Live Your Legend

Alan Watts- It’s better to have a short life that is full of what you like doing, than a long life spent in a miserable way.

Joseph Campbell- If you do follow your bliss you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. Follow your bliss and don't be afraid, and doors will open where you didn't know they were going to be.

I found this site- Live Your Legend- a while ago and re-found it today. It's about finding your passion and doing it as your work. And so, it seems to me to go very well with Watts and Campbell... I'll ask these questions again at the end- but what do you think about these quotes above? And do you think you are following your bliss? What can you simply NOT help doing? Is there a danger in following your bliss perhaps by attaching very strongly to an image of who you are and what you do?

The dude who started 'Live Your Legend Revolution' was called Scott Dinsmore. He died earlier this year which is a shame but the site seems to be going strong regardless and is spreading some of the ideas we may have seen before here... I'd like to share some things from their about page but to keep this post relatively short- I'll share what simply drove him to do what he did which I find myself agreeing with...

The following beliefs drove most of his actions:

1) We are capable of a lot more than we give ourselves credit for.

2) You don’t have to do things the way they’ve always been done.

3) There’s usually a better way.

4) Most things aren’t as impossible as we think. They must be tested.

5) Exploring and getting out on adventures adds clarity to most of life’s confusions.

6) We can all do work we love, we just have to understand ourselves first – and create the proper surroundings.

7) Environment. Is. Everything. The fastest way to do the things you don’t think can be done is to hang around people already doing them. Choose your friends wisely and brainwash the impossible.

8)The education and experiments never end.

Here's the about page for those interested- http://liveyourlegend.net/about/

And lastly I'd also like to share his tedxtalk he did for those interested,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpe-LKn-4gM

So to repeat my questions:

What do you think about these quotes above (now including the quote on the beliefs)?
Do you think you are following your bliss in your life?
What can you simply NOT help doing?
Is there a danger in following your bliss perhaps by attaching very strongly to an image of who you are and what you do?

Enjoy the discussion and have a nice day,

Thanks for posting this. It seems really interesting. Following your bliss is something that I've given a lot of thought to in the last few years.

If you don't mind I'd like to skip answering the first few questions and talk about this one (although they'll all pretty much get answered anyway):

Vusuki wrote: Is there a danger in following your bliss perhaps by attaching very strongly to an image of who you are and what you do?

From my experience there can be a danger. That danger is, as you said, the danger of attachment to that idea, that image of yourself.

Growing up all I knew was martial arts. From the time I was ten years old I was trained not only in martial arts but in how to run a school, even an entire organization. (the martial arts training started before that, but the rest started about then). When I was 22 it happened. My father stepped down and I took over his school. It wasn't until about six months in to running it myself that I started to question whether that was really what I had wanted or if it was just what I had been trained to want. I decided that the only way to know for sure was to quit, at least for a while.

That's where that attachment came in. My entire life had been about one thing, martial arts. I didn't do sports or extra curricular activities in school because I was at the dojo every day. I missed out on family things to go to shows and conventions. Martial arts was all of who I was. That I, even for a moment, thought of taking that all away left me feeling empty. That was probably the closest I've ever come to understanding depression. It should come as no big surprise that that is when I found this Temple.

I did quit. The school closed and I was both free and empty. I learned though, that I needed to be empty to discover what I really wanted to be filled with.

Eventually I came to realize that martial arts was my bliss but maybe not teaching it, not yet at least. It's still in there, inside me, the teacher, but I think it needs a few more years to fully develop.

In summation, martial arts is my bliss but I'm not at a point yet that I can make it my job. I also hate making my living dependent on something that I love because then it is literally work. I like having the choice. Do I work out today or not? When I taught it was, "well I HAVE to go to the dojo and I HAVE to train these people." That's another danger of making your bliss your job. For me my bliss has to remain my hobby. At least for right now.

Goken wrote: I also hate making my living dependent on something that I love because then it is literally work. I like having the choice.

