Have you Followed your🐻 GRRUNT, lately….?

17 min readDec 15, 2018

Many of you have heard about the famous term by the great Philosopher, Author of many books Joseph Campbell who was known as an American mythology professor, writer, and orator whose best known for his exceptional work in the fields of comparative mythologies and comparative religions.

He coined this exceptional term that we all know and love today that has led us down our yellow brick road adventure down the pursuit trail of chasing our personal passions.

The term is…

“Follow Your Bliss….”

Are you following it up with something else a little more inspirational?

Follow
Your
Bliss…

These three amazing words have captured our essence of a decision.

A keyworded message of Joseph Campbell’s teachings— the amazing mythology guru and mentor to George Lucas who based much of his deep work in the epic classic Star Wars on the archetypal journeys he has documented in his life’s work. Many of us may know it as the Hero's Journey!

“There are something like 18 billion cells in the brain alone. There are no two brains alike; there are no two hands alike; there are no two human beings alike. You can take your instructions and your guidance from others, but you must find your own path.” — Joseph Campbell

Maybe, you were told in other ways what to follow such as…

“Follow Your Heart.”

“Follow Your Path.”

“Follow Your Purpose.”

“Follow Your Love.”

“Follow Your Passion.”

“Follow Your Journey.”

“Follow Your Practice.”

“Follow Your Bliss”

The Ripple Effect of the Follow… waveforms ripples itself out to another effectual train of thought, that has garnered some steam in the road ahead as he realized that Following Your Bliss was only part of the equation to living a fulfilled, deep and meaningful life, and forward purpose.

Joseph Campbell formed another great saying years later which was created in his older life when he realized Following Your Bliss just wasn’t enough to give you the life of your hopes and dreams. It’s not just about making a decision and the law of attraction will work by itself. It’s about actually reaching down getting your hands dirty with some gritty, difficult doing the hard work spit as your bliss callouses ripen from the work of creating this thing of importance and significance to your life.

We have to absolutely, unequivocally …

Follow Your GRUNT GRRRRRRR!

Because it’s so much easier and much simpler to just “Follow Our Bliss,” when we are in the moment of getting this uncanny, wonderful idea that will serve a deeper, more profound purpose in our life by doing this thing we just thought up, in the moment as just a feel-good idea.

Being in our bliss for the moment feels so good and makes us happy in the moment. Life is much more than just blissing.

To truly be fulfilled in our life choices we have to in the words of Stephen Pressfield “ Do The Work.” Rub our choices hard against the realties of life to see if we truly have what it takes to see it through to the end my friends.

I can see it now if Stephen Pressfield and Joseph Campbell were hanging out with us at our favorite coffee shop having an angelic conversation on both of our shoulders as we contemplate our bliss followed by a GRRR.

They would both be passively saying “Follow Your Grunt” and “Do The Work.”

Both simple ways of looking at life no matter where we are at with chasing down our excellence in pursuit of our greatness is hard work…

We get that Ah Hah! Moment of bliss. It feels well, blissful.

Many people have gone and done that to realize that the decision of making that choice (isn’t as easy as it was first thought of in the moment…)

We make easy decisions without any follow-throughs most of the time with lack of energy, heartfelt enthusiasm and an unstifling feeling of passion. There comes a time of temperance of the hard, difficult and often not rewarding work ahead of us, not only was it difficult to Follow Our Blissful thinking but there was a lot of hard work involved with our GRUNTS!

LAND OF LALA

Most of us when we say Follow Our Bliss we have been living in this LAND. Also, known as the Land of the Lost. when we create this hope or dream of a better life. I know I have been there. I believe this is a step it up in the right direction when we decide to actually choose a path to follow our hopes and dreams.

Dreams are exceptional but they take planning and much deep, invested work and some massive, focused attention if you want to be great at something and leave a legacy, not just make a pay joke, I mean pacycheck. There are enough of us mediocre people living in this world, and leaving a deadened husk of life behind them when the fruit of life is inside of them waiting for the water of energy. We look around and see the zombies walking around in an unwakened life. Are you one? How can you wake up to something more profound and meaningful to you?

We want our greatness to shine before we meet the inevitable maker by leaving behind your best work possible by making the biggest impact in this one great life, even if you are just entertaining this idea now. Sit, take the time to sort through your blessed mess and pick out the pieces that seed right through you. This starts by doing your best in everything you do.

“A bit of advice given to a young Native American boy at the time of his initiation: ‘As you go the way of life, you will see a great chasm. Jump. It’s not as wide as you think.” — Joseph Campbell

It sounds so simple, we see it as the end Vision of whatever we choose to be, whatever it is for us to become, that in which we want our work to become...

