In The Power of Myth, a series of PBS interviews with Bill Moyers and Joseph Campbell in 1984, Campbell said the words that would end up on bumper stickers and email signatures for years.
His advice “Follow your Bliss,” was based on the Sanskrit term sat-chit-ananda – and reduced out of context. There’s an article from the Joseph Campbell Foundation about this quote and its various appearances, which I think does a good job of contextualizing what Campbell probably meant – it speaks of bliss as “rapture.” Essentially the way he describes it, he’s talking about the experience of engagement or flow, paired with what Jung called synchronicities. He wanted to encourage people to take the path they were the most enthusiastic about, even if it didn’t make logical or financial sense.
In terms of his choice of the word “bliss”, Campbell studied a great deal with Heinrich Zimmer, and his major academic work was in helping Zimmer collect his works on Hindu and Indian traditions. So, it makes sense that he’s talking about ananda, a concept from those traditions. However, with a post-colonial lens, it is still pretty problematic – you can’t take sat-chit-ananda out of its cultural and religious context.
The meaning of this word is much more complicated and esoteric than getting into a flow state. Even with the actual use of the term being cherry-picked away, one of the paths to understanding sat-chit-ananda was to express and live out one’s dharma – which means fulfilling the moral and social roles we must fulfill based on who we are in this life. Dharma is one of those words that is packed and layered with meaning. It refers to the inherent property or quality of a person or thing, as well as the Law of the duties, responsibilities, and rights of a person based on who they are. (The most famous text on the topic of dharma is the Bhagavad Gita, a subsection of the Mahabharata. Though Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, the Ramayana, and the Pancatantra also speak on dharma a great deal.) Obviously, if Campbell had been talking about dharma, he would not be espousing following enthusiasm and passions without taking into account duty, obligation, and responsibility.
After the phrase had taken off, Campbell spoke about it again in an interview with Psychology Today. He said that he wished he’d said “follow your blisters” instead of bliss, having had to explain it and contextualize it so many times. Follow the work you will do even when no one rewards you for it – the work that is itself its own reward. The work you will do even when its hard because that’s what you’re built to do.
When a student asked Campbell whether they could become a writer, his response was “Can you endure ten years of disappointment with nobody responding to you, or are you thinking that you are going to write a best seller the first crack? If you have the guts to stay with the thing you really want, no matter what happens, well, go ahead” (PoM 148). This quote reminds me of something I’d read in college. The idea was there are people who write because they think it’s fun, and there are people who write because they have to in order to stay sane. The latter are the ones who are writers. That’s following your blisters.
Martin Seligman breaks down the concept into distinct parts in his book Flourish. Engagement or Flow is one part of it. Meaning is another. How meaningful the work is – how tied it is to your personal values – is a huge part of what makes it a step toward thriving. The other element is achievement – the sense of doing things you’re good with and meeting goals. Doing the job well. If your work plays to your strengths, ties to your values, and allows you to enter a flow state every now and then, then it’s pretty likely you are following your bliss. The sign that this is the case is when there are little “hidden hands” as Bill Moyers calls them, luck breaks, coincidences, or synchronicities that nudge you along your path, encouraging your moves forward.
In this Economy?
The simple answer is yes. In this economy. In the context of following bliss, Campbell talked about quitting a good but soul-sucking job during the Great Depression.
From my own experience, I can tell you that it really does work. I leapt and the net appeared. It is illogical, and scary, and I’m still not entirely sure how it will all work out. But faith and fear cannot coexist. I gave up knowing how things would work out and focus instead on the fact that they will and do work out. (I will acknowledge that it’s nerve-wracking as I watch this administration and the ACA – which is where my healthcare coverage comes from.)
I know a few other people who have followed their bliss to the tune of quitting full-time jobs and going out on their own as entrepreneurs, freelancers, and creatives.
The steps to this process are remarkably similar across the board. Also, I’ll say that most of us had 9-12 months of planning and lead time before we took the leap. (Some, however, took layoffs and buyouts, so didn’t have that luxury of months of planning.)
What did we all do?
- Know what needs your current job meets – sure it pays the bills, but what are the other needs that it fulfils? My last corporate job really helped satisfy my need for belonging and being part of a team – so I knew that when I left I’d need to find other ways to get that.
- Heal the emotional relationship with money – not so much the actual bank account stuff, more of the emotional elements that lead you to make financial missteps and mistakes. I used the book Heal Your Relationship with Money by Kara Stephens.
- Fix your finances – pay off debts, get recurring charges off the books, make sure you know how much money you have, and how much you need to survive. Come up with the amount you need in savings to leap without feeling totally unprepared. Often, following our bliss does include at least a short-term pay cut, so being clear on this can be helpful.
- Give yourself a deadline – write it on your calendar and count down. Be as prepared as you can when that date rolls around.
