Member-only story
The Bliss Heuristic
“Follow your bliss and the universe will open doors where there were only walls.” (Joseph Campbell)
Ever since I stumbled upon the idea of Joseph Campbell’s “Follow Your Bliss,” I was hooked. I feel like most of us already now what our ‘bliss’ is because it’s just something so obvious to the individual. It’s a subjective sense of ecstasy or excitement.
To follow one’s bliss is not to live a hedonistic lifestyle and what I mean by hedonistic is chasing experiences and titillation through the form of cars, drugs, sex, partying, so on and so forth. The reason for this is because there is a different quality to following what really lights you on fire compared to just being stimulated.
Here’s how to tell the difference between your bliss and stimulation:
- Your bliss practically is your life — It consumes everything in your life and you constantly think about it with a sense of excitement that can’t be contained. Ask yourself, “What is it that I truly love to do?”
- Your bliss is something that you do for its own sake — You do it any chance you get because it provides an enormous sense of satisfaction. Ask yourself, “What are those activities that I do because I just love to do them for?”
- Your intuition knows immediately what your bliss is — Be very careful to not confuse intuition with…
