If you’re feeling stuck in a phase of your life that is not where you want to be, or you’re feeling uninspired or confused about next steps, you’re not alone. People around the world have shared, through stories, their experiences of challenge and obstacles… and ultimately overcoming them to find their true selves and their best future.

How Stories, Tales and Myths Support Our Growth

I know this partly because I experience ups-and-downs like everyone else, and partly because I’ve spent the past years researching stories from around the world that showcase the lives of characters who face what seem to be insurmountable odds… and yet they succeed. This is the point of many myths and fairy tales, and even of the popular films we watch in theaters. It’s important to face the adversities that life throws at us so that we can understand what we need to do to grow.

It is scary to change. It's much easier to remain the same and be compliant and static. But change is necessary! You may feel that you are a strong and capable person but some event pushes you to realize that in addition to strength you need compassion. For someone in a leadership role, this can be both a revelation and a fright. Or you may feel that you are too small and insignificant to make much of a difference in someone’s life, but through a difficult challenge you wake up to the fact that you are actually overwhelmingly powerful and that your words and actions can lead someone to something great.

Symbolism Makes It Understandable and Relatable

Our stories are ripe with images that help us understand these simple truths.

For example, my book Once Upon A Place explores the Biblical story of Jonah–the guy who was “swallowed by a whale.” In fact, the texts describe the beast as a fish but the ultimate point is the same, in that a cowardly man who was running from his duties was tossed overboard and ended up in the belly of a whale. Only when he was feeling extreme penitence did the whale spit him up and he survived to become a better man (at least, better in terms of Biblical society).

An even better example is the African tale of a married couple who were facing sore spots in their relationship. (See the video above.)

The wife (I call her Misiti) was told by a village elder to bring back the whisker from the chin of a wild lion so that he could make her a potion that would give her courage–courage to talk with her husband and make changes to improve their marriage. The woman carefully entered the jungle and brought with her a hunk of raw meat, and when she saw the lion sipping water at the creek’s edge, she hid behind a tree and threw it to him. The following week she did the same thing, scooting a bit out from the tree this time to throw the meat. The next week she didn’t hide behind the tree, and the week after that she sat beside the lion, leaned over and plucked a whisker from his chin while he drank. She returned to the village but the elder told her he didn’t need it after all – her courage was evident.

These stories of change are fictional but they show us, through symbolism and colorful imagery, that we all possess that capacity to grow and mature. We all deserve better and are able to make choices in our lives that lead us to our better selves.

Without such stories, we would be faced with dreary realism and our imaginations would be stunted, wondering how magic could be possible. In the tales and myths written and shared by ancestors hundreds or even thousands of years ago, we can relate to girls and boys, women and men who must overcome something terrifying – and seemingly impossible – in order to grow.

Once Upon A Place: Forests, Caverns and Other Place of Transformation in Myths, Fairy Tales and Film is available for pre-order now! Purchase from your favorite bookstores or order from Amazon, Llewellyn, Barnes and Noble, and anywhere you get your favorite books. Go here for more info about Once Upon A Place.