From Chaos to Bliss: Creating Clarity, Confidence, Control and a Life You Love

By Karen Carpenter, Raymond Aaron and Loral Langemeier

TAKE THE CHAOS IN YOUR LIFE AND SHAPE IT TO CREATE THE BLISSFUL LIFE YOU ALWAYS DREAMED ABOUT!
Today's world can give you circumstances that turn your life upside down. Losses can pile up and you can feel as if there is no way to bring the joy and bliss back into your life. Read From Chaos to Bliss: Creating Clarity, Confidence, Control, and a Life You Love, as Karen Carpenter takes you on a journey through her personal losses and gives you the tools that she used to return her life to bliss. Along the way, she empowers you to move away from a victim mentality to one focused on finding joy in all areas of your life. This inspiring book centers on personal changes in her life but doesn't focus on the negative aspects. Instead, Karen walks you through how to lessen the negative impact and how to learn from the loss
and your reaction to it. Along the way, she gives you practical tips on how to control your thoughts, emotions, and actions,
giving you the keys to reclaim your bliss from the chaos that circumstances can bring into your life. From Chaos to Bliss also walks you through the steps of attracting individuals into your life that contribute to your bliss, while helping you to alter your viewpoint of circumstances, giving you control in the middle of chaos. If you have ever dealt with loss and chaos, then pick up From Chaos to Bliss, your guide to creating the life you want with the bliss you deserve!

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Aug 15, 2019
• ISBN: 9781772773019

Book preview

Introduction

There are moments in life where circumstances threaten to turn you upside down, eliminating all the joy from your life. During those moments, you might feel as if you were drowning, and likely to go under at any second. I am here to tell you that in those moments of chaos, you have the power to create a life of bliss.

How can bliss be possible during times of profound loss? It starts with your thoughts, and how you choose to frame the circumstances that life presents to you. For many of you, that chaos could begin with an economic loss and spiral into other more personal losses, such as divorce, or may be more permanent, such as the loss of a family member or close friend through illness or accident. Perhaps your world has been shaken by a natural disaster and/or the loss of your material livelihood. Circumstances of loss can include more than material losses. They can also be spiritual losses.

No matter what the loss, there is hope to be found even in the seemingly darkest moments. You have the ability to find the clarity, confidence, and focus to claim the bliss that you deserve. Throughout these chapters, I want you to focus on finding one action item that you can apply in your own life right now. You do not need to wait until you have suffered chaos before applying these keys. In fact, the more you make them a part of your life now, the easier it will be to handle the chaos and change when it comes into your life through circumstances that you seemingly cannot control.

I look forward to taking this journey with you, not only by sharing my story, but sharing with you the steps I took to find my bliss, and how I continue to apply them today. Finding your bliss is critical to living the life of your dreams, one that will inspire you to give to others and fulfill your life’s purpose. With that in mind, let’s get started by addressing what chaos can look like and what some of the common responses to chaos are. Next, I will focus on your thoughts, emotions, and actions, as they are the building blocks of your bliss. Finally, I will share with you practical ways to alter your thoughts, emotions, and actions to maintain your bliss through any chaos that comes your way.

I am excited to start this journey with you!

Chapter 1

The End of Chaos

Life is full of moments in time when our safe and stable world is rocked. In those moments, all you might want to do is find your way back to normal. The question is, what does normal look like for you? Life is to be joyful and happy. Life is meant to be something enjoyed, instead of spending it being miserable. Normal is a life that you create, one that leaves you fulfilled and able to handle whatever comes your way. It is not however, something not to be changed.

I have been rocked with plenty of life altering situations, ones that took my life in directions that I had never imagined or would have even consciously chosen. It meant sometimes reimagining my world and putting in the work to get myself whole and moving forward. How did I do it?

It started with a thought, determining where I wanted to get and who I wanted to be after the dust settled from these life-altering situations. As I describe where I wanted to be after my losses and/or chaos, perhaps some of these will resonate with you. No matter what your circumstances you face, keep these in mind, because throughout this book, I am going to show you how I achieved bliss and got to this point in my life. I want you to get excited, knowing that you too can reset your life and make it even better!

