Quiet Times and Personal Meaning

Tuesday 1July08 9:59am

Today’s podcast (Episode 4) from Dr. Eric Maisel is on Personal Meaning
His podcast is Purpose-Centred Life - A Plan for Authentic Living. His podcasts and others can be found at Personal Life Media

I've been kind of quiet. I seem to be in a big processing mode, processing all the energies and messages flying my way. It's all good. The messages make me think about commitment level and mine in particular.

It's funny how when I look, so many messages can come my way. This morning I watched my kitten Gatsby eyeing my baby girl Zelda. When Zelda gets worn out from Gatsby and all his energy and bites, she goes as high in the apartment as possible because little guy Gatsby can't jump all that well. He's still a little guy at 4 months old and having started his life almost dying twice. He still has breathing issues, he sounds like an asthmatic at times. But that doesn't really stop him.

Anyway, Zelda gets on top of my stacked storage bins that are stacked three high. It's taller than my shelving unit in my kitchen. It's the place she calls peace. It's one of the three places that he can't get at. "Ha ha," she waves down at him, "you can't get me!"
This morning I'm lying in bed taking my time with waking fully, enjoying the moment. It is a holiday after all. I watch Gatsby run in and out of the kitchen just pissed that he can't get at Zelda. He stops at the bins and stares them down. He runs back into the main room, turns and runs at the bins. His little paws clip into the lid of the first bin and he tries to scale up to the second lid. He doesn't quite make it and plops off. Doesn't the little shit keep trying? Doesn't he scale up to the third bin with his little feet clawing the third lid and I swear he was laughing at Zelda and screaming HI! HI!. ha ha.
He flings himself on to the kitchen table and jumps up to the top bin to harrass poor Miss Zelda.

My immediate thought was, "talk about using your individual way to succeed."

Zelda ran off feeling bitter, no doubt, and Gatsby chased after her. When she ditched him by jumping up into the bathroom window he turned on his heels and ran back into the kitchen. By this time I was in there prepping my fruits and smoothies and stuff. I turned to watch him scale all the bins, pull himself on top and lie down! I swear watching little dude is a daily lesson on perseverance. He rocks!

Eric Maisel's podcast on Personal Meaning didn't leave me with many notes. I wrote stuff like:
"You get to decide what meaning is in your Life."
"Make life mean exactly what you want it to mean."
"What does life mean? Whatever I decide it to mean."
"Commit, 'I intend to matter in my own meaningful way'"

Good notes but nothing to blog about. But it's funny that since the last couple of days of listening to that podcast, examples of meaning have been showing up. Like Gatsby.

And I caught a couple shows on Global this morning. You gotta love holiday mornings when the programmers don't know what to put on television and they end up putting on some stellar stuff, sometimes. I caught two episodes of a show about second chances in life. And it's Canadian! One episode was about a woman who has won a woman of distinction award, Kim Beauregard (I think). She was overweight, stagnant in her life, unhappily married. She found her individual way to success. She's run marathons then after an injury started body building, won strongest woman award, became a nurse, is a personal trainer/coach, dog walker. She went from no where to now here, as Wayne Dyer likes to say.

She made a brilliant comment, "Even when you're at the back of the pack, you're still a runner."
Ah Personal Meaning at it's finest.

The other episode was about a woman who was really successful selling cars, Ferrari's, Maserati's and the like, which she loved. She was one of the crew members for her husband who races cars. She was living a pretty good existence. She got back into painting while on maternity leave and realized that her soul had been crying out for it. She worked out a new schedule at work to enable her to have Fridays off to paint and by fluke showed a guy her paintings, who subsequently got on the phone and was able to bring her paintings to a showing in Chicago and sold them all!

In the episode she discusses the struggle of giving up a comfortable job with benefits to the uneasyness of being a painter.
The scary dream of the artist's life rebounds in my head on a daily basis. How do I matter in my own meaningful way?

EY