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Monday, March 28, 2011

Monday Motivator: Follow Your Bliss

I spent a lot of the last week enjoying re-watching the 1980s documentary series The Power of Myth, in which Bill Moyers interviews the inspiring Joseph Campbell. If you get the chance, I highly recommend it. One phrase that resonates with many who have seen the series is "Follow your bliss."
Here, in a segment from KUED-TV's documentary, The Job, David Kudler reflects on the impact of those words:

A YouTube user, sharabanisadr, put together a nice collage of some of Joseph Campbell's quotes with some music by Yo-Yo Ma:

Often misunderstood as encouraging hedonism, "follow your bliss" is explained by Campbell in this way:
"If you 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. Wherever you are—if you are following your bliss, you are enjoying that refreshment, that life within you, all the time."
Some other authors have referred to this as being "in flow."
The saying also inspired the B-52s to write an instrumental song of the same title which was included on their Cosmic Thing album:

Happy Monday, cherubs. Follow your bliss.

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