The Story of the Tiger, the Dragon, and the Treasure — A Hero’s Journey

The Most Important Thing To Know And To Teach Your Kids

Principles Of Life: A Meridian Code For Leaders

A harmony of life.

As a life-long martial artist, I have always been obsessed with the development of the individual. I constantly strive to improve myself and share the things that have helped me with others. Knowing that others are on a similar journey to better themselves, and having the opportunity to support their journey, is as inspiring for me as progress in my own growth.

I believe that we are all on our own “hero’s journey.” For context and reference, I will draw on ideas from some of the greatest minds in psychology including Carl Jung, his student Erich Neumann, and the newly prominent clinical psychologist Dr. Jordan Peterson. Their ideas about archetypal stories, specifically how we are inhabited by these archetypes, are an essential and, in my opinion, missing in the current education system.

The importance of understanding how these stories and the archetypes manifest in the real world and positively support individual development can not be overstated. I believe, like Jordan Peterson, Jung, and Neumann, that stories convey a type of meaning, about how to act and the human condition, that we know to be true without knowing how we know its true. In speaking on the hero myth, Neumann says:

“Thus the hero is the archetypal forerunner of mankind in general. His fate is the pattern in accordance with which the masses of humanity must live, and always have lived, however haltingly and distantly; and however short of the ideal man they have fallen, the stages of hero myth have become constituent elements in the personal development of every individual…it is evident that the hero’s victory brings with it a new spiritual status, a new knowledge, and an alteration of [personality] consciousness.”

For a number of years I have been working to create a leadership program, something that is functional and practical for both kids and adults. The following story is my best attempt to capture my first experience sharing some of the ideas that have helped me on my own journey with a number of the younger students at my martial arts school.

There was a lot of back and forth between what was said (I like to involve the entire group when I teach), and especially given how quickly we were moving, I tried my best to include quotations where appropriate.

And so, I set out to teach my students about the hero’s journey, the balance of order and chaos, and the “treasure hard to attain.”

Class Time

During the stretching portion of our warm-up, the kids are in what we call “sleeping dragon.”

Thinking about the material in the leadership program and being curious to see if the kids would be interested in it, I ask them if they want to know something cool about dragons. Of course, they said yes.

I said, “Alright, well where do you find dragons? They’re in all kinds of stories right?” “Yeah!” “Cool, where else do you find dragons?” “There are dragons in movies.” “Yep, what else?” Someone says “Have you seen the Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug?”

“Yep, yep, they’re in movies. What else?” One of the kids raise their hand and says “they’re in the symbol for Kempo!” You got it — it’s in the symbol for Kempo!

What’s the symbol of Kempo? It’s the tiger and dragon, tangled together, engaged in a battle. Right, got it — that’s cool!

And what do you think the symbol means?

“Combat” was the first answer I heard. I said, “okay, well combat sure. But there’s some meaning behind it. There’s a deeper meaning in symbols like that. There’s kind of a story to it, and we can learn a lot of cool things from stories. We can learn really important things (about life) from stories!”

“So, how do we figure out what it means?” Before I go into this next part, keep in mind that these kids are ages seven, eight, nine, and ten — they’re pretty young, but I wanted to see how far I could push them to understand some truly complicated ideas. I wanted to see if they could follow me and really get the whole picture.

“Well, let’s look at each one of them. Tell me, how does the tiger fight?” Someone answers “he uses his claws.” Yep, that’s true, and how does he fight — what’s his style of fighting?” We go through all the things from they’re sneaky — they stay low in order to pounce, to tigers climbing up trees so they can drop down in an ambush.

Tigers, clearly in a dominance dispute.

I said, “Have you seen tigers fight? Pretty intense right? So what is the main characteristic of the tiger’s fighting style?” One kid says, “they’re aggressive.” “Nice, that’s a good one!”

“What else?” The room kind of sat still for a minute.

The kids were really trying to figure out what gave the tiger his fighting prowess. All of them were thinking; I could tell they were really into the discussion. Normally the kids can be fidgety and want to move to the next activity quickly. But with this, they were focused — they wanted to figure it out so they could get to hear the next part of the story. I’m of course thrilled at this point because I’m thinking: yes, it’s working!

So, I said, “Each animal has something special about them that makes them important in karate. Let’s see, what does the snake have? What’s special about the snake?”

One of the kids says that they stay low to the ground and I said “that’s good, and how do they attack? When a snake strikes, is it slow?” “No!”

“They’re fast! Right,” I said, “they’re super-fast.”

“So what about the tiger? What’s special about him? What does he use to win? What’s his strength?” One of the purple belts raises his hand and says “power?” “That’s right, it’s power!”

Okay, so we got it. The tiger is raw power. He’s aggressive, he’s strong, and he relies on power to overwhelm whatever he’s fighting.

