[Summary for Podcast Episode 1: Getting Started]

Tens of millions of Americans like you—thoughtful, sensitive, book-reading Americans who bought and read Sam Harris’s The End of Faith, Daniel Dennett’s Breaking the Spell, Christopher Hitchens’ God is Not Great and Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion, and who keep books like Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning a perennial bestseller—are looking for a coherent plan to follow as they try to make sense of modern life.

Books like The End of Faith have helped articulate the problem but many people are still looking for answers.

Rick Warren’s The Purpose Driven Life speaks to one America and provides one sort of answer.

I hope that this show will speak to the other America, to those millions of people who want to create a meaningful life based on thoughtful evaluation and self-directed meaning-making.

When you learn how to lead such a life, the following sorts of thing happen.

A creativity coaching client of mine, Jack, an actor, had excellent verbal skills but a poor physical presence on stage.

With my help, he decided that he had to take responsibility for that aspect of his career and invest his daily exercise routine with new meaning, transforming it from a chore into something much more valuable.

Now, when he worked out, he paid less attention to how many reps he was doing and more attention to feeling strong and confident in his own skin.

Jack used “I take responsibility” as his meaning-making mantra and used it to motivate himself to change his stage presence.

This is what I mean by “making meaning.”

You decide that something is important to you and then you take personal responsibility for doing what’s required of you to achieve that goal and to turn that dream into a reality.

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This is a summary of the first episode of the “art of making meaning” podcast series - listen to Episode 1: Getting Started, or other podcasts in the series Your Purpose-Centered Life: A Plan for Authentic Living.

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Eric Maisel, Ph.D. holds Master's degrees in Creative Writing and Counseling, and a Doctorate in Counseling Psychology. He is a California licensed marriage and family therapist, a creativity coach and trainer of creativity coaches, and teaches through lectures, workshops, and teleseminars.

Dr. Maisel is widely regarded as America's foremost creativity coach and has taught thousands of creative and performing artists how to incorporate Ten Zen Second mindfulness techniques into their creativity practice. See his site EricMaisel.com for ebooks and more information on his work.

He is the author of more than thirty books - some titles at right:

Also see more articles by Eric Maisel.

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