In an age when everyone is selling enlightenment and manifestation, what does it actually mean to become a modern hero?
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Everyone wants to grow. But nobody wants to dig. That's the truth the manifestation crowd buries. Why? Because it doesn't sell.

‍Like a tree, you can't grow tall without roots... and roots grow in the dark depths of the soil. Real growth happens in the darkness you've been avoiding.

This brutally honest guide takes you into those depths - where you'll find everything the scripts buried: your authentic self, your true values, and the purpose and meaning that emerge from them.

From humiliating reality TV disasters and prizefighting with the Australian carnival, to UFO encounters in Mexican jungles and energy vortexes in the Arizona desert, I discovered that genuine transformation happens in the places we least want to look. The shadow. The mess. The parts of yourself you've been taught to hide.

‍This is the toolkit I wish someone had handed me in my twenties - when I was lost, living by everyone else's rules, and didn't even know that the answers were buried in the very darkness I was running from.

Why I Wrote The Modern Hero Books

I spent years trying to be the tallest, mightiest oak in the forest. Then life's first real storm toppled me over and I fell down with a crash. Turns out, height without depth doesn't work.

Most self-help books are selling us a ladder to success when what might serve us better is a shovel. They promise we can reach the heights without ever touching the depths. For years, I chased these temporary highs, feeding my ego's hunger for quick fixes, completely oblivious that real transformation—at least for me—meant going into those dark depths first.

This is the book I wished someone had handed me in my twenties, when I was lost and could have used an honest map through those depths. Because I didn't know then what I know now: working through those dark depths was clearing space for something real—a chance to discover my actual values, and through living them, find a purpose that was genuinely mine.

So what was it I discovered? Incredibly, 20th-century psychologists and mythologists had uncovered something hidden in plain sight. A universal pattern buried in every story humans have ever told about transformation.

Greek myths. Aboriginal dreamtime. Buddhist teachings. Native American vision quests. Even Star Wars and The Matrix. Thousands of years. Cultures that never communicated. Yet somehow, they were all telling the same story. It's as if humans everywhere were unconsciously living out the same hidden script.

When scholars finally mapped this pattern, they weren't discovering something new. They were revealing the operating system of human transformation that had been there all along. And out of all the self-help formulas the modern world keeps producing, this is the only one that wasn't invented. It was observed.

One pattern, emerging again and again across every culture throughout history. They called it the hero's journey, but it's really the human journey. The one we're all on whether we know it or not. What this ancient pattern reveals that our success-obsessed culture conveniently misses is this:

The hero must always descend into the depths before emerging transformed.

But this "shadow" work isn't a detour from transformation. For many of us, it IS transformation.

‍So why did I decide to write these books now?

Our parents' generation could conquer the external world all day long but wouldn't dare look at their own depths. Fortunately, that's changing. Our generation and younger are rewriting the rules. Therapy isn't weakness, it's strategy. Shadow work isn't "woo-woo," it's practical. We're the first to normalize saying "I'm working on my shit" out loud.

We're starting to understand what ancient cultures always knew: real growth involves looking at what lies beneath. And this feels more relevant than ever. Because just as we're learning to do this inner work, the outer world is making it exponentially harder.

We're living through unprecedented uncertainty and distractions. Technological disruption, AI replacing human connection and economic instability. We're drowning in information, algorithms, political opinions, and influencers selling breakthrough formulas, while authenticity itself is becoming endangered.

This ancient pattern is still there though, waiting. We've just buried it under optimization hacks and productivity porn. But digging deep might help us remain sturdy and strong in these headwinds.

That's why I called the first book in the Modern Hero series LeeWay. Like ancient sailors who needed extra space to navigate when winds pushed them sideways, the same might help our internal journey:

1️⃣ Shelter: Safe spaces to fall apart and rebuild. Therapy, real community, or wherever we can be honest about the struggle.

‍2️⃣ Space: Room to release old patterns without immediately needing new ones to grab onto.

‍3️⃣ Support: Fellow travelers who get that growth isn't a solo mission and can be easier with others.

I'm trying to show up here as a guide not a guru (though sure, I still occasionally catch myself falling into that ego trap). But maybe that's exactly what works: honest companions who admit they're figuring it out too, who know the mess and the depths are part of it, that growth isn't clean or guaranteed, but it's real.

The reward isn't perfection. Not "fixed," but integrated. Whole. Like we're actually living our lives instead of performing them.

If mapping my own stumbling helps even one person feel less lost, then every vulnerable moment shared in these books was worth it. Because when you clear away what isn't yours and create space to start living from your real values, purpose isn't something you have to search for—it finds you.

We don't have to do this alone.