“And, what about the dragon? What’s special about the dragon?” I got the “he can fly!” Yep, he can fly hah. “He can breathe fire!” Another kid said. “Yes, he can bring fire, that’s pretty cool right? What else?” A little stumped, I prompted them with, well is the dragon just one thing, or is he made up of different animals? “Different ones,” they answer.

Two-headed dragon.

“What kind of animals do you think the dragon is made of?” One kid says snake, another says a lion, and another says a bird. Perfect, right!

Okay, so that means that the dragon has the traits of many different animals, he’s kind of like the ultimate predator that can also fly and shoot fire!

Then I said, “What else is special about the dragon? Where does the dragon live and what does he have there?” He lives in a cave one kid says. “Yep, he lives in a cave, and what does he have with him in the cave? What’s he guarding?” “Treasure!” almost all of them shout at the same time. Right, he’s guarding treasure, that’s cool. We’ll talk about that later.

Still impressed that these kids are following along, I continue.

“Good, okay, so the dragon’s got the speed of the snake, the strength of a giant cat, the balance of a crane, the cunning of a leopard, and the agility of a praying mantis.” For anyone who has seen Kung-Fu Panda, you remember that little praying mantis flying through the air spinning and twirling, dodging like four bad guys at a time — that’s the mantis.

“Alright,” I said. “So we figured out that the tiger fights with raw power and ferocity. And we figured out that the dragon has the abilities and skills of all the other animals. And, we also know that the symbol for Kempo is the tiger and the dragon fighting each other in a great battle. So, the question is: who do you think would win? Will the tiger win because he’s laser-focused, aggressive, and can use this one pure advantage, his power, to overwhelm the dragon? Will he take down the dragon because he does this one thing really well? Or, you might think to ask: could the tiger keep up with the dragon? Would the dragon win because he has the strengths of all the animals to use? Will the dragon win because he has all the skills to handle any opponent, or will he get tangled up trying to do too much?” Right then one of the kids shouts out “will he have to manage too much at once.” Wow, I thought — nailed it.

“That’s a smart way to put it,” I said.

“Okay, so who thinks the tiger would win?” I quickly realized, after only one hand went up, that I had to adjust the picture here. I had to ask them to pretend that the tiger and the dragon were roughly the same sizes. Otherwise, you’d have this tiger of average size (and tigers aren’t small), trying to fight against a massive dragon. There’d be just about no chance for the poor tiger. So, imagine that the animals are about the same size so it’s a fair fight and I ask again, “who thinks the tiger?” About half the hands in the class go up. Nice, okay now we’re back on track.

And then I say, “who thinks the dragon?” The other half of the class raises their hands. Then I think to myself: Gosh, how am I going to talk about the next part? Right as that thought passes through my head one of the Jr. Black Belts raises his hand, and in an oddly confident tone says, “I’m not saying either of them, I think it’ll come to a draw.”

“A draw?” I asked. “What makes you think it will be a draw?” He said because the wisdom of the dragon will balance the brute strength of the tiger. “Wow!” I said. “Seriously? That’s awesome, great answer!” I walked over to give him a high-five. “Right,” I said. “The ferocity of the tiger will be balanced by the wisdom and cunning of the dragon. That’s what I think too!” Then, to my amazement, one of the kids says. “It’s like the yin-yang” “Yes!” I said walking over to give them a high-five as well. “It is like a yin-yang. And what’s the other part of the symbol for Kempo? Look, it’s here,” I pointed to the patch on my uniform with the yin-yang symbol behind the symbol of the tiger and dragon fighting. “It’s right there; it’s on your tee-shirts too, what is it? “It’s the yin-yang,” they all said. That’s right; the yin-yang is also part of the symbol for Kempo. It’s kind of like another symbol for the tiger and dragon fighting.

“And what does the yin-yang mean? What does it represent?”

A balance of the forces of life.

“Good and evil,” one of the kids answered. “Nice, that’s good. The yin-yang represents a balance between good and evil, good job. What else? How else can you think about it?” “Fighting vs. not fighting,” one kid says. Okay, that’s a good one too. How about the colors? What are the colors? “Light and dark!” Someone yells. “Great,” I say.

“Think about the light and dark and think of what that means if you’re looking at it like situations you find yourself in, your circumstances. How else can you describe being in the light or the dark?” I knew this was a tough one, so I said, “Well, what would happen if somehow I could make this entire room pitch black so you couldn’t see a thing? Would you know what’s going on and what’s around you? Would you know how to act in that situation?” Almost all the kids said “nooo.” “Right, and how about when its light out, when you can see, do you know what going on then?” “Yeah” the kids answered. “Okay good, so if the light is where you know what’s going on and the dark is where you don’t know, how else can we describe the yin-yang symbol?” One hand shoots up, and without waiting to be called on (as if the answer hit him like a “lightbulb moment”), this little boy says “known and unknown.” “Amazing, you guys are so smart, man I can’t believe how well you guys are doing with this!”