Without truly knowing the difficulty level of the task at hand turning up to a Spinal Tap sound of “11.” Embracing the suck to success is part of this epic journey that we will be going on if you decide to truly Follow Your Bliss in pursuit of your Grunt. or continually check your social media feed for an addictive pulse…

Your better than you think you are. Know this! I BELIEVE IN YOU MY FRIENDS!

“Nietzsche was the one who did the job for me. At a certain moment in his life, the idea came to him of what he called ‘the love of your fate.’ Whatever your fate is, whatever the hell happens, you say, ‘This is what I need.’ It may look like a wreck but go at it as though it were an opportunity, a challenge. If you bring love to that moment — not discouragement — you will find the strength is there. Any disaster that you can survive is an improvement in your character, your stature, and your life. What a privilege! This is when the spontaneity of your own nature will have a chance to flow.
Then, when looking back at your life, you will see that the moments which seemed to be great failures followed by wreckage were the incidents that shaped the life you have now. You’ll see that this is really true. Nothing can happen to you that is not positive. Even though it looks and feels at the moment like a negative crisis, it is not. The crisis throws you back, and when you are required to exhibit strength, it comes.” — Joseph Campbell ( Please re-read this 110 times)

I BELIEVE IN YOU

Think of the words and how you can apply them to your life. Plan well, choose to be well, try to test your limitations and limit the bad things that can happen by mitigating your inherent actions with a well thought out disciplined plan of actions to make sure your deviations aren’t completely off. If so, plan again and again, so forth, so on….

Also, push your limitations past your governor, and see how far they can actually grow to. You may be surprised.

Be your own scientist, a collector of data that keeps working, and keeping what works and throwing out the rest that doesn’t test your methods as you create them following your experimentations on your laboratory of life. Then re-test it as your Grunting all the way through your experiences.

Creating a Vivid Vision of the great thing you want to create before you go exploring can be a beneficial and arctic fact before you go off into the search of the cold hard truth of the world with a ready at hand plan, as you move through this cold, hard world before you with a loss of feeling, judgment, fear, criticism, and know the roadblocks will continue for you as learning curves that will inevitably get in the way to help you. When you make that plan, have some stick-tuit-iveness with your systems to convey your strong intentional actions.

This is just a fact of life. Embrace your faith and courage while you embrace the suck. As bleak as this all sounds it’s just the raw, real and relevant truth to your circumstance as your bliss is forming you towards actions untaken-in the moment, which can be rectified by the end of you reading this article.

How about a warm Vision which is the most powerful concept we can use in our lives to paint our picture through our Real towards our Ideal within the canvas of our mind's eye- painting that picture of bliss-scipline, and see it play out in real time as if we are there holding that glowing vision inside of us near and dear to our heart. This needs to be practiced daily.

Visualization is a daily practice…

Imagine…

What your vision would look like, feel like, smell like and act like years later as it’s already happened in your divine minded future. What would it be like to meet your future self and shake their hand. I believe you would truly want the best for that person as they age gracefully.

STOP

Truly STOP what you are doing right now at this moment. STOP reading and take five minutes for yourself. Wherever you are.

*Time it on the alarm on your phone.

Close your eyes, take a few deep concentrated breaths- garbage in, garbage out.
Concentrate on what counts, stop the distractions for 5 minutes and make a habit of doing this daily, when you are in moments of iety.
Now envision your business/ life with the next question.

What’s your 3-year plan look like?

STOP AND DO THIS! REALLY! HELP ME! HELP YOURSELF! HELP YOUR FUTURE SELF IN RETROGRADE. YOU CAN THANK ME LATER IF I’M ALIVE.

***AFTER 5 MINUTES IS OVER. ( READ ON) BE critically HONEST WITH YOURSELF. IF YOU DIDN’T DO THE EXERCISE THE CHANGE YOU THINK IN THIS MOMENTOUS Occasion WILL BE THE GIFT YOU GIVE YOURSELF TO GET BETTER AND NOT JUST BE AN IDEA ZOMBIE.
SEEKING ISN’T JUST READ IN WORDS, BUT DONE IN DEEDS. UNTIL YOU DECIDE TO DELIBERATELY PRACTICE DAILY AND MAKE A RITUAL OUT OF YOUR FUTURE VISION OF YOUR VERSION. NOW! CUTTING LOSE OF THE OLD WAYS OF DOING THINGS. THIS STARTS NOW! THIS STARTS WITH YOU! THIS STARTS WITH YOU DOING THE WORK. I BELIEVE IN YOU. I KNOW ITS HARD. IN LIFE SOMETIMES WE DON’T FOLLOW DIRECTIONS.
THE THING WE TRULY DO FOLLOW IS WE FOLLOW OUR BLISS WITHOUT THE GRUNT AND WONDER WHY WE ARE,WHERE WE ARE YEARS LATER… AFTER THE FACT. TRUTH IS THAT FACT. YOU CANNOT DENY THAT. YOU CAN DENY THE TRUTH UNTIL YOU LAY ON YOUR DEATH BED AND THEN HAVE REGRETS MANY YEARS FROM NOW. IT’S TOO LATE. LET’S SOBER UP TO THE REAL BY LIVING OUR IDEAL. IT’S A LINE OF THINKING THAT WILL SAVE YOUR FUTURE SELF’S LIFE...

