Revisiting Bliss ...

Follow your bliss …

and the universe will open doors

where there were only walls.

Joseph Campbell

    Wow! I was a little stunned myself at how much more clarity and focus about what counts in life can be achieved in about the time it takes to have a cappuccino and a croissant.

If you’re … lost … tired … unmotivated … or, yearning for something elusive that you hope will give you the sense of destiny and  fulfillment you desperately desire … but have been unable to find … what I discovered accidentally one morning over breakfast with a friend may just be the answer you’ve been looking for …

But first indulge me in sharing a little bit of background. Joseph Campbell is remembered by many for his injunction to …

Follow your bliss …

It always amazes me how little people expect of life that really counts for something, and how hard they are willing to work to get it.   I think that’s mostly because they don’t get what Joseph Campbell meant when he referred to “bliss” … Most people think “BLISS” refers to being happy or comfortable, or more than that a kind of ecstasy of spirit.  Yet, I’m confident it has nothing to do with any of those things … As I understand it, and work with my clients around it, “BLISS” refers to being fully and completely aligned with one’s self … identifying and moving in sync with your true nature. Think about it … Joseph Campbell says when you follow your bliss “the universe will open doors where there were only walls” … he says nothing about feeling “happy” or “being comfortable” … In Joseph Campbell’s magnum opus, “The Hero With A Thousand Faces” … he lays out the structure of the “Hero’s Journey” and shows us that the hero/heroine must enter the “belly of the beast” first … facing their fears and overcoming many trials before achieving their bliss. But, while the “Journey” can be wrought with difficulty it doesn’t have to be that way … Joseph Campbell also points us to other aspects of the “Hero’s Journey” … in this case specifically the “Guide” and the “Magic Helper” … Luke Skywalker’s “Obi Wan Kenobe” and “Hans Solo” in StarWars, or Daniel’s “Mr. Miyagi” and “Ali” from The Karate Kid are examples … but, my favorite guide and magic helper are Carlos Castaneda’s “Don Juan” (Juan Mateus) and “Don Genaro” (Genaro Flores).

The guide and the magic helper are crucial when you are ready to transcend what limits you.

In the past there were many who fulfilled these traditional roles of guiding the seeker over the threshold … the shaman … the medicine man/woman … the witch doctor … the priest/priestess … and on and on. Today some hope for this kind of facilitation with their psychologist, counselor or therapist … yet the medical models these folks work from is often completely lacking in achieving such transcendence. However, all is not lost … there are still some models which seek to fulfill these sacred roles … I got this many years ago when I was apprenticing with Roye, my own mentor. A little over two months ago I began something extraordinary … a *NEW* program for one to one private work I designed, i.e.: the Breakfast Discovery Process … an extremely focused, a single 45 minute coaching session. Both my client and I agree at the outset that the intention of our time together will be to arrive at an extraordinary clarity about the current situation and the realization of a direction leading forward … a path through the next steps to take.

According to great Swiss psychologist, Carl Jung, there are two tasks of life:

• In the first half of life arriving at ego differentiation … to find yourself at home in the external world.

• In the second half of life the task becomes about … discovering who you are as an individual.

I had a conversation about a month ago with a twenty-something client who was striving to achieve the realization of the first task … to find himself at home in the external world, i.e.: to know what to do with his life. The conversation began naturally enough, around how he was not sure about what to be doing with his life … the direction he should be taking to build a career and find success in his life. The real issue was one I’ve heard again and again, “I get started on something new with a sense of excitement and hope that this thing will be it … then I quickly get bored and disinterested.”

Twenty-somethings … Thirty-somethings … even some Forty-somethings find themselves lost in this loop … looking for bliss in their lives, but only finding boredom instead. 

This comes with incredible possibility … with options and choices, i.e.: boredom common to folks who are ambitious and desire more from life than a guarantee of a place to go from 9-5 everyday and a paycheck at the end of the week. Transcending the re-occurring boredom that comes with opportunity requires a special kind of vision and perspective to see beyond the obvious. Yet, when that special perspective is achieved what had been hidden with it becomes obvious as well. This is the foundation for BLISS. We discussed a lot of things, beginning with an exploration of where he’d been in his life and where he found himself in the moment … all very casual, all very conversational. At some point he began revealing his deeper thoughts and desires … what really held him back and where he really wanted to be … what it was exactly that he was revealing, all spoken outside of his conscious awareness (… and that’s what made is so unavailable to him). Although it was now obvious to me the path forward remained inaccessible to him … The key to his movement was actually remarkably simple … a single powerful insight followed by an equally powerful single action were all it took to transform his blindness to clarity.

A critical point is that insight without action is most often meaningless … yet, insight followed by action can be the most powerful transformative process available to you.

Now like most things … any old action won’t cut it. The action must be precisely aligned with the insight, and the insight must cut through to the core of your hidden identity to create the alignment that leads to BLISS. My client wanted to know the next steps …

• First of all he was (and is) a truly talented programmer … code comes to him like babbling comes to a baby.
• He was a dream employee for every up and coming start up he ever worked for … for the first month or two … and then he’d simply get bored and lose interest in the project and ultimately the company.
• Then he’d move along to the next bright and shiny thing that came along (usually at an increased salary and bonus package) … doing well, until that too got boring … and so it went.
• What he kept missing … that was actually supremely obvious despite how elusive it was for him … was that he was the world’s best starter and problem solver when it came to coding … and the world’s worst finisher … he didn’t get bored with coding, he got bored with finishing.
• What he was really missing was a way to structure his talent in relation to a team that could and would support what he was best at … that would allow him to step away and move on as soon as he began to get bored BEFORE he lost interest.
• Next step … get hired in a leadership role with a team under him to support his remarkable talent as a coder and a way to keep him motivated about moving the project forward without him having to be responsible for doing it himself.
• So we designed a way for him to find and move into role where he could get just that, including all the steps he needed to take immediately to make that happen … and he was on his way.

Okay, so you get the idea … a carefully crafted conversation that leads to the insight and action creating the transformation from existential angst to BLISS is what my accidental discovery led me to … and I built an entire process to deliver this kind of clarity to anyone who wants it in about 45 minutes. I call this process the Breakfast Discovery Process (or BDP in my personal shorthand). I have a limited number of openings available at the current investment level … and when they are gone the price will more than double. I’m also including bonuses worth more than three times what the current investment for BDP | Breakfast Discovery Process is today that you’ll get when you register before 1 January 2016. Here’s your link: Get all the details and register here: The Breakfast Discovery Process   All the best, Joseph Riggio, Ph.D. New Hope, PA PS – If you are ready to get started here’s the place to register before the program investment more than doubles (from $447 to $975) … and you’ll get my year-end special bonus package when you sign-up before the 1st of January 2016 … including permanent access to TCP | The Complete Package … my premier Personal Development DFY (done for you) program, and Story Control … the complete videos from the three-day program I ran with Jamie Smart … the bonuses alone are worth about three times what I’m charging for the BDP | Breakfast Discovery Process before I raise the price in less than two weeks from now.

The Breakfast Discovery Process