This Lesson from ‘The Newsroom’ Can Change Your Life…Today
Maybe the Hero’s Journey is wrong…
If you’ve recall any moment from Aaron Sorkin’s HBO series, The Newsroom, it was likely the killer monologue in the pilot episode.
But, there’s a moment later in the premiere that actually better defines the series a little more than this inciting incident.
It’s when Charlie Skinner is talking about what happened, why it happened, and how it happened. It’s also the name of this first episode.
“In the old days, we did the news well,” Charlie tells Will McAvoy. “You know how? We just decided to.” (Watch it yourself right here.)
The idea of the Hero’s Journey, which you’ve seen over and over again in all of your favorite films, is that you need a call to adventure, or external force to pull you out of the day-to-day, and force you to make a change.
In this pilot episode, Will thinks he sees his ex-girlfriend in the crowd, he’s overstimulated by the political parties, and this combination of things causes him to spit out this monologue, and break his Switzerland/Jay Leno persona to actually provide a real point-of-view.
But here’s the thing, in real life, you don’t need this...
- You don’t need to wait until the doctor threatens you with death to quit smoking or lose weight.
- You don’t need to wait for your spouse to walk out the door to change your bad habits.
- You don’t need to wait till you hit rock bottom to repair your relationships.
- You don’t need an external force to make you take action.
You DO need to start taking small steps, each day, to start stacking up proof that you are who you wish to be.
“We just decided to,” says Charlie.
You don’t need the call to adventure. You can create your own adventure. You just have to decide to take the next step.
Almost everyone learns this hard way.
But you can decide, right now, to be different.
Today, I decided, once again, to do the following:
- Publish Medium ✔️
- Schedule Email ✔️
- UpWork outreach 2x ✔️
- VRBO guest issue ✔️
- VRBO handyman ✔️
- VRBO snowbirds ✔️
- Mini-writer workshop ✔️
- Contact 7x friends ✔️
- Review mastermind ✔️
- Run workout 2 ✔️
- Start tomorrow’s post ✔️
There are many external forces in my life that recently made me make the decision to take control of today and stop waiting until tomorrow.
That can’t be ignored.
But underneath all of that, I still had to make the decision, and it’s one you have to make over and over and over again.
What’s holding you back from making the internal decision to change, for good? (If you need an external force, this article is it.)
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Postscript: Learn more about The Hero’s Journey in my interview with author Chris Vogler here. Learn more about The Newsroom in my interview with screenwriter Aaron Sorkin here.
