Follow. Your. Bliss. We write, say and think these 3 words often but what do they really mean? What is it to ‘Follow Your Bliss’?
We’d heard it before but we never really knew what it meant! That was until we watched the documentary ‘Finding Joe’ and it seriously changed our lives! We’d call it a somewhat spiritual documentary and it’s by far the most inspiring documentary we’ve ever watched (in fact, we’ve watched it 6 and a 1/2 times).
We stumbled across Finding Joe from subscribing to Food Matters TV (which we officially LOVE). We don’t watch TV so when we’re in the mood to ‘veg’, we make it worthwhile. We watch interesting foodie, spiritual or mindful documentaries (when we crave a typical TV session we watch Sex and The City re-runs… it’s just bloody funny). If you want to read more about why we choose not to watch TV you can read about that here, apparently if you live until you’re 80 and watch 2 hours of TV a day it equals 8 years of your entire life. Enough to make you switch off?
Finding Joe the documentary is about the teachings and philosophy of the late mythologist, Joseph Campbell. And seriously, this inspirational documentary really helped us to get where we are (that is: blogging full time, living our dreams). It gave us perspective, drive, passion, meaning.
It made us question: why is it that we’re all subject to a materialistic world of shopping, things, advertising and jobs we actually hate? Why are our lives fuelled by money or maybe the lack of money?
Before we watched Finding Joe we knew there was something more. It was like we were stuck in an unauthentic life where we were white sheep following the masses of other white sheep. Finding Joe was a huge AHA moment for us and helped us escape this fake world.
The thing we especially love about Finding Joe is that it’s a well made documentary. It features authors, actors, entrepreneurs, athletes and is based around the mythical ‘hero’s journey’. Stories are told with the help of adorable children in the cutest costumes.
The key message is that we all go through our own ‘hero journey’ within life and smaller ‘hero journeys’ within that. The journey is a choice… it starts with a call to adventure and it’s what we do next that creates a life worth living. Do we say YES?! Do we take the easy path or do we push our limits? Do we take the red pill or the blue pill? Do we stand still or do we strive for more?
Robert Walter is the President of the Joseph Campbell Foundation and he speaks about myths and the core message “to go beyond what we perceive as the limits of our possibility”. He asks us to question FEAR. Instead of looking at fear as a feeling of ‘maybe I shouldn’t do that, maybe it’s too risky’ start looking at fear as ‘oh this scares the absolute crapola out of me but I’m going to do it any way’. AHHH we just got tingles!
The documentary looks at one of Joseph’s most famous quotes and one of our most favourites too… ‘Follow Your Bliss’.
We realised that The Merrymaker Sisters is our Bliss. It’s what makes us happy, connects us to the world and gives us meaning to life.
Finding Joe taught us that we can all be significant; we can all make a difference in this big world. In order to do that, we just need to find our bliss. The ‘thing’ that brings joy, the thing we’re good at and the thing that gives us the fire in our tummies to keep on going no matter what obstacles get in our way.
It was just 3 small words that changed our entire lives. To Follow Your Bliss is the key to truly unlock the authentic life ahead. It was like a kick up the bum, an extra push, a huge sign saying ‘Hey Merrymakers! Your truth is this way, follow your bliss!’.
So what are you waiting for? Start to notice the signs, they are all around you. Find your bliss, then follow it! After all: THIS. IS. IT.
Always merrymaking,
Emma + Carla