VIBRATIONAL TUNING FORK (OFF)

Often times we hear vibrations, a vibrational tuning fork of our mind, this feeling, this gut instinct of our second brain, our intuitional gut-second brain, this knowing, this slight pushy uncomfortable feeling (you know)that nudges you back into consciousness when you don’t listen to it making you less aware when the next time it speaks to you, this tiny little knee-jerk whisperer, and if you are quiet enough you can hear it spark in the hairs of our ears that vibrate our inner consciousness of the search of our truth, then the spark turns into a voice that we think is within our mind, in the deep, controlled recesses of thinking with our consciousness/awareness as we become more aware with focused attention and then it speaks to us, as a “God Spark,” voice. I call it.

It’s a divine awakening of our subconsciousness that we create when we cut out all other decisions in our life. When we have some quiet listening time with our unconsciousness. The breeze of our convictions. We (D)efinitely advise meditation to awaken this gift.

It’s an unconscious whisper from the universe to listen to our heart’s desire. Knowing where we are at the moment and going from there. A favor that’s handed to us is to listen in to ourselves(our cells) of the direction we truly want.

The story of how you got there will truly be better than the story of how you did nothing and stayed the same. I personally call this favor, this whisper of our inner consciousness, our inner universe, our inner siren song of mediocrity to search for our Odysseus greatness through our blissful sparks of battle.

In the great Greek word, “Eudaemon,” an inner spiritual awakening to our soul. Eu — Good. Daemon- is Soul.

GOOD SOUL

I call this gift the “God spark,” because it’s the start of everything in our universe that helps us realize our gifts. It’s a state of beliefs which we choose. It’s the start when we awaken our inner consciousness to the possibilities of moving us forward as a species.

It’s an aperitif of the awakening of the sleeping mind that has been mired in doubt’s starvation of a complex multitude, of mindless wandering labyrinthine-maze of thoughts, wading through the extremes of our many selves of wandering generalities of everything; before that moment that leads up to this enlightened epiphany that rings out in the halls of our divine mind like a trumpet as we seek the heartfelt string of the connections of it all knowing that we are the puppeteers of our own design stirking the dischord to hear our music and correct its course of action.

We pull our own strings and we pull our own weight.

Did you know that the heart is the first thing that’s formed in our baby body before the brain when we are formed in utero?

How can you trust your heart?

ANSWER:

…Because the mind will lead you with LOGIC and the heart will lead you with EMOTION of truth. That gut instinct.

Now, it’s time to think for yourself. Where are you on your El Camino journey? Where do you want to be? Sometimes you have to start from the bottom to rise to the top.

When it comes to doing the work and having to rub our hand's together in GRIT style knowing that there will be hardships in the beginning as you Follow Your wonderful Bliss, that sometimes you have to Follow your hateful Grunt as well to do the work you love bad enough to truly-truly desire it, before it becomes good, then you Follow Your Bliss some more as the passion unfolds like a flower, bliss wanes then flows again furthering you down the proverbial line you set yourself up for, then you’ll Grunt some more as you put in the hours of yearning and learning, then you’ll Grunt some more as you wake up before anyone else does to have some magic time to create the preliminary work to your work between the Blissing and the Grunting to truly produce the focus and impact with meaning of your mission that you’ve directed your attention to creating the greatness when you reach that flow that keeps you on the go.

“People say that what we are seeking is a meaning of life. I don’t think this is what we’re really seeking. I think what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive.” ~ Joseph Campbell

Some days will be much harder than others. Some days will be easier than others. Some days will be as is. Some days will suck the life out of you like a wraith, and make you want to stop. Some days will reward you to WHY you do this every day.

Some days will be a bloody mary mix of both order and chaos. You’ll be indifferent on others as you just “Do The Work”. Just know that your crappiest days are your best days. Your best days are your crappiest days. The ebb and flow are like fluttering heartbeats as we get focused in between the beats as the silence stills.

