Hello, Sam here. Welcome to Radio Headspace and to Friday.

Have you ever thought of yourself as a magician? What about a warrior? A king or a queen?

What if I told you that we have all of these characters and more within us, helping us to make decisions?

During a recent coaching session, I was talking about how I tend to respond to a behavior

that I find annoying with my partner. I told my coach that I tend to shut down or distance

myself when this pattern emerges because I feel like I have no control or influence over

it. She asked me to consider other ways of responding, ways that have been helpful for me in the past.

I immediately thought about the perspective of empathy, tapping into my own experience that mirrors

what my partner is going through, and this ability to respond from different perspectives reminded

me of working with archetypes, something I became familiar with in graduate school.

Archetypes, a term coined by Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Jung, are characters or symbols that are

widely recognizable and relatable. Many archetypes are passed down to us through stories and movies as

we retell tales of kings and queens, heroes and wizards. Tapping into our own version of these

archetypes helps us to access inner resources that we didn't even know we had.

In graduate school, my professor showed us a video of motivational speaker Tony Robbins leading a

discussion between an Orthodox Jewish man and a Muslim man hours after they got word about what

happened on 9-11. His intention was to help them have an honest discussion about thoughts and

feelings surrounding their religious and political beliefs, and their work with the archetypes allowed

them to access empathy and true connection. They became really good friends and even co-founded a

peace organization. Tony asked them to speak from different parts of themselves using four archetypes.

The four he used were the magician, warrior, sovereign and lover. They represent distinct

perspectives from which we can see a situation. The magician is the part of us that sees no obstacles,

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