- Grow your support system and community
I will say that for most of us who have done this successfully in the past few years, we are single, and we have adult kids or no kids at all. I think that’s an important caveat, because I often hear that getting the kids through college is a huge sticking point for people who are burned out and ready to take this kind of leap but can’t… yet!
What’s not on this list? Knowing what your dream job is, knowing what you want to do, having a business plan, or having a clue as to what comes next. For some of us, the “what’s next” is as clear as day. But for many of us – myself included – we don’t have that kind of clarity. At least not at first. I realized I needed to leap and let go of the old life completely in order to discover the new one. That may be the case for you, too.
Some of the recommendations below can help with “trying on hats” to discover the most fulfilling activities and careers that interest you.
Meeting Bliss Somewhere in the Middle
If you’re not in the position to quit your 9-to-5, but you also feel like it’s not anywhere bliss-adjacent, there are a few things you can do to make it a little more fulfilling.
- Know your strengths and use them daily. I really like this free strengths assessment tool for identifying your unique strengths. Try to figure out how to incorporate these strengths into your daily tasks or routine. This will help you feel satisfied and accomplished more regularly, which is a need at work. (Two of my personal strengths that I use all the time are teaching and learning)
- Seek out pockets of meaning in your current work. Meaningful work doesn’t have to mean that you’re helping people directly with your activities. For me, helping people grow and become stronger in their roles was a thing I gained a ton of meeting out of as a manager. I love helping people meet their goals. (This is why coaching is meaningful work for me now!) By finding the meaning in your current position, you can lean into those areas a little more there. Perhaps even rearranging work duties to ensure you’re doing them more often.
When teenagers and kids are trying to answer the question “what do you want to do when you grow up?” they often play with the idea. They try on the hat of “fireman” and they wear that red plastic hat for a day or two. The next time you ask them if they still want to be a fireman, they will say “nah, now I’m going to be a jungle explorer” and pretend that the red plastic hat is now a khaki pith helmet.
This is the exact same process that we need to do as adults when we are trying to determine what our vocation, calling, and “bliss” might be. We need to try on the hat, wear it around for a few days and see how it feels.
Ways to “try on hats” as an adult include:
- Side-hustles and Freelancing – If you’re in the “trying on hats” part of finding your bliss, doing random odd jobs on websites like Fiverr, Taskrabbit, and Upwork can help you to determine whether you enjoy some of the work you’re exploring. By actually doing the thing a few times, you can determine how it feels inside you to do the thing.
- Volunteering – Another way to try on hats is to volunteer to do the thing you’re curious about for free. Give it a whirl.
- Hobbies – Naturally, hobbies are another way we can explore the things that we used to love. If you have hobby materials collecting dust in the back of a closet, it’s time to dig them out.
Which hats to try?
C.G. Jung said that the clue to this was whatever you did when you were young that “made the hours pass like minutes.” What were the things you did as a kid or still do today that made time stop? What are the things you long to do, you wish you had time to do?
One of my favorite exercises is to write 6-9 paragraphs about times that you were firing on all cylinders at work or in hobbies – times you felt flow, you felt achievement, it was meaningful, and almost fun. Times when you felt like you were working at your best. After you write the paragraphs, go through and pull out verbs from what you were doing. Look at all of those verbs and see which ones show up more than once. That’s a clue to how to adjust your resume (if you’re job searching) or where to spend more time.
If you haven’t tried it yet, see if you can map those verbs into an ikigai Venn diagram. Ikigai is another one of those terms that is packed with meaning, and easily taken out of context in the West. Its misinterpretation is that it’s just about work, when in reality, it’s about meaning. It’s your why, not your what.
How to Follow Your Bliss if You’ve Recently Lost a Job
The other thing I talk with people about frequently is what they can do if they just lost a job, or have been having a hard time finding a new role.
First, of course, button up finances as much as you can. Don’t forget about unemployment benefits, and other sources of support that are available.
I’d say that the soul-searching around strengths, meaning, and achievement outlined above, as well as the hat-testing could be useful ways to get started at revamping the resume and the job search. Remember, recruiters and software are looking for combinations of keywords on a resume, so be sure you include the words that matter to you!
Job searching and side-gig work will likely take up a good chunk of your time. I do, however, recommend spending concerted time on a passion project. Do something you love with the rest of that time. Write the book. Audition. Practice the guitar. I don’t recommend this lightly.
The reason why I recommend doing this passion project is threefold:
- It distracts you and keeps you busy (getting you out of the way of the universe)
- It helps preserve your mental health and well-being
- You never know, it may pay off!
Depression, helplessness, and despair are easy to slip into following job loss. It’s also easy to chip away at our identities and confidence at this time. By doing something you love, at the very least, you can hold those things at bay.
I wrote a book during that liminal, uncomfortable time last year, and I sold it to a publisher. I know of one person who started acting again during this time. Another wrote a script that was produced as a short film! You would be surprised at how much the world needs you to do what you love.