We are all actors in a play, for which the stage is set every day, in every workplace. Owners, managers, employees, customers and suppliers are all part of the constant, swirling emotional drama, a drama we call The Plot, involving victims, villains and heroes. This book explains how to step out of emotional dramas in the workplace.

New York Times bestselling author Donald Miller shares the plan that led him to turn his life around. This actionable guide will teach you how to do the same through journaling prompts and goal-planning exercises. There are four characters in every story: The victim, the villain, the hero, and the guide. These four characters live inside us. If we play the victim, we’re doomed to fail. If we play the villain, we will not create genuine bonds. But if we play the hero or guide, our lives will flourish. The hard part is being self-aware enough to know which character we are playing. In this book, bestselling author Donald Miller uses his own experiences to help you recognize if the character you are currently surfacing is helping you experience a life of meaning. He breaks down the transformational, yet practical, plan that took him from slowly giving up to rapidly gaining a new perspective of his own life’s beauty and meaning, igniting his motivation, passion, and productivity, so you can do the same. In Hero on a Mission, Donald’s lessons will teach you how to: Discover when you are playing the victim and villain. Create a simple life plan that will bring clarity and meaning to your goals ahead. Take control of your life by choosing to be the hero in your story. Cultivate a sense of creativity about what your life can be. Move beyond just being productive to experiencing a deep sense of meaning. Donald will help you identify the many chances you have of being the hero in your life, and the times when you are falling into the trap of becoming the victim. Hero on a Mission will guide you in developing a unique plan that will speak to the challenges you currently face so you can find the fulfillment you have been searching for in your life and work.

Whether you are branding your company, your product, your service, or yourself, learn to boost the power of your story and convey a compelling message in any setting by incorporating villains, victims, and heroes. Compelling stories exalt, motivate, and acculturate every worker in an enterprise. They also attract customers and media alike. Imagine an elderly man, snowed in, unable to shop for groceries until a supermarket comes to the rescue and delivers his food. The story of this company going out of its way to help a customer in need will resonate not only with consumers but also with employees. This book explains not just how to tell a captivating story, but also what elements—namely, villains, victims, and heroes—it should include in the first place. This approach is based on the notion that in business messaging, the villains may just be your best friends. The "villains" are simply any problems that cause pain, discomfort, or extra expense for customers, who are in effect the "victims." As for the "heroes," they are best illustrated by the supermarket going beyond expectations. Who in business wouldn't want to emulate that company? If your products and services offer real solutions to customers' predicaments, there is nothing more powerful than communicating that message and making sure your potential customers remember it.

What is the moral of the human trafficking story, and how can the narrative be shaped and evolved? Stories of human trafficking are prolific in the public domain, proving immensely powerful in guiding our understandings of trafficking, and offering something tangible on which to base policy and action. Yet these stories also misrepresent the problem, establishing a dominant narrative that stifles other stories and fails to capture the complexity of human trafficking. This book deconstructs the human trafficking narrative in public discourse, examining the victims, villains, and heroes of trafficking stories. Sex slaves, exploited workers, mobsters, pimps and johns, consumers, governments, and anti-trafficking activists are all characters in the story, serving to illustrate who is to blame for the problem of trafficking, and how that problem might be solved. Erin O’Brien argues that a constrained narrative of ideal victims, foreign villains, and western heroes dominates the discourse, underpinned by cultural assumptions about gender and ethnicity, and wider narratives of border security, consumerism, and western exceptionalism. Drawing on depictions of trafficking in entertainment and news media, awareness campaigns, and government reports in Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America, this book will be of interest to criminologists, political scientists, sociologists, and those engaged with human rights activism and the politics of international justice

Much writing on men in the field of gender studies tends to focus unduly, almost exclusively, on portraying men as villains and women as victims in a moral bi-polar paradigm. Re-Thinking Men reverses the proclivity which ignores not only the positive contributions of men to society, but also the male victims of life including the homeless, the incarcerated, the victims of homicide, suicide, accidents, war and the draft, and sexism, as well as those affected by the failures of the health, education, political and justice systems. Proceeding from a radically different perspective in seeking a more positive, balanced and inclusive view of men (and women), this book presents three contrasting paradigms of men as Heroes, Villains and Victims. With the development of a comparative and revised gender perspective drawing on US, Canadian and UK sources, this book will be of interest to scholars across a range of social sciences.