Are you on your path, right now? If not, how can you change this course? Just know these are the learning, earning days of the experiences that keep you on the path. Just know these are the grueling days that you learn the most as you turn problems into salutations.

Just know these problems will not seem glorious as they are occurring but they are a wellspring of defining moments that you truly learn about the character you are bringing to your future table, developing him/her as you chisel out the tiny decisions that create you on a daily basis to get you there.

Just know YOU as a professional in life, in business, doing whatever needs to be done to get that goal by squeezing the attention of your intention, of your day for everything it has got. Being the person that sets this strong attention as a foundry of steel intention, into everything you do and seeing it through to the end.

Just know that Embracing this as it is IS the path to excellence; because that’s what it is. Let’s get to work! Let’s do the work together! Let’s make the world a better place with what you want to do in your one greta life!

In the words of HAYSEUS :) “Know Thy Self.”

Such that Joseph Campbell later discovered later in his life the wish, the dream of stressing the importance of…

Following Your Grunt…

WOW!

“God will not have his work made manifest by cowards.” And pleads with us: “Always, always, always, always, always do what you are afraid to do.” And assures us: “Do the thing you fear and the death of fear is certain.”~Emerson

WOW!

IN saying this, where can you make what is important to you a true RED eye-opening reality check with constant cuts of right decisions making, by rubbing it raw up against your realities claws and making it sharp with happenstance, with your best ways possible by being the best version of your best self possible; while doing the work you were put on this planet to make exceptionally possible by taking away the clay of your masterpiece here and adding some more mud, blood and sweaty tears over there.

What can you do to inspire your spire of desire and build it higher? Answer ths for you.

Imagine if you looked at everything you did with a sense of duty, a sense of obligation, and a sense of worldly responsibility to do the best work on this earth that you are aiming for that is possible for a universal egoic consciousness, instead of a personal ego?

What do you think you would create with this mindset switch?

How could you take it from red to green every single day with the Bliss inside of you, that you want to create knowing it can happen.

Knowing your long-term intentions are about holding the tension in the reigns of your life horse, so you do the best work possible of what you want close to your divine heart while creating exactly what you envision happening in this one great life. This is a beginning to your ending. Just get started.

So, now that you have identified the Bliscipline of your life in your great Vision plane, in your one great, special life that you would love to embrace and make it a grim, wonderful reality while turning your Bliss into a Grunt; which combines the determination, purpose, persistence, perseverance, and watching your fulfillment unfold like a flower of your life's journey before the wilting end of the petals fall.

START NOW!

Bliscipline, sutures together our blissful grunt as one knowing that together they flow like yen and yang, they flow like the Rubicon river in Germany, they flow inside of your steadfast veins, they flow while you are in action to know that it’s going to take a lot of incredulous work to get exactly the ideal life that you desire and being of service to your ideality of what it is your goals hold for you, your intentions, your gift(s) you hold near and dear to your heart’s heart of desires in this one great giving life.

Where’s your mind? is it in the past, present or future. Be in the here and now. Start creating today.

It’s also going to take the same exact work if you do nothing and lead a simple undisciplined life in this short existence of time on this pale, blue dot.

Would love to hear from you?

What’s your Epic Journey look like?

Who's the most powerful person in your life? If the answer isn’t you. Then who is it? How can YOU become more responsible for this powerful person to become you?

How can you make your life “Epic” today by… (Fill in the sentence stem)

Following-ING Your Grunt?” :)

I wanted to leave you with some final words by Joseph Campbell on your VISION QUEST…

“What is it we are questing for? It is the fulfillment of that which is potential in each of us. Questing for it is not an ego trip; it is an adventure to bring into fulfillment your gift to the world, which is yourself. There’s nothing you can do that’s more important than being fulfilled. You become a sign, you become a signal, transparent to transcendence; in this way, you will find, live, and become a realization of your own personal myth.” ` J.C.

Here’s: MORE exceptional quotes to write down for yourself and post on your mirror or corkboard. THE END. Thank you for taking the time to read this. I do hope this has served you in some profound way to dig deeper and to never settle in complacency.

“There is no security in
following the call to adventure.” ~ Joseph Campbell

“You enter the forest at the darkest point, where there is no path. Where there is a way or a path, it is someone else’s path. You are not on your own path. If you follow someone else’s way, you are not going to realize your potential.” ~Joseph Campbell

“If you want resurrection, you must have crucifixion.” ~ Joseph Campbell

“We must be willing to get rid of the life we’ve planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.” ~ Joseph Campbell