Episode 72 What Is A Threshold Guardian? What Blocks Your Forward Progress?

Understanding Story Archetypes Can Provide A Whole New Interpretation of Your Story Welcome back to the Love Your Story podcast. Today we are getting real with the parts of story. This is going to be fun.  Have you ever been blocked in life? You’re cruising along in life, headed toward your goal or something you want, and bam, something challenges you. Of course you have! It’s a part of everyday life. So, let’s talk about a perspective shift here on this topic. First a definition. What is an archetype? An archetype is a recurrent symbol or motif.  In story there are 7 character archetypes. Carl Jung called the archetypes of story the ancient patterns of personality that are the shared heritage of the human race. His claim is that within the human mind all 7 of these archetypes are a part of each of us. Sometimes we’re the hero, sometimes the mentor, sometimes the Herald , the shape-shifter, threshold guardian, or the trickster. Sometimes we must even deal with the shadow – the repressed part of the hero that must be loosed or destroyed or redeemed and turned into a positive force. But, I’m getting ahead of myself… Tune in for our discussion about the troll on the bridge. Stories are our lives in language. Welcome to the Love Your Story podcast. I’m Lori Lee, and I’m excited for our future together of telling stories, evaluating our own stories, and lifting ourselves and others to greater places because of our control over our stories. This podcast is about empowerment and giving you, the listener, ideas to work with in making your stories work for you.  Story power serves you best when you know how to use it. As mentioned there are a handful of archetypes, but today we’re going to delve specifically into the Threshold Guardian – the symbolic troll, or knight, or witch, or voice that challenges your forward journey. Last year I was having an on-line conversation about how we are the heroes of our own stories and my high school boyfriend popped into the conversation and made a comment about how sometimes we are also the dragon or the antagonist in another person’s story (I’m not sure if there was an ulterior message in that comment). This got me thinking about the roles we play. Sometimes we are the extra, sitting at the table in the roadside café of someone else’s story. Sometimes we are the herald – the one who brings the message or call to adventure to another person – like Gandalf bringing the invitation to adventure for Bilbo. Sometimes we are the mentor, providing inspiration to someone on their journey, providing them with gifts – like Yoda in Star Wars. Always in our own story we are the hero, even if it’s an anti-hero, but understanding the roles we may be playing in other’s stories, and recognizing the roles that other’s play in our stories gives us a perspective shift that often is the key to breaking through something, or finding a solution, or having a little more fun in the creation of our life story. By understanding the parts of story, we can begin to see our lives through different eyes. We can begin to see our stories as real stories and that makes it sorta fun. A couple months ago I was speaking to an associate who was not on her game. She said, “I’m just thinking that maybe being a Realtor isn’t for me. It’s hard finding clients,” she said. “The other day I was knocking doors for my open house and the first door I went to the man who answered acted so put out that I was there that I almost froze up. I put the fliers in my car and just quit inviting people. Maybe this isn’t for me.” So, I launched into this concept about archetypes. “In story,” I explained, “there are archetypal characters. One of them is the Threshold Guardian. This is the character that is placed to keep the unworthy from entering. Often times this character is a lieutenant of the villain, a naysayer or an internal demon, sometimes it’s just someone putting up...