Welcome to our Freedom, Love and Joy Challenge!

I'd love for you to join us for a 21-Day Challenge, so you can reconnect with what's important to you, what brings you joy, and what makes you feel alive.  

I've done a bunch of these challenges, and each time participants are really surprised at how fast change happens when we use the 21-day format to focus up, power up, and enliven our lives!

Who's it for?

I created the challenge to jumpstart any changes you want to create in your life right now.

We all know people who seem to find it easy to make changes they want, and it can be really frustrating to try and figure out how they do it.  Over the last 20 years, I've developed the Blissipline protocols, and helped a lot of people overcome their obstacles, find their strengths, connect with their real hopes and dreams and change their lives.

Most of my work was in private 1:1 sessions, but about 10 years ago, I decided to get really serious about finding ways to make the tools more affordable and accessible.

The number one thing I discovered is that if I can get people to actually practice the tools of Blissipline, they get WAY better results than even in (super expensive) 1:1 sessions without practicing them in between.

And so I started doing challenges, and (halle-freakin'-luia) they worked!

Why a 21 day challenge?

People say, "It takes 21 days to change a habit."  It turns out it can happen even faster than that.

As one of the participants of a previous 21-Day Challenge wrote:  

I joined the course because I wanted to find my "happy."

It’s no exaggeration to say that with the first exercise, Mary showed me where to look.

21 days is short enough to really focus.  There's a little time pressure, which makes it way more likely that we will dive and in and focus enough to actually do the challenges (which is what creates the magic). 

21 days is long enough to create real change.  As my client discovered, the main realization is that you are capable of creating changes you want. 

 KNOWING this is what give you power, and in 21 days you can experience this power enough to begin to trust it.

But is 21 days enough for me to create changes I want?

Honestly, I don't know. 

But if it's not, I've got you, because at the end of the 21 days,  I'm gifting you lifetime membership in The Blissipline Community, so we can keep connecting and you can keep getting support for creating joy in your life.

So there is no pressure to get it right.  But maybe a little pressure and accountability to help you get up off the couch and do something for you!

Why focus on Freedom, Love and Joy?

Together, Freedom, Love and Joy create a powerful trifecta.  .  

I have found they balance one another out in really important ways, and balancing them supports you in focusing on what you REALLY want. 

Their potent combo can stop you getting sidetracked by old habits, by others' opinions, and just plain old fear.

Let me give you a few examples.

Have you noticed that when you try and do something important, it can seem like an infinity of small obstacles get in your way, like sand in the gears, grinding you to a halt. 

If you explore what's in your way in the context of Freedom, Love and Joy, you discover what's stopping you.

Let's say you're doing something and your emphasis is on feeling, being, expressing love, but you're missing elements of freedom and joy... it can start feeling a lot like obligation. 

Or let's imagine you're really focused on freedom and joy, but missing the love piece... it can feel shallow, like you're disconnected from what truly nourishes your soul.

Or let's say you want to focus on joy and love, but missing a sense of freedom.. you might be having fun and doing things you enjoy, but you start to feel disconnected from your own creativity and truth.

And one thing I have noticed is that reaching for joy without freedom and love makes it almost impossible to connect with joy.  You can be in the happiest place in the world, feeling like it's just not working for you.

Perhaps the worst of all is focusing on freedom with adding in love and joy. 

This is a really common scarcity mindset, and we see it happening a lot.  It ends up being a recipe for fear and resentment, and leads to a lot of the aggression and hostility we are seeing in the world.

But what I have seen, over and over, is that as you consciously balance out these three elements, an inner resilience, confidence and feeling of happiness and well-being is nourished.  

It's a case of Self FLaJ-Elation!

I have been practicing Freedom, Love and Joy so much that I started calling it FLaJ ... and putting FLaJ on everything!  

When I got new earbuds, and my phones asked me what I wanted to call them, I called them FLaJ. 😉

And in my ongoing groups, we started practicing Self FLaJ-Elation! 

You know how people used to practice self-flagellation? Literally beating themselves with knotted ropes to demonstrate their unworthiness and sinfulness. 😬

And in the modern world, we tend to practice a version of this where we're constantly beating ourselves up inside. 😪

Well this is our moment to reclaim and transform that energy!

As we practice Freedom, Love and Joy, we build our inner resilience, our happiness and our empowerment into an ever-growing feeling of Elation. 

Elation goes beyond simple happiness; it's a more profound and exhilarating feeling.  It can involve a sense of hopefulness and confidence about the future. Elation may be accompanied by a feeling of energy and a desire to express the joy.  Elation feels connected to our inner guidance.  It's a feeling of being lifted up, warm, connected, interested, loving, joyful, all mixed in with a kind of enlivened peace.

So that's the plan. We will practice Self FLaJ-Elation, by practicing Freedom, practicing Love, and practicing Joy and through these practices, building this sense of Elation.

But is it even right to be happy now, with how much suffering there is in the world?

It's essential!

A lot of people ask me, "How can I practice joy, when there is so much going on that is so distressing."

I have some insight on this.

As a therapist, I connect with people specifically when their lives are in crisis. 

As an empath, I often feel intense sorrow and compassion for what people are going through. 

And as an responsible human and a long term activist, I want to do my part in creating a kinder world.

I have seen for myself how helping people reconnect to whatever joy is available makes a big difference in two important ways. 

First, of course, it just lets you feel better for a while (which is essential, and you deserve that, especially when things are hard). 

And there's a really powerful bonus effect. 

It empowers you to start seeing the world in terms of possibility.  You start to notice more places you can create change and finding the inner resilience to actually do what is important to you. 

As Ghandi said, "You must be the change you wish to see in the world."  

If we want to see joy, we must be joyful.  If we want to see love, we must be loving.  

Without love and joy we can get mired in despair. 

With love and joy we reconnect to possibility.

And that supports our freedom to create the world as we envision it!

What if I feel like Freedom, Love and Joy are just too damn far away?

When I first started thinking about this challenge, I was thinking a lot about how much genuine suffering people are experiencing right now.  My first impulse was to call it...The Courage to be Joyful

As I was looking for a picture to put at the top of the page, I scrolled through Unsplash looking for images related to joy, etc. and I found a lot of pictures of people laughing and dancing and playing music -- a lot of the pictures you see above -- but nothing seemed right quite right. 

So I kept looking. 

I looked up other words, like happiness and hope.

Eventually my scrolling led me to this photo, and immediately my heart said, "Yes.  That's the one."

My head argued... "That doesn't look like joy.  That looks like determination or something."

But something in me knew I wanted to use it. 

I realized that the courage it takes to be joyful often looks more like this than the happy, laughing images that popped up first.

Sometimes the first step toward joy requires us to stand up straight and put a fist in the air and say, "I will figure this out." 

Or even, "I will not let the bastards get me down."

So yes I did put joyful images of playfulness and laughter on the page, and yes, it's my intention that over the 21 days we spend together you will have lots of moments like those.

But you get to start wherever you are. 

(And you can keep this image in your back pocket for when you need it.)