We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Macara Brachmann. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with macara below.

Macara, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Was there a defining moment in your professional career? A moment that changed the trajectory of your career?

I’ve experienced several defining moments in my life, but one that truly shaped my professional journey occurred during an intensely stressful period. I took my own advice and began searching for positivity in my otherwise hectic days, challenging myself to post three gratitude photos daily on Facebook (no IG back then) as personal accountability. What started as a private practice unexpectedly resonated with others, who found value in what I would later name my #blissdaily3’s.

These nightly gratitude rituals transformed my perspective and life so profoundly that I immersed myself in gratitude research, eventually developing the FREE Bliss Daily 3 Gratitude app. I chose to invest the modest life insurance funds I received after my mother’s passing, since she was the one who always told me to “think positively” to create something meaningful—a gift that could help others focus on the good in their daily lives, even during challenging times.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

Finding BLISS Through Gratitude and Small Steps

In 2013 my mom was diagnosed with Leukemia. Coming on the heels of the death of my husband, Scott in late 2011, loss was overwhelming me and what I had relied on to cope with tragedy – putting on a brave face and getting on with it – wasn’t working. I was “sitting in the suck,” as I referred to it. I decided to take my own advice about finding positivity amid difficulty. I began the practice of posting three gratitude photos daily on Facebook—not as a social media strategy, but as personal accountability, to ensure I was actively looking for moments of joy. This daily practice of intentional gratitude has become a cornerstone of my life—I’ve maintained it consistently since 2013, missing only two days in over ten years.

What began as a survival mechanism gradually revealed itself as a powerful tool for transformation. I noticed my outlook shifting, my stress levels decreasing, and my ability to navigate difficulties improving. Curious about these changes, I dove into researching the science behind gratitude practices and discovered how these small daily actions were literally rewiring my brain’s neural pathways. This is when my love of Neuroscience and brain health began!
After recognizing how profoundly this simple nightly gratitude practice transformed my life, I created the Bliss Daily 3 Gratitude app as my gift to others—a free tool to help them experience the same life-changing benefits of consistent gratitude practice, even during their most challenging times.
These life experiences shaped my brand, BLISS—Balanced Living In Small Steps—built on the philosophy that meaningful change happens through consistent, manageable actions.

How I Serve Clients

I offer several transformative pathways:

30 Days of Bliss, a self-paced mindset reset, focused exclusively on neuro coaching, featuring activities I personally relied on after my husband, Scott’s passing.

“5 Secrets” workshop, offered as a live one-hour session twice yearly, which uniquely blends neuro coaching with health coaching, simplifying the science of brain health, neurotransmitters, and neuroplasticity to improve both mental and physical wellbeing.

Personalized one-on-one coaching sessions for those seeking individualized support, tailored specifically to their unique wellness journey.

Corporate wellness workshops that have produced remarkable results. Companies report reduced burnout, increased employee happiness, greater satisfaction with life both in and outside work, and higher resilience to stress. Participants experience tangible physical benefits including fewer headaches and reduced illness—all through implementing neuroscience-backed health practices that are accessible and sustainable.

What Sets My Approach Apart

My coaching integrates brain-based mindset strategies and physical well-being practices for moms, caregivers, healthcare professionals, and midlife women experiencing burnout or feeling stuck. I serve those navigating the challenges of aging parents, older children, perimenopause, and the quest for self-rediscovery.

What truly differentiates my approach is that everything I teach comes from personally tested practices backed by science. As they say, we are all born with knowledge, but it’s only through experience that we gain true understanding.

I’m most proud of creating a framework that helps clients achieve sustainable changes through small, consistent steps—the essence of my BLISS philosophy. By focusing on balanced living through manageable actions, I’ve witnessed countless clients transform their lives in ways they never thought possible, finding joy and purpose even amidst life’s most demanding challenges.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

When I unexpectedly lost my husband Scott in 2011, my entire world turned upside down. You know that feeling when life as you know it completely shatters? That was me, just trying to survive each day, putting my best foot forward to support our two grieving young sons.

During those dark days of grief, I found myself instinctively looking for hearts in nature. It sounds a bit strange maybe, but I’d be walking along and suddenly spot a heart-shaped leaf, a rock or a cloud that looked like a heart. Each time I found one, I felt a connection and some peace. From his many trips overseas, Scott had brought back many treasures over the years from far away lands. Days before his passing, he gave me this red polka-dotted heart stone, knowing how much I loved hearts and polka dots.

