Everything You Need to Find Your Bliss Today

What Is Bliss?

So what is bliss and why is it so important? Why even bother trying to be blissful? And why is it so difficult for us to feel this happy regularly when we reach adulthood?

These are all questions I struggled with over the years because I would feel happy for days, weeks, and even months at a time. Then, I would get in these slumps that seemed to last forever before a new cycle of happiness took over for me. I can tell you from experience that my highs were high and my lows were so very low.

I knew that I needed to change something, but I did not know how to. And I knew many people who found great relief through medication, but I did not feel like that was a necessity for me, so I was looking for other options.

So strangely enough, this is the perfect time for me to tell you about how I almost died. And I would love to say it was my wake-up call, my aha moment, or even my rock bottom, and in many ways it was. But really it was just the very beginning of how I started taking baby steps towards finding joy in the little things and ultimately making dramatic changes in my life that led to my sense of bliss.

Picture it. It was a beautiful fall day, and I was waddling my way to the car with a very swollen belly on the way to deliver my well-loved second child. I was full of excitement and nervousness, and I could not wait to meet the little one who had stolen my heart already. The day went perfectly with my healthy pregnant body and my healthy, sweet baby, and then suddenly it stopped being so perfect.

I will spare you the details, but I can tell you that I will never forget that day, as it is forever tattooed onto my brain. The sound of my own blood pouring onto the floor, the shouts of nurses, and the stabbing in my thighs, as they tried every medicine they could, are all images that haunted me in nightmares for months.

Fast forward years later, and I now look back at that day as such a huge blessing for me, because it was then that I realized how lucky I am. I am lucky to be breathing, I am lucky to right now be staring across the room while I am typing and to see the beautiful face of that baby (who is now a young lady), and I am lucky to recognize how powerful I feel from having experienced that near tragedy and surviving.

I am a survivor and so are you!

I know it sounds crazy to some. But that day taught me that every good and bad thing we go through is part of our journey. Everything is a lesson that we can either hold onto painfully, or we can eventually be thankful for, once we have allowed ourselves to heal from it.

Bliss is finding joy in our lives on a daily basis. It’s being thankful for what we have experienced. And it’s feeling satisfied with who we are and what we already have.

I think this is where bliss differs greatly from contentment.

What is contentment?

Contentment is being just okay with how our lives are. It is going through the motions. It is putting a smile on our face and telling everyone we are great when we really only feel good enough.

No one should live merely content. We all deserve to feel genuinely ecstatic about our lives, and the only way to get there is to recognize our need as humans to feel joy, and then to take the steps necessary to create a life that makes us joyful.

I recently read about a very thorough study done by Harvard regarding the aging of our bodies. They discovered that joy was even more important than genetics in influencing our mental and physical health as we age. The article I read regarding this study titled “Good Genes Are Nice, But Joy is Better” by Liz Mineo, which you can read here, states that close relationships with our families, our friends, and even members of our communities make a huge impact on what keeps us healthy. Therefore, the absence of close relationships drastically contributes to a decline in our health over time.

When I read this, it made me think that it is no wonder that spouses often die so quickly after the other spouse passes away, and why older people in nursing homes, who do not have regular visitors, are often in poor health and are more likely to be neglected or abused.

From the minute we are born, we crave attention, comfort, and love. No amount of years that we experience on Earth makes this need any less than it was on our first birthday. Sure, the way we experience love changes and the way we show love changes. But the fact that we need love to feel joy does not change.

Finding Your Bliss

So this all ties into how I figured out how to live a blissful life. A life where virtually every day I feel powerful, joyful, accomplished, and whole. A day that ends with me drifting off to sleep feeling at peace no matter what crazy challenges were thrown at me that day. A day that leaves me excited to wake up and experience the next one.

1 I realized that I am lucky to be here at all.

No unexpected flat tire, no rough day where my kids argue non-stop, and no boss or co-worker who seems to not know what the heck he or she is doing can take that away from me.

I am here. I am alive. I am thankful.

2 I recognized that I am a survivor.

I have experienced many tragic things in my life, and I made it through in one piece. We all have. We all have faced obstacles, we all have experienced loss, and we all have felt disappointment in our lives. And we made it. We did this, and we did this alone because we are strong.

I am a survivor. I choose to learn lessons from my negative experiences. I choose to not let them hold me back or continue to hurt me. I refuse to be a victim.

3 And last, but certainly not least…I built a group of supporters.

I realized that all of my slumps came during times when I felt alone and had no support.

I moved across the country right after my first marriage, to a tiny town where I knew absolutely no one. My brand new husband worked way more than 40 hours a week, and he could not understand why I felt so lonely. Then, when I did find employment, it was more than an hour away. Due to the long commute, friendships and nights out were virtually non-existent. Two years later, I moved back to my hometown, was laid off from my brand new job, within a few months, and also while I was pregnant, and I ended up having my kids back to back. Let me tell you, there is nothing lonelier than being a stay-at-home parent, with no adult interactions all day long, no matter how much you try to cherish the time with your babies.

So, I built my group of supporters from scratch. My first and most important members were my own two children. There is no doubt in their minds that I am their parent first and foremost, but I also tell them that they are my friends, because I like them just as much as I love them.

Then I joined a stay-at-home parents’ club, which changed my life forever. Almost all of my closest friends to this day I met through this club, and we have seen each other through sicknesses, divorces, postpartum depression, exhaustion from sleepless nights, etc. And when my own marriage failed, I already had an amazing support system to help me through it (because it is shocking to see who turns their backs on you during a divorce).

And lastly, although my family is relatively close by (but not super close), I put a lot of effort into strengthening those relationships. I became (and still am) the family social planner because no one else was making the time for it. It does not matter who puts in the effort. We are all way too busy. Just make the time and plan something already. I am willing to pack the kids up anytime and drive the hour away to see them, and that has made the difference.

I built my own group of supporters. I turn to them when I need to and I encourage them to turn to me. I enjoy their company and I celebrate their accomplishments as much as my own.

So this is it. Three steps are really all it takes to find true joy in your life. If you feel like you are always giving the stock response when people ask how you are doing if you only feel like your life is good enough, if you wake every morning and are not excited for the day and wish you could just sleep your life away, I encourage you to implement these steps into your own life.

All you have to do is learn to be thankful (even if you have to fake it until you make it), become a survivor by refusing to be a victim, and build a group of supporters with people who make you a better person just for knowing them.

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What can you do to find your bliss? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.