TALK TO YOUR grandmother or the man who owns your favorite restaurant, and you’ll find that a similar story structure defines the journey of their lives.

It’s the same framework which represents ancient myths, classic fables, modern blockbusters, as well as the rollercoaster careers of the world’s greatest athletes, and those of the modern artists, doers and shakers we look up to.

Most importantly, it’s the structure that our own lives may follow, that of the hero’s journey, described by Joseph Campbell in his 1949 classic, The Hero With a Thousand Faces.

He describes the journey like this:

“A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.”

Think about the people you look up to. They don’t have to be famous, rich, or successful by society’s standards.

We’re inspired not because these people have had an easy road to get to where they are, but because they were called to a more meaningful life, and to get there, they had to overcome adversity.

In doing so, they became who they’re truly meant to be.

The hero’s journey is a concept that has inspired me tremendously over the years as I’ve dealt with chronic back pain, and it’s one that we can be inspired by no matter the challenges we face.

Because everything worthwhile on the journey comes from the challenge. Without it, there’s no growth, no wisdom, and hardly any adventure.

I’ve spent my twenties in chronic back pain, yet I see this challenge as a pivotal component of my overall story, an initiation into a much more profound existence.

Why else would every storyline since the beginning of time follow this path? Because these stories inspire us.

“It has always been the prime function of mythology and rite to supply the symbols that carry the human spirit forward, in counteraction to those constant human fantasies that tend to tie it back,” writes Campbell.

Whether or not we’re aware of the framework, we are all on our own hero’s journey, the same one Odysseus took in the Odyssey, or Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz; it’s the very true storyline of Florence Nightingale in The Crimean War, or the career trajectory of my man, Kobe Bryant.

We, too, are called to a life of adventure, difficulty, victory, and ultimately wisdom. But it’s up to us to see the story through.

“We have not even to risk the adventure alone,” writes Campbell, “for the heroes of all time have gone before us; the labyrinth is thoroughly known; we have only to follow the thread of the hero-path. And where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a god; where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves; where we had thought to travel outward, we shall come to the center of our own existence; where we had thought to be alone, we shall be with all the world.”

Campbell breaks the journey into three acts — departure, initiation, and return. The framework of the departure stage is: the call to adventure, the refusal of the call, the supernatural aid, the crossing of the first threshold, and the belly of the whale.

We will receive the call to change our lives, but many of us don’t answer. The change required is too scary; the unknown seems too dark.

So we stay in the world we know.

That was me for the last six years as I’ve dealt with chronic pain, something I’ve only just realized, as everything has changed in the last month.

Trust me, I thought I’d crossed the threshold. All the pain I’d experienced made me believe I had to be in the belly of the whale this entire time.

But recently on a call with Santana, one of my best friends who is deeply inspired by Campbell’s work, I was shown that all this time, I’d been refusing the call.

I thought it was my body that needed healing, when it’s really my past, my heart, my soul. To truly heal my body I have to travel within, as deep as I can possibly go.

“Where we had thought to travel outward, we shall come to the center of our own existence,” writes Campbell.

Now, I’ve finally left home, as home was never a city. It was the mindset I was comfortable with, that of fixing a broken body, instead of healing an injured soul.

A month ago, I hit rock bottom regarding my back. I spent practically the entire month prior to that in serious pain and confusion. Something had to change, and it had to be drastic.

I had to rethink my entire approach to healing. When I surrendered to this idea, fate presented my supernatural aid, an incredible woman who helped me see I would never heal my body without doing the work to heal emotionally.

It started finally making sense.

I’d refused leaving home, but home wasn’t a city. It was the mindset that I was comfortable with.

To get to the root of my pain, I’d have to leave the physical and enter the realm of the emotional and begin traversing my own inner landscape.

After this revelation I began a spiritual odyssey, dedicating myself to learning about the mindbody syndrome, also called TMS (tension myositis syndrome), first outlined by professor and physiatrist Dr. John Sarno in his books: Healing Back Pain; The Mindbody Prescription; and The Divided Mind.

What I’ve learned is that my body is not broken, and never has been.