Losses can include the loss of family or friends through death, divorce, or other changes to your circumstances that may leave you feeling a sense of loss and a in a sense some chaos, shifting you off balance. Life has a way of sending circumstances that tend to make you feel as if happiness and joy are lost forever. I want to help you appreciate that you have the power to reclaim your bliss.

What this book is not going to do is focus in on how or why you got to chaos, but what you need to do to move forward and attract what you really desire. The past has happened, now it is up to you to forge a new path. How do you do that? Do you want to empower yourself and continue your life’s journey with confidence, learning and growing from the experiences you have had? Not everyone is up for the challenge of coming back from a significant loss or life-altering circumstances.

Instead, they might be quick to fall into the realm of victimhood, giving away your power to create change in your life, constantly being at the effect of every circumstance. It can be easy to do, but is that really the life you want to live? I am confident that by picking up this book, you have what it takes to create the control, confidence, clarity to build a happy life. In order to do this, you must take responsibility for circumstances around you.

At this point, I need you to understand that even though your world has been rocked, this moment is where you want to be. Because right now, in this moment, you have the power to take your life in a new direction, one that you might never before imagined. You are at ground zero, but where you go from here does not need to be defined by society’s norms. You can decide where to take your life and open your mind to some amazing possibilities. I want you to be ready to open your mind to new thoughts and new ways of thinking and doing things like most successful people have done before you as a model to follow.

When I was going through the different losses and life-altering circumstances, I found that there was a list of things that I wanted to feel and do to move myself forward. Let’s talk about some of them and what they meant for me. Perhaps you can relate.

Good Health and Physically Strong

During my moments when it felt as if the world was crashing in on me, it was hard to focus on taking care of myself. One of the first things that seemed to happen as a result is that I failed to eat well and exercise. When I was stressed or dealing with a lot of negative emotions, my rules, if I really had any, were disregarded. What I have learned since is that successful people have rules – lots of them.

One of my first realizations was that I wanted to reclaim my energy and vitality. I knew that if I was going to be able to handle anything I needed to make change in how I took care of myself. That meant focusing on my health, by eating right and making time to exercise. To do so helped me to remain physically and mentally strong. Not to mention, taking the time to exercise got those happy hormones flowing in my brain and body, offsetting the stress hormones. It helped me to get a fresh perspective, one that I really needed.

During stressful and life-changing times, it can be so easy to fall into a pattern of negativity and self-discipline. You just grab those comfort foods, regardless of whether or not they are any good for you or even if you are really hungry. You may be thirsty, tired, bored or emotional, which is giving you signals that you think are hunger. You stop exercising, because you just feel like you don’t have the energy, the money, or the time. That eventually impacts your ability to be physically and mentally strong. It begins a spiral, one where you do not feel good because of what you are eating, and those emotions prompt you to keep making bad food choices.

I am not here to expound the virtues of any particular plan. I have no specific education on what constitutes a healthy diet. I just know what is good and not so good for me. I take responsibility for my food choices. For me, I know that sugar and processed foods make me sluggish and cause me to have even more food cravings and binge. I also believe that everyone is different. I bet you know what foods give you lots of energy and which make you sluggish. Do a little research and pay attention to how you feel before, during, and after eating certain foods. You may surprise yourself. It can help you become more aware of what type of foods you should include more and the ones you should limit or perhaps avoid altogether.

I noticed that these things all snowballed to the point that it became a vicious cycle, one where I didn’t take care of myself and then I felt bad, which left me with little energy to take care of myself and being a victim of my choices. You can see where I am going with this. I had to take responsibility for my choices in order to turn my life around.

Take the time to take care of yourself. Eat well, exercise, and get plenty of sleep. Make sure that you do not neglect yourself physically, because that will impact your ability to address your emotional and mental needs. If the physical foundation is neglected, eventually the whole building falls apart! You do not want to rot from the inside out, but when you neglect yourself, that is exactly what can happen.

If you want to have the energy to address the big changes in your life, then you need to make sure that your physical well-being is on the top of your priority list, instead of pushed to the bottom or just an afterthought altogether. Recognize that how you feel physically translates into your thoughts. Now, let’s talk about the types of thoughts you need to move forward and create the life you want.

Understanding How Thoughts Create Emotions

The focus of your thoughts translates into your emotional state. The fact is