Do you start your day in a calm or a reactive state? When you go to bed at night? Are you nourished? Or are you depleted? And then during the day, are you scattered? Or are you focused?

Well, those are great questions, particularly, as we address in this particular session, how we develop our inner life, how we respond, you stressfully by thinking rightly with the right perspective toward our inner life, by getting centered, all those questions deal with being centered or not centered. And that's an incredibly important factor in dealing with stress in our life. So, what I want to do in this session is to help you think through the process of getting centered First, I want you to believe that it's an important thing to do. And I want you to have some level of confidence about whether you actually live a life that's centered or not centered. And then I specifically want to go through in our various sessions, how specifically we become centered, how you can get from wherever you might be now to where you want to be. So we're going to, we're going to focus in on this whole area of centeredness, I'm going to help you discover your center now, as much as you can.

And then I'm also going to help you cultivate your center and the sessions will deal with those two particular issues. What I want you to do right now, though, as you think about getting centered is to look at these questions we have on the screen. I'm gonna walk through these. And as we look at them, I want you to think how you would answer them now and then the same question. We'll be in the Resource Center where you can actually work your way through them and answer these questions in the sheet that we'll have available for you there, you can just click off how you feel in these areas. So the clear indicators of not being centered are these.

So look at look at the words here on the screen, look at the sentences and ask yourself the question, am I centered in this way? Or do I have these characteristics of being off center or out of the center? throughout the day, you for instance, take on too many tasks you often multitask or throughout the day, you're reactive, you're checking your phone, you're always tied up and busy with external things. throughout the day. You feel fatigued, too early, and you lose your energy sooner versus later. Throughout the day, you can become impatient and frustrated.

And then in in your mental and emotional state throughout the day. Are you consumed by negative self talk? Are you easily distracted? Unable to focus? Do you ruminate about the past or hold anxiety about the future? Do you get stuck?

Are you high strong? Are you overwhelmed? And then at the end of the day, do you end your workday more depleted? Are you do you struggle with impulse control? Either with sugar or social media or alcohol or snacks or TV or drugs or or shopping or anything? Is it true that you can't remember what you did yesterday or even today?

Do you go to sleep too late or crash too early? Well, if any of these signs sound familiar to you, it's an indication that you're really not centered. So what I'd like for you to do is to think through these and look through these. And for your action step to check out, just check the ones in the Resource Center and the sheet that we have available there, check the ones that indicate where you are now. And if you check it a good number of them, like you may likely do, that's a good indication that you're not as centered as you need to be, and you need to really address this issue of getting centered. Okay, that's your assignment for now.

We'll pick up on this in the next session where we'll start talking about what your center is. And then we'll help you later on in following sessions on how to cultivate and develop your center in an ongoing basis in a way that empowers you in a ways that allows you to deal with stress the right way and Not to become over, overcome with distress, but instead use stressfully. Using all the activity around you by getting centered, so that you are living a life that's full and rich and abundant. Make sense? Okay, go to work. And by By the way, don't forget to be engaged in the Facebook group where we're communicating routinely ask your questions, share your insights, help one another grow as we use this crowd growing crowd coaching crowdsourcing environment, and I'll respond to questions in there as well as some of the rest of our team.

So let's go for it.