For a long time, probably a year, I used to focus on the idea “Follow Your Bliss” by Joseph Campbell. I spent a lot of time devoted to understanding what that meant, what it meant to me, and then applying it.
I was in a marriage that I shouldn’t have been in, and was so out of sync with myself that I was depressed and trying my best to get some clarity in my life. I would meditate, exercise, fast, eat clean, and focus on follow your bliss. This was all pre-children so I had way more time to myself to think uninterrupted thoughts for long periods of time, something I look back on fondly now that I have two small children.
Anyway, the idea of follow your bliss along with the other complimentary clarifying practices helped me to understand that it meant. To sum it up, follow your bliss means that at any given time, that I need to do what feels best to me. That best may change from day to day, even moment to moment which then requires me to be in touch with my inner self and detoxifying my body and mind with clean food and meditation certainly helped to reduce the noise so I could actually listen within.
In a world without other people around this would be easy, I’d just simply do whatever thing I felt like doing. In social situations I would just choose to not talk to people, or I’d choose to exit conversations, or I’d simply choose to not go to places if I didn’t want to even if that was the socially expected thing for me to do. Slowly but surely one decision at a time, one moment of following what felt the best to me at a time, my life started to shift, then pivot and completely change. I left the marriage, I returned to the United States, I meditated more, I traveled, I danced, I read, I laughed, I loved, and I started to get the hang of it.
When motherhood came, things shifted drastically for me. I now have a slew of people who are dependent upon me, this is what families are, a family that I have created. My little people are little and need protecting, they can only be so independent. My husband is independent but also we have a partnership that is dependent as well, but in a healthy way. Follow Your Bliss as a mom and wife is very different for me now as I have to take others in to account.
Sometimes I get so caught up doing all the school stuff, the baby stuff, the wife and household stuff that I end up doing all the things that I need to do, but not the things that make me feel the best. When this happens I get off balance, and during covid restrictions this has definitely happened and I wasn’t sure how to come out of it. Initially it was great to have my husband working from home, homeschooling, and having the baby be entertained by everyone else in the moments when I would be making food or doing house stuff. Then it just kept going, and six months into it, I was out of balance.
So I had to go back to my basics and thankfully I know what they are. Covid restrictions have had me bring out all of my wellbeing tools that I’ve learned over the years. The one that has helped me is going back to the idea of follow your bliss, to focus on what feels best.
I know that when I feel good, when I am feeling blissful, the rest of my life feels magical, lively, happy, in flow where amazing things happen easily. I’ve been asking myself the question of How amazing can I allow my life to be? The only way for me to truly answer that is to honour and be true to what feels best to me.
When I know what feels best then I can intentionally add that into my life and make time for it. Life is meant to be fun, life is meant to feel amazing, life is meant to be full of joy and happiness.
In the last couple of weeks I have been very much intentionally holding space for what feels best, and you know what? My resting happy face is back and it feels soo good. 🙂