“And how do you turn the unknown into the known? What do you have to do?” “You have to go in there!” answered the group. “Right! And, what do you usually have to do when you don’t know something?” I could see they knew the answer, so I nodded and said, “that’s right you have to learn something. So, when you learn something new you take a bit of the unknown, and you turn it into something you know right?” All their heads were nodding so I kept going. “And you can’t be afraid of what you don’t know or else what?!” Half the hands went up, I said, “what is it?” “You won’t learn anything!” “Exactly, that’s pretty cool, and that’s something that’s really, really important to figure out! You can’t learn anything new unless you are brave enough to go explore and try the things you don’t know.

“Now, when you learn something new. That’s like what? Remember the dragon.” They stopped to think for a second, then their eyes lit up, and they shouted, “the treasure!” “That’s it,” I said. “The treasure is like learning new things, having new experiences that teach you something. It’s gaining knowledge, and that’s found in the unknown. So, you go into the unknown to learn something new, and then you can share that with others — that sounds right doesn’t it? Think about what it takes to do something new. You’ve got to get your feet wet, you’ve got to learn something, you’ve got to make mistakes and fail many, many times before you get the hang of things and feel like you know what going on.”

The dragon’s “treasure hard to attain.”

“All right, so what’s another way you can describe known and unknown? I’ll give you a hint, think of clean and messy. Imagine your room. You guys have to make your bed, right? *the group nods*. Okay when your bed is made, and you’ve picked up your clothes, you’ve organized your school stuff, and your games and toys your room is pretty clean. What’s that like? How would you describe that? You’d say your room is in good what?” “Order?” One of the kids asked. “That’s right!” I said, “and what’s the opposite of order?” Almost immediately one of the students speaks up and says “chaos!” Exactly! I said.

As a side note, I wasn’t even sure if the kids would even know these terms, but they did — that’s pretty impressive.

“So, when everything is known, it’s clean and organized, that’s order. And, when things are messy, in disarray, and you don’t know where things are and what’s going on, that’s the chaos.” Again, still in amazement that the kids are not just following along but creating the next piece of the lesson out of their own curiosity, I ask the next question.

“Alright, so we figured out that you can look at things as chaos and order. If that’s the way things are, what do you think the best way for you to be? How do you navigate that? What should you be looking to do?” Almost everyone understood right away, and they answered: “you want to be right in the middle,” one kid says, “you want to be balanced,” chimes in another. “That’s great,” I said. “Right in the middle, that’s the line between order and chaos, between what you know and what you don’t know, and you want to be walking the tightrope between the two.”

“Why don’t you want to be on one side or the other? Well, if you’re in a place where you know everything that’s going on, then there’s nothing new, things are boring, and you’re not learning anything and improving yourself. On the other hand, if you’re in a place where you don’t know anything about what’s going on, where you’re completely in chaos, you get totally overwhelmed, you freeze up because things are too much for you to handle. So, we want to be in the middle right?” The class nods.

When you’re in the middle, you’re in a place where you know enough about what’s going on to get your bearings, you have some solid ground to stand on, and you have the confidence to explore and be curious. But, things are also new enough that they stretch you to have a new experience, where you’re forced to use your courage to battle the dragon and the dragon is where the treasure is! The dragon has the treasure, and the treasure is knowledge which you can use for yourself, which makes you stronger, and you can also take back to the village to make everyone else’s lives better. The more comfortable you are with the unknown, the more and more you confront the dragon, the more knowledge you gain, and the more treasure you get!”

Walking the line between order and chaos.

“Now, the battle with the dragon, do you think that will be easy?” “No” the class says, continuing to be fully wrapped in the story. “Definitely not. The fight with the dragon is going to be hard! But, if you don’t explore the unknown, you’ll never get to the treasure. The fight is going to be challenging, but it’s worth it! What’s the alternative? If you don’t go into battle against the dragon, you’ll stay the same way that you are, and that might seem safe but it’s super boring — you won’t ever become better than you are now. You won’t gain knowledge; you won’t increase your skills, you won’t develop your courage and confidence. You might mess up, you might fail, but then you can learn from that too! You can become stronger from that mistake if you think about where you went wrong and what you could do better. Then you can go back and battle the dragon again, but this time, you’ll be more likely to end up victorious. Those victories can be even more important, the ones where you try and try, and you fail many times, but you finally win! Those are some of the most rewarding victories, and they teach you not to give up!”

