What You Can Learn From A Cat
You CAN learn some amazing lessons from a cat if you just observe.
I’m a cat person. You could also say I’m a dog person having had dogs throughout my life.
But cats really do it for me. Does it say something about me as cats are known to be fickle? I don’t know, I don’t care either, that’s your thought (maybe).
We currently have 3 cats, only 2 are related. We have Bonnie who is a 8 year old tortie and 18 months old Finch, a tabby and white male and his sister Wren, a black and white lovely who has a smudge under her chin which makes her look like she has a permanent smirk on her face!
COMPARISON IS THE THIEF OF JOY
It’s Wren that has really taught me something of late.
She has taught me what it means to be in the present moment. And I mean really be in the present moment.
I’d got up in my head recently about a new program I was drawing up. I knew exactly what I wanted to achieve with the program and I knew exactly what I wanted the participants to achieve.
But I’d started to doubt that a) it was going to be any good; b) anyone would be interested in it and c) how the hell I was going to market it in a genre I had no real clue about.
Then I started to compare it with the other programs I run and the programs I’d run in the past. I compared the content with something from 2 years previously and thought “I’ve already done this why am I doing it again?” “But this is a different genre” I answered myself (does anybody else do this?)
I then started looking at ALL the previous lesson plans and content and started to feel overwhelmed with what I was doing. I was all over the place and couldn’t focus on the task at hand.
Until Wren bounced into the room – quite literally. For a stocky puss she’s incredibly bouncy and fast with it.
I sat back in my chair and looked at her. I have no idea what thought was going through her mind but I watched her, her ears pinned back and eyes wide in excitement as she unleashed the biggest spring ever and then ran out of the room at breakneck speed only to charge back into the room chirping.
She unleashed another spring and disappeared out of the door again this time bouncing back through the door with her back arched and tail in the air. I laughed, watching her create her own fun, no toys in sight. She was living in the moment.
BAM!
She was living in the moment.
She wasn’t worried about anything she was totally present and in the moment of pure fun. Not when dinner would be served, not thinking when to take a nap, not worrying about the mess she’d made earlier after sloshing water over the kitchen floor (she likes to take her water bowl for a walk – whilst it’s full), not worrying about what would happen tomorrow.
She was in the moment.
The insight I had was a realization I was delving into the past comparing what I was doing in the present and worrying about a potential outcome I had conjured up.
Isn’t that amazing? We humans can do this to ourselves with the power of thought to the extent we end up somewhere else in our heads other than where we should be.
Yesterday is history, let it go
Tomorrow is a mystery, we’ll never know
But today?
Today is a gift
That’s why it is called
The Present
Give yourself a gift and be present.