Follow Your Bliss
“When you follow your bliss… doors will open where you would not have thought there would be doors; and where there wouldn’t be a door for anyone else.”
– Joseph Campbell
I can usually tell how on track I am in my life by how doors either open or close. I lived in London when I was 19 and I was studying acting. I liked acting and I was in a great school, but somehow it didn’t lift me up. I’d come very close to the precipice of success – like have a meeting with a very well-known director’s casting agent – and just not have it materialize. After some struggle, I let go of acting and pursued other things.
When I took a lifetime worth of skills and channeled them into coaching, doors opened instantly and constantly. After I made the decision to pursue training, the course I wanted was starting the very next week, was held around the corner from where I lived and had space for me. I loved it. I got so high off coaching, it was amazing. I still do.
There’s another Campbell quote on the subject I like:
“We must be willing to get rid of the life we’ve planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us. The old skin has to be shed before the new one can come.”
By listening to the signs around us, guiding us, we can avoid many pitfalls on our journey. If we are headstrong and attempt to swim against the flow, we can delay arriving at a life of pleasure, or risk never getting there at all.
Surrender to the flow.