Those hearts became the backbone for my entire approach to healing and eventually for the BLISS concept itself. They taught me that when we train our minds to look for specific symbols of hope or love, we actually begin to see them everywhere. I started taking pictures of them.

I had no idea at the time, but the little healing practices I was developing for myself—the heart-seeking, the mindfulness moments, the intentional ways I was processing my grief—they were actually rewiring my brain in healing ways. I wasn’t thinking about neuroscience then; I was just doing what felt right to help me keep going. These intuitive practices I developed during that time eventually became the foundation for what I now call my 30 Days of Bliss program.

2013 provided another chapter for growth. That’s when I decided to start posting three things I was grateful for every single night on Facebook. I called it my BLISS Daily 3. It wasn’t a business strategy—it was my personal accountability system to make sure I was actively looking for good moments each day, even on the hardest days. It’s no coincidence that when I later created the BLISS Daily 3 app, I designed the logo that combines a camera with a heart (or is it a number 3?)—the heart being the cornerstone of my healing journey. The symbol represents how finding hearts in nature during my grief eventually led to the photography-based gratitude practice and finally to the complete BLISS philosophy and approach.

What amazes me, looking back, is how these practices that began as survival mechanisms during my toughest times have become the very tools I now share with others. I didn’t set out to create programs or an app or a coaching method—I was just trying to heal my own heart and find my way back to joy. But those personal healing journeys showed me firsthand how powerful small, consistent practices can be, even when facing life’s biggest challenges.

The techniques I now teach weren’t developed in some clinical setting, although there is plenty of science that supports the practices —they were born from my own healing journey, and my own discovery that even in our darkest moments, we can train ourselves to find glimmers of light if we’re intentional about looking for them.

Have you ever had to pivot?

When 2020 arrived, the pandemic dramatically changed my trajectory. As a physical therapist serving as an essential healthcare worker, I witnessed firsthand how this global crisis stripped away life’s complexities and forced a return to basics. Nobody was living their best life, and many were rediscovering appreciation for the simplest things.

During this time, downloads and usage of my Bliss Daily 3 gratitude app skyrocketed, as people sought tools for focusing on positivity amid uncertainty. This confirmed my belief that gratitude practices become most vital precisely when they feel most difficult.

Though I had never previously considered online learning as a format for my work, the pandemic’s restrictions pushed me to explore new possibilities. I remember sitting at my kitchen table one evening after a particularly exhausting day, thinking about all the people struggling with isolation, anxiety and lack of support. That’s when it clicked—I could create an online program . The pandemic had physically separated us, but I realized there was an opportunity to forge new types of meaningful connections through shared growth and healing. I could teach people the very techniques I had used personally when I was at my lowest point, but now enhanced with all the scientific understanding I had gained to help them feel better during this global crisis.

This unexpected pivot led me to create my ’30 Days of Bliss’ mindset reset as a self-paced online program, transforming my personal experiences and professional knowledge into an accessible program for others navigating challenging times. The process was humbling—I had to learn new technologies, develop different teaching methods, and completely rethink how to convey embodied practices through a screen.

What surprised me most was how this format actually allowed me to reach people who might never have sought in-person coaching. People from across the country, and eventually around the world, began working through the program and sharing how these tools were helping them weather their own storms.

Every technique and strategy I teach in this program is one I’ve personally used and tested in my own life—these aren’t theoretical concepts, but practical tools, proven through science, that helped me navigate my own difficulties and find genuine balance and joy, even during the most challenging circumstances.

This experience taught me that our most significant professional evolutions often come not from careful planning, but from responding authentically to unexpected circumstances, with wisdom we’ve already earned through life. The pandemic pushed me out of my comfort zone, but in doing so, it connected me with a broader community and opened possibilities I hadn’t imagined. Sometimes our greatest obstacles become doorways to our most meaningful work—we just have to be willing to step through them, even when we can’t see clearly what lies on the other side.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.blisswithmac.com
• Instagram: blisswithmac my personal daily gratitude page / blissdaily3 the app IG page for users posts and insipration
• Facebook: BLISS with Mac health Coaching + BLISS Daily 3
• Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/ macarabrachmann
• Youtube: @Blisswithmac

Image Credits

KIM BAJOREK PHOTOGRAPHY