“Now, think about this: does it feel good to win the battle and discover the treasure?” All the kids, almost leaning forward with eyes wide say, “yeah.” “It does feel good right? So, when you do something hard, when you learn something new and have a new experience, it actually feels good. You guys get that feeling all the time, think about the first time you learn a new move; it’s hard at first and you struggle trying to do the move correctly, but you keep trying and practicing and then what happens?” “Your moves get better!” one of the kids shouts. “Yes,” I said. “Your moves get better! You turn something that’s new and unknown into something that you’ve mastered and that you feel comfortable with.”

“Let’s think about this in another situation that you’ve probably been in before. Have you ever been sitting in the lunchroom or outside during recess, or maybe you’re at a birthday party event where there’s a bunch of new people? And, at this event, there is a kid that you’d like to introduce yourself to, that you might like to be friends with? “Yeah,” at least half of the class acknowledges. “Okay well, what’s the order? That’s where you don’t go say hi, you don’t take the risk to introduce yourself. You stay where you know it’s safe and you know that you might even feel bad because you didn’t dare to go and meet that new person. What’s the chaos? The chaos is going up and introducing yourself. That’s the unknown. You don’t know how they’re going to react. You don’t know if they’re going to be nice and want to talk to you, and you don’t know if they’re going to be mean or treat you like some weirdo for coming over and talking to them. So, what should you do? Should you stay where its safe or should you put yourself out there and try to meet somebody new? What’s the potential treasure if you go say hi?” “You can make a new friend,” the kids answer.

Making a new friend.

“Exactly!” I said. “If you say hello, then you might make a new friend! Who knows how long that friendship might last? You might build a great friendship that lasts the rest of your life! That’s the treasure, but you’ve got to be brave enough to get up and go over there!”

As the kids nodded their understanding, I told them: “alright well you guys were amazing with this!” Wanting to give them a little boost to their self-esteem I added, “I can’t believe how smart you guys are you did great! Now, before we move on to practicing our material, I want you to remember this story and think about it later. Remember the story of the tiger and the dragon. Remember the yin-yang. Remember that the dragon, the unknown, is where the treasure is, and that battling the dragon is going to be tough, but it’s also the only way you can get to the treasure. Balancing on the line between the two is where you’re safe enough not to be overwhelmed by the chaos, but you’re courageous enough to experience and learn something new, to gain knowledge, to make a new friend.”

As we wrapped up the lesson and the kids spread out to begin practicing their karate, I could see that they had some extra pep in their step. For the rest of class, I watched them practice with a heightened focus and intensity, but also with smiles on their faces that conveyed a new level of confidence. Exactly what I was hoping would happen.

This is the type of leadership program I want to be able to share with the kids. Not just the kids but the adults as well. For adults because I know that there is so much to manage on a day to day basis, that it can be a struggle to impart lessons like this — lessons that everyone wants their kids to know. It can be hard to find the right way to explain and share these lessons. That’s what I’m hoping to provide: a sort of resource or blueprint, a toolkit to help kids to improve their understanding of the world and how to act within it. A reference they can use, as they encounter the difficult situations and feelings of growing up, to move through those situations positively. Not only that, but I also want to provide parents with a toolkit for talking about complex issues with their kids in a way that will be effective and produce positive outcomes that parents can feel good about. A toolkit that kids are actually interested in. One that they want to hear about and learn from.

I keep thinking, why do we feel we have to wait until kids graduate college for them to figure out how the world works and how to interface with it? That seems far too late and the adjustment period they’ll have to go through to figure things out will be full of (unnecessary) pitfalls. Consider that in context of our current culture, especially regarding adolescents and the overwhelming attraction of things like social media and technology, which add to the stress the average individual feels. That’s going to be extremely difficult, even painful. Needlessly painful! Many of us have experienced this feeling ourselves. Think of what you had to go through to get to where you are now. Imagine if you had been exposed to powerful ideas like this at a much younger age and were able to practice putting that knowledge into practice.

Imagine how much more practice these kids will have at making good decisions, and how much more exposure they’ll have to working through the decisions they do make, with people like their parents and mentors, having these ideas as a strong framework for their thought processes. I haven’t yet figured out how I can track their progress over time having learned these things, but, from personal experience, I feel like it is valuable for both kids and adults, that these ideas can provide a much stronger foundation for character, a sense of confidence, and some straight up courage. I believe these ideas can help people quickly develop into smart, assertive, self-reliant, grounded, and humble individuals who can face the world head on and forge their own path.

Which path is the right decision?

And so, that’s what I’m trying to do. I’m trying to give our kids (the adult world as well) the tools to aim for something good. I’m trying to share the tools that have helped myself and many others develop a sense of meaning and purpose. I’m trying to empower people to find fulfillment and success. I want to help those on their own hero’s journey to discover and harness their inner strength. As one moves closer to their full potential, one becomes a leader — not just in their own lives, but in their families, and communities as they get older.

Want to see more principles?

Find me at “Grounded Truth” on Youtube and at thegroundedtruth.com

twitter: @MichaelNahan