What Readers Are Saying I just finished reading Victims, Villains and Heroes: Managing Emotions in the Workplace, and I need to tell you that you are right on the money. If business America would only read this book, we would have fewer problems in the workplace. Your insight in bringing the teachings of Loy Young and your own experience cannot help but ease the problems that individuals have, not only in the workplace, but also in their personal lives. Good work and my congratulations! Ken Varga, President Professional Buyers GuildVictims, Villains and Heroes: Managing Emotions in the Workplace has contributed a valuable piece to my education in relationships, which are the core of my business (and yours!). The old dramas I used to unwittingly play took about 70 percent of my energy--energy that can now be used productively. I've learned how to avoid the hidden traps of the Victim, the Villain and the Negative Hero--the ones at work, and the ones battling it out inside of me. I've stopped trying to save the world and started taking care of me and, ironically, am making MORE of a difference now--and having more fun working and laughing a lot more. I am being my own Hero, and the satisfaction that comes with that is amazing. My effectiveness as a speaker, trainer and consultant has increased with this knowledge. I am becoming a much wiser woman! Loy and Don, much gratitude. Bobbie Jones, Trainer and Consultant for IBM, Advanced Microdevices, Samsung and many U.S. clientsExcellent . . . excellent . . . I have just finished reading the book Victims, Villains and Heroes: Managing Emotions in the Workplace. Congratulations to both Loy and Don! Don made a statement that deeply touched me personally. He stated something about "owning 100% of the content, or 100 percent of the audience." This immediately reminded me of my own style of "teaching" and "counseling," which is to give sooo much information and want them to "get what I am wanting them to get" rather than what they are wanting to get out of it or letting them have their lessons . . . because I am afraid I will lose control. I'm going to recommend it to all my clients. Rene Schulz, Business Consultant Schulz Associates I can't tell you enough how going to your seminar last week has impacted my life. The ideas you talked about, I have been repeating on a regular daily basis. The 80/20/40 image of managing energy has been particularly useful personally. And last but definitely not least, the parallels of using your ideas in my home life has been amazing! Without going into all the details, let's just say that my husband and I have actually been really communicating since the Friday seminar! Anne Dor, Co-Founder RM Automation Systems"Attending one of Don's seminars made the decision to buy this book an easy one. As a business consultant who deals with how HR impacts a business' bottom line, I found this book a veritable treasure trove of gems and nuggets of practical wisdom. His metaphor of "the stage" is pure genius and has yielded the unexpected bonus of benefiting my personal life as much as my professional. I would stake my reputation on recommending this book to anyone who has to manage people at the workplace, and fully expect his ideas to become universally accepted in the years to come." Rick Neyman, Broker Slaton Risk ManagementIn writing this book, our goal is to give you powerful references to help you identify your emotions and their interplay with relationship scenarios surrounding you at work every day. This book isn't just about what you're thinking while at work. It's also about what you are feeling and how that affects what you think, do and accomplish. You'll learn how to be a more conscious participant in life, to deal with your feelings in a way that will make you proud and bring you peace.

WHAT IS THE STORY GRID? The Story Grid is a tool developed by editor Shawn Coyne to analyze stories and provide helpful editorial comments. It's like a CT Scan that takes a photo of the global story and tells the editor or writer what is working, what is not, and what must be done to make what works better and fix what's not. The Story Grid breaks down the component parts of stories to identify the problems. And finding the problems in a story is almost as difficult as the writing of the story itself (maybe even more difficult). The Story Grid is a tool with many applications: 1. It will tell a writer if a Story ?works? or ?doesn't work. 2. It pinpoints story problems but does not emotionally abuse the writer, revealing exactly where a Story (not the person creating the Story'the Story) has failed. 3. It will tell the writer the specific work necessary to fix that Story's problems. 4. It is a tool to re-envision and resuscitate a seemingly irredeemable pile of paper stuck in an attic drawer. 5. It is a tool that can inspire an original creation.