Bill Moyers: What happens when you follow your bliss?
Joseph Campbell: You come to bliss.
— from The Power of Myth
I love the exchange between Bill Moyers and Joseph Campbell quoted above. Moyers asks what seems like such a complicated question — what happens when you pursue your passion, when you connect to your inner knowing and take inspired action to make your dreams a reality? It all sounds so difficult, so challenging, so overwhelming.
SO RISKY.
I am now coming to the end of my third year of a three-to-five year leave of absence from teaching. It’s a completely unpaid leave with no benefits — though I do have the security of being able to return to the classroom at the end of my leave if I choose to do so.
I can’t tell you how many times people have congratulated me for BEING SO BRAVE and TAKING SUCH A BIG RISK.
But the thing is, I still don’t consider myself a risk-taker. I guess, for me, making the decision to take several years of unpaid leave from teaching ultimately boiled down to the moment when the choice simply felt right, not risky.
I just had a …. a knowing that everything would work out.
That’s not to say I made the decision lightly. I carefully thought about my finances, about worst-case scenarios, about all the what-ifs…
…and I made the decision to follow my bliss. I decided to start my own business and pursue teaching mindfulness in schools and online.
And I discovered that when you follow your bliss…
you
come
to
bliss.
Campbell’s answer lets us in on a powerful secret: it’s really NOT that complicated. If everywhere that bliss leads, you are sure to go … well, you will come to bliss.
We seem to get conflicting advice on this topic, though, which makes it appear complicated. We read one article that says, “Follow your passion! Do what makes you happy!”
And then someone snarkily asks, “What if my bliss is playing Candy Crush? How does that work?”
And then we encounter a Facebook meme that proclaims, “Don’t follow your passion — follow your talents!”
And then our parents tell us, “You need a 401(k) and a decent health plan.”
What’s a seeker to do?
Let’s start, as left-brainers do, with some definitions:
What does it mean to follow your bliss?
Bliss comes from the Old English word blibe, meaning merriment and happiness, and is related to the less common blithe, meaning happy. Blithe, in turn, was derived from the Dutch blide and the German blidi, meaning “kind and friendly.”
The earliest meanings of the word blithe (in German) referred to outward demonstrations of kindness and empathy to others, but in English it came to mean one’s own internal state of mind or the appearance of happiness.
Your bliss, then, etymologically speaking, is that which brings you contentment through doing good for others.
Bliss is also related to the word “bless,” meaning to consecrate or make holy, to bestow goodness, health, or happiness upon, to endow with a talent or gift, or to protect.
So our bliss is not merely our “likes” or even our passions. It is doing work with honor. It is doing work for others, work that protects and endows others with safety and gifts.
Bliss Myths
With this in mind, let’s debunk some myths about bliss.
Myth #1: Following your bliss means simply doing the things that make you happy.
See above.
Myth #2: Following your bliss means quitting your day job.
It might. But it might not!
Yes, it would be lovely if our bliss was also the thing we got paid to do every day. But it doesn’t always work out that way. You can be great at your job and love the work you do and be fulfilled by it even if it isn’t what you call your “bliss.”
Maybe your bliss is the volunteer work that you do. Maybe it’s how you parent and raise your children. Maybe it’s the blog posts you write that inspire and uplift others. Maybe it’s the genuine smile and kindness and compassion you bring to others as you go through your day. You can live your bliss without it being your job.
Myth #3: Following your bliss means you’ll be instantly successful and feel blissful all the time.
Indeed, much about my life does feel good right now. I set my own schedule. I’m home with my children in the morning and I’m home when they get off the bus. I get letters from mothers and teachers and students about how much my sessions and courses have helped them.
I’ve worked with over a hundred schools and organizations in just the last few years. I’ve taught online courses to over a thousand students. My summer and fall are already booked with teacher trainings nation-wide, and I have several grant-funded mindfulness programs for students starting up next year. And I wrote a book! Looking back on my first few years as a mindful entrepreneur, I can humbly proclaim success.
But there were difficult moments. I had days when working from home felt terribly isolating.
I would run into students while shopping (something that used to horrify me!) and then cringe at the thought that in a few years, that won’t happen anymore.
Some days I missed my former colleagues so much it hurt.
I had a moment of panic in the first winter of my mindful entrepreneurial adventure — I didn’t have many programs scheduled, and I yearned for the days of steady bi-weekly paychecks. I remember stumbling out of bed one cold winter morning asking myself, “What the f#@% have I done?????”
But I went to work. {Which meant heading down to my home office, sending emails, networking, writing….} And a few days later, an email came in with a request for mindfulness training for teachers. And then another… and another…
I remembered that later in the interview with Bill Moyers, Joseph Campbell said,
If you do follow your bliss you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. When you can see that, you begin to meet people who are in your field of bliss, and they open doors to you. I say, follow your bliss and don’t be afraid, and doors will open where you didn’t know they were going to be.”
While I tend to be the kind of person who says that it’s so random when I happen to meet someone who connects me to a school that wants to introduce mindfulness to their staff, or when someone stumbles upon my blog and reaches out to me, there is a tiny piece of me that wonders if I’ve stepped onto the track that’s been waiting for me and I’m just meeting the people in my field of bliss, the people who know about the doors I didn’t even realize existed.
Perhaps this is how I know I am following my bliss — when I hit those moments of panic, when I start to worry that I might be a failure — I stay with my difficult feelings. I see them as mental phenomena, as reminders of the passion I feel for my work and my commitment to my family. And then, somehow, in a style that is quite unfamiliar for this left-brain gal, I shift to a state of trust. I trust that I know what to do, I know how to do it, and everything will work out.
And it does.
Myth #4: You only have one bliss.
The passage above may lead you to think that you have only one bliss, that somehow there’s ONE thing that you are SUPPOSED to do or be and you have to guess and hope you get it right or you’ll be blissless forever.
That’s not true. How do I know? Because apparently blissless is not even a word (according to spellcheck) so I guess it’s IMPOSSIBLE to live a life without bliss.
I don’t think I spent 40 years without bliss, and then finally discovered what I was “meant to do” just a few years ago. I think there were whispers throughout my life, as Steven Spielberg describes below, of the things that would tickle my heart: choosing where to go to college, deciding to major in history, applying for a Master’s program in education, selecting the job offer that brought me to my previous bliss (teaching AP European History to amazingly talented students for 16 years), stumbling upon mindfulness as motherhood and teaching and living became so overwhelming in my children’s infancies, starting a blog about my mindful motherhood journey that initially only my aunt and mother read, being asked to lead staff development programs about mindfulness at my school, realizing my students needed mindfulness and stress reduction as much as I did, finding a certification program to become a mindfulness instructor…. you get the picture.
Bliss is a winding road. It is the byproduct of a life well lived.
It’s not something you are simply given; it’s something you create.
Following your bliss is a path full of whispers and nudges of all the different ways you can serve others, in ways that fulfill you and tickle your heart. So listen… and when you come to the forks in the roads, realize there is actually a whole spaghetti junction of possibilities that could be your bliss. You just need to get quiet: tune out the noise of the traffic so you can hear the signals.
Listen to the whispers.
TRUST in yourself, your efforts, your commitment, your ability, and your inner knowing.
It’s not risky, but that doesn’t mean it’s not scary.
It’s not always happy, but that doesn’t mean it’s not joyful.
Because when you follow your bliss,
you
will
come
to
bliss.
- A Mindful Approach to New Year’s Resolutions - January 13, 2020
- Just This Next Step - December 16, 2019
- WAIT: A Mindfulness Practice for Waiting in Line - December 9, 2019
