makes it hard to break the bonds that form. It is crucial then, to be utterly conscious about who you are and what you are doing with your life – in other words, to be brutally truthful with yourself about your purpose – so that you are aware of your story and can assess whether and how it is helping or hurting you.

There is a problem , though. You may be thoroughly well – intentioned about examining your story, yet often it is difficult, if not impossible, to see the immediate consequences of your story on yourself or others. Your story’s impact may not reveal itself for years.