Blissification

I love to make up words. I even made up a place to keep my made up words — The Fictionary.

It all started with a friend of mine who made up words because they sounded good. Another friend of mine didn’t know he was inventing these words and was intimidated beyond belief by this massive vocabulary. That is until I started pointing out which words were — um — non-standard English.

From there, we started keeping track of these creative new terms and decided that there was an eloquence to them… that and it was FUN to make up words. So we did.

And then it spread.

My fellow grammar guru, Christine, would get hysterical when I would share the latest entries into The Fictionary and started creating words of her own. So, it was only natural than when we started a blog together that it be titled with a term that we made up.

Blissification

That blog was founded on the scientifically-supported idea that if you pay attention to what makes you happy and spend at least part of your day counting your blessings, you can actually alleviate depression, improve overall health, and could even increase longevity. Sounds good, no?

Quite frankly, the science is nice validation for what we already know–it feels good to be happy. So, in an attempt to spread the wealth, we’ started Blissification to give a little levity to the blogosphere.

Fast forward a couple of years since the flash of brilliance hit us to start that blog. We’d added a handful of collaborators and most of us went on to create other web outlets for our thoughts. As you’ve read here, I didn’t want to have to create a new blog for every shiny idea I have — so I put my whole online presence under my name. But I also didn’t want to lose the shiny ideas I’d already had… so I brought Blissification and The MegaChallenge 200 and Pointing Forward and Happy and Included with me.

So, if all you want is the good stuff — steeped in Positive Psychology and full of gratitude — Blissification is your blog.

Enjoy!

Silence Doesn’t Indicate Inertia…

Everything in Balance

I love this blog. I know it is hard to tell that from the long absences–okay, complete neglect–over the past couple of years, but I do!

When I started the MegaChallenge, I was some 39 (50) pounds overweight, living in a marriage that threatened my life, working on my degree, homeschooling my kids, and in need of a place where I could “talk” without being edited. It was an act of courage–actually several, since it took multiple tries to get logged on to blog spot–that started this blog. When I wrote that very first entry I honestly had no idea whether anyone would read it.

Then something amazing happened. People did read it, but that wasn’t the real magic. The real magic was finding other people who were in the same boat. No, not identical boats–just similar ones. There were these other bloggers who were also losing weight, but the pounds weren’t actually the point. Life was the point. They were exploring that question that seems to manifest itself from some common place in us all–“Why are we here?”

Of course, the answers varied widely. They had to. How could Allan–an admitted foodie and a food broker from NYC–maintain his sanity as he made his attempt to lose weight while handling the most decadent of foods all day every day? How could Renee drop the pounds while carrying around her self-doubts? How would Trish bounce back from a post-tummy-tuck weight gain while she juggled her responsibilities and the ones she took on for her family? How would Shawna hold up under media scrutiny when her weight-loss blog and book made her famous?

Sure, we were all talking about weight and diet and exercise and scales, but they weren’t the only common themes. Other A-Has emerged as we blogged.

Balance — Maintenance — Relationships — Goals –Celebration

Those are the topics of larger conversations. Yeah, I lost weight and worked out and wrote about it on this blog. But I also transformed my life, found balance, improved my relationships, set brand new goals, and celebrated successes of all sorts!

I thought about deleting the MegaChallenge when I co-created Blissification with my long-time, off-line friend, Christine. Blissification is all about what I am up to now: helping folks find their bliss. But I paused on the delete link. Maybe the MegaChallenge still has its purpose. If I am telling someone that they can be happy and all they see is the current Gina–the one who lives on 6 acres in a gorgeous part of the world, with a wonderfully supportive husband, a job she loves, and kids all around, and who is regularly called, “PollyAnna”–will they believe I have any idea what they are going through?

So, the MegaChallenge stays so that if at some point someone wants to know how I got from where I was to where I am, I can point them here.

And, who knows? At some point this 10 extra pounds that I have been carrying around for the past year might become something I want to eliminate. When I get past the precontemplation stage, this is exactly where I want to record that journey.

Blissification

Blissification

Silence Doesn’t Indicate Inertia…

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