I used to think the same way. I've had a natural ability to play the piano since I was 4 years old, I am now 32. For the longest time I didn't want to make playing the piano/music my living. Finally, when I was around 29/30 I decided I'm going to give it a go. And I never worked a day in my life. As the old saying goes "Do what you love for a living, and you'll never work a day in your life." It is absolutely true. I would "go to work," whether it's rehearsals, practicing new songs, writing my own, or showing up for gigs...doing what I absolutely loved to do. At the end of the day I would constantly say to myself "I can't believe I'm being paid to do this."

You say "then it is literally work." Well....yes but no. Literally, well yeah. But I say no, because is it really? Is doing what you love, work? How can one define it as 'work,' not in the literal definition of the term, but in the definition of what your heart refers to as 'work?'

Vusuki wrote:

Is there a danger in following your bliss perhaps by attaching very strongly to an image of who you are and what you do?

Goken illustrated this point brilliantly with his story, but I feel I need to piggyback with my own. To answer your quote, I believe there is a danger: dogmatism.

There was a time when you could have called me an environmental extremist and I would not have disagreed. Much like Goken only knew martial arts, I only knew the forests and hills where I came from. The slightest bit of development was seen (to me) as an assault on myself and everything I believed in. It came to the point where humanity took a second seat to nature, and human suffering was a fair price of environmental justice.

Overcompensating as I foolishly do, I dismissed the Land Ethic as a childhood fantasy I needed to "grow out of". From there I spent years convincing myself I needed to go into physics, engineering, and computer science. Little did I know I was just as dogmatic as before. In the last two years, something has brought me back to environmentalism; the same thing that brought me to this forum.



Balance



The environment is important, but it should never outweigh the mental, spiritual, and physical health of humanity. A 'legend' shouldn't be relentlessly pursuing a fringe facet so much as the bringing of an entire field into balance. And there is much balance to be brought.

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Edit: "Following your bliss" is perhaps the most fervent lesson taught to us, though it has brought me much confusion. Am I only supposed to work in what makes me happy? There are many paths I could take. Watching birds. Reading. Piano. Video games. Writing. It is possible to make a living off them all, and they all make me happy. But am I willing to suffer for that career? For me, piano is an escape from reality. I would not play until my fingers bled. The same goes with video games. Balance would be finding that which makes us happy, but we are willing to suffer for to bring about betterment of ourselves and our communities.

Goken wrote:
I learned though, that I needed to be empty to discover what I really wanted to be filled with.

Very profound! Can I use this for something I'm writing for the Temple?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YN6N2GY-7u8

i think this is a great topic

if i have something meaningful to contribute here it would be somewhere the following ideas

the most imlortant thing is to just go do it - i mean get started today

if there is uncertainty about what your "bliss" might be then dont worry about your "bliiss", just be willing to try new things as often as you can

look around: pay attention to as much of the world as you can
eventually you will see something that you really think is cool
get involved with it at whatever level you are able, as quickly as possible

in fact, get involved with everything you think is cool, and when you find something that would still be cool if no one ever knew you did it, or if you couldnt be paid for it , stick with that for a while

its totally ok to be wrong
its really not ok to hold back because youre lazy or because youre afraid

dont lie to yourself - we all have to drop the lesser motives in this kind of decision making, like the idea that "security" is a good reason to choose what we do with our lives, and/or the emotional attachment to the kind of social prestige that might be associated with the activity -

so like, having real ability and a sincere desire to save lives and heal people, are good reasons to get in to medicine - wanting to make a lot of money and be admired because youre a doctor (or whatever) are not very good reasons

remember that youre going to have to work really hard no matter what you do
accept that fact as soon as possible
but understand that if youre doing something you belive in, the work is justified

the only time its not ok to walk away from a situation is when youre doing it to hide or escape something that you know you ought to handle - once you honestly feel its time to go, go. just do it respectfully

Khaos wrote:

Excellent! Super excellent!! You nailed it with this video. :woohoo:

Rick D wrote:

Goken wrote:
I learned though, that I needed to be empty to discover what I really wanted to be filled with.

Very profound! Can I use this for something I'm writing for the Temple?

Absolutely.