The mindbody syndrome is a harmless process created by the brain that doesn’t cause any structural damage. But it can still hurt. A lot.

The brain creates genuine pain in the body to distract us from the reservoir of repressed emotions that lives in our unconscious. The brain believes that if these emotions were to come to the surface, they would be too painful and destructive.

There are three main rivers which feed into this ocean of repressed emotion: traumas and experiences from childhood; current stressors in everyday life; and the internal conflict created by our personality traits, many of which are positive on the surface, yet create anxiety and anger underneath.

This is a process. A lifelong process.

But healing begins just by opening the door and confronting these unconscious emotions and parts of ourselves.

Healing is my main priority right now, as the universe would not let me continue without confronting my inner pain and handling this. I am so incredibly grateful for that.

I’ve started therapy, and I’m doing everything I can to focus on my health without distractions.

If you’re interested in learning about mindbody healing, there are countless videos on YouTube with incredible testimonials of people who have fully healed from mindbody syndrome, people like me.

There’s an entire world of mindbody healing that I’m now exposed to, pioneered by Dr. John Sarno and led by others like Steven Ray Ozanich, Dr. Howard Schubiner, and my man, Jim Prussack, on YouTube.

The education I’ve gotten from these guys just in one month has completely transformed my life.

Mindbody syndrome doesn’t just involve back pain. It involves pretty much any chronic pain, and many of the modern, perplexing ailments which plague our society.

My body feels better than it’s felt in months. I’m getting back to my old ways of training and playing. I’m losing the fear of being in my own body.

The pain is fading, but I can’t put a timeline on my healing. I’m retraining my brain and taking back control. My mind feels clear, open, inspired. I can’t tell you how liberating it feels to finally understand what’s going on, and to give this my full dedication.

I wouldn’t change a thing about the last six years, because everything I’ve been through has led me exactly to this moment.

There is nothing that exists beyond this moment.

Everything we know about ourselves is a reflection of the past or a projection of the predictable future. It isn’t real. And if we dwell on these things, we’ll never change.

The only place where we could make real change is right here in the present.

Endless possibilities exist in this moment, but we have to be willing to take charge and make a change. We must step into the role of the hero of our own life story, and that, for many of us, will mean turning inward to look our demons square in the face.

“The hero quest today is not through the physical world but through the badlands of the soul,” writes psychoanalyst James Hollis in Under Saturn’s Shadow.

“The evil men must engage is not the barbarian at the gates but the darkness within, the faer from which only boldness may bring delivery.”

Every time I get back pain, I have to tell my brain I’m not going to deal with this anymore. I know there’s nothing wrong with my body. I know what you’re trying to do. You’re trying to protect me, but I’m not going to take it anymore.

The prefrontal cortex, what us humans are gifted with, has to consciously fight against the limbic brain, the lizard brain, and show it who is in charge.

I have to show my brain that I’m safe. A lot of the emotional pain comes from childhood, and not feeling safe, whether physically or emotionally.

The nervous system is in constant fight-or-flight mode; I’m reprogramming my brain to realize that I am safe, that I don’t need the protection.

But I do need the emotions. I have to feel them.

I want them to rise because I can deal with them. I have to.

It takes effort. Life will happen to us if we don’t happen to it.

What we could do in this moment is direct our energy and our attention toward gratitude, and toward the future that we want instead of the one that we expect. I don’t expect pain anymore.

I’m finally on my way to liberation, and more importantly, to a genuine, compassionate understanding of myself.

I could have traveled all around the world, living my life, going for my dreams, and I would have still had this lingering back pain because I didn’t venture into the one unknown that was calling to me all along, and that is within.

There is a lot of pain still inside of me, as none of us can get out of childhood unscathed. Maybe my body is not broken, but my soul, my spirit, my past — they’ve taken a hit.

But that’s what makes us human. We’re all broken in a way. We all have wounds; being broken is what makes life beautiful.

And now, I get to repair the broken pieces, putting them together in my own style, stronger for what they’ve endured, better for the pain.

Now, I’m truly in the unknown, yet paradoxically, things are finally starting to become clear.