It's one thing to get centered. It's another thing to stay centered and go deeper in your centeredness. And that's what I want to address in this particular session. Now, you may not have figured out quite yet what your center is what's on the throne of your life, what or who is your boss or your God. But even even if you're grappling with that, and that's okay to grapple. And again, if you're in our Facebook group, keep bringing up the issues you're grappling with and ask others, how they're addressing this and what's on the throne of their life, what's at the center of their life.

And then ask others and keep doing your research and do a deep dive and meditate and think through this and pray about this, but determine what's at the center of your life. For who's at the center of your life. But in this session, I want to go a little bit deep, deeper and how you cultivate your center. Once you identify it, how do you develop it in a deeper way in a more robust way. So you're actually living at that constant sense of peace and joy, and love and your life. In order to do that, I want to talk about two technologies, one I've addressed before, but I want to readdress a little more in detail on meditation.

The other one is about integration, learning how to integrate those vital areas in your life holistically, and I'm going to give you skillsets on how to do both of these things. So number one, is meditation. Now, meditation, again, there's two types. There's a transcendental meditation that is based on the assumption that we empty our minds. And part of getting center is learning to empty your mind certainly have all the hustle and bustle going on all the technology going around this and just being at peace being Quiet listening being present. That's a whole skill and technology.

And I want you to develop that. So there's great value in that. But there's a second type of meditation I want to focus in on. And that's more of a Hebraic form of meditation we read about in the Old Testament of the Bible, and certainly in the New Testament of the Bible as well and is filling your mind. So instead of emptying your mind, which is a helpful tool to do, I want you to learn also how to fill your mind I want you to fill your mind with the right kind of thoughts. And to help you do that.

It means that you determine the thing that's most important to you, your boss, your center, and you start meditating on that. You fill your thoughts, your mind with thoughts about that. If it is your family, focus in on that and think about how you really focus in on your family and make them special. If it's God, in some form. focus in on God get to know God better, go deeper. You might be a follower of multiple types of religions, but find, find the truth that works in your life and start meditating on that truth.

And you may find after a while that it just doesn't ring true, and it may lead you in another direction, that's fine also. But the point is, you want to be able to fill your mind and meditate on that. Now that type of meditation is the concept of rumination. Again, a cow chewing on her cut, and when you meditate, you chew on a truth over and over again until it gets ultimately disseminated into your entire being, which is what rumination is as a cow chews on her cut. She'll chew on the grass, she'll swallow it into one compartment of her stomach, she'll cough it up, chew on it again, and do that over and over again until it gets disseminated into into her entire being. And that's what you want to do with truth as you meditate particularly on that most important thing in your life.

Your center, what's on your throne. Now three things that helped me meditate number one, as I try to memorize some thoughts, some ideas, some inspiration that will help me think about my center. Secondly, what I try to do then is I try to mull over it, that's the process of ruminating where I chew over it, typically four times a day in the morning, first thing at night before I go to bed around lunch around dinner, but I try to find time just to stop and meditate on a very simple little thought. And then the third thing is I try to master that I try to turn that into a habit. So let it really start to affect not just my thoughts and my actions, but let my emotions become more deeply embedded in that particular truth. So let me give you an example.

I love the George Bernard Shaw quote that says in the right key, you can say anything in the wrong key nothing the only delicate part of life's establishing the key and It's so powerful because it talks about how we develop the right key in relationships. And the fact the matter is, if we're not in the right key, we're never going to have a successful relationship. But I want you to have a successful relationship with the people around you, and be in the right key. And so I'll meditate on that and say, what's the right key? Am I in the right key with my wife and with my family, with my friends, with my associates with the people I work with? Where am I out of key?

Am I bitter toward anyone? Am I frustrated with anyone? Am I not connecting with someone because we're not addressing a conflict and, and I'll meditate on that, where I'm thinking about how it applies to different areas of my life. And and that really helps me then start to get focused on building that truth into my mind which creates a change in my life, you get the point? Well, that's meditation. The second major thing is integration.

Integration is where you get a sense of how you build your life around Those areas that are important. Remember in an earlier session, I talked about the importance of defining success the right way. I call it authentic success. And I maintained it's just not power, prosperity, position, prestige, and pleasure, great things. But it's not just those things. It's more about being complete as a person succeeding in all vital areas of life.

So think of your center and your throne, and then those key areas around your life. It's succeeding holistically, and its contribution. And so I want to give you some tips on that. Now, when most of us think of integrating our life for work life balance, some people call it or a work life harmony. I like when we think about that many times we think of this image that you'll see here of a person lying on the beach, just praying and meditating and ah, everything's at peace, or or this other image of a guy who's like line in a hammock, and he's going, Oh, life is sweet. This is peace.

That's really what work life integration or harmony is all about. But life not really like that. It's more like these two circles. So look at these two bowls. one bowl has the marble at the bottom. And they're sitting there just going, ah, and we think that's what work life integration or balance is all about.

And that's called a static equilibrium. There's no pressure on it. It's just a piece. We think we're just trying to get to that place and we'll be there as rest of our lives. Not you won't. You've got to turn that bowl over on its lid, but the marble on the top where it's starting to fall one way and then the other and it's constantly adjusting, because that's what work life balance is all about, isn't it?

It's where there's constant attention in our lives to move one way or the other. We've got an assignment at work. We have deadlines at work. We have emergencies in our family life. We have our personal development. We have our faith, we have all vital areas of life.

And we need to be intentional about developing those in a proactive and dynamic and powerful way. And I want to show you how to do that. Now, by the way, it's not easy to do it, but I want you to know, we can do it. And we're going to give you some tools on really how to get that done. I want you to look at this image of my friend Michael. He used to be one of my teammates years ago, and we were dealing with this whole area of work, work life integration.

And I said, Michael, can you create a picture dress up like a guy who's conflicted by all the areas you need to live in and you'll see this picture of him here. You know, he's got sports, he's got work, he's got financial issues, he's got families got his personal growth, sports, again, all sorts of things. And this is kind of the way our life is. So the question is, how do we develop healthy, proper work life integration, I simply want to give you four steps. Now here are the steps Number one, I do this with all my clients. Number one, I want you to think about doing this weekly starting this week.

Number one, I want you to develop your balance wheel. Now you'll see this on the screen, the balance wheel has, it's basically to be balanced. And you'll see seven spokes and they stand for what I call my seven F's. The areas that I try to be integrated in and have my coaches or mentees develop in. And those are faith, fitness, family, friends, finances, firm and fun seven areas. And you notice each one of those folks represents one of them.

And once a week, I do this on a Sunday and I have my my team do the same thing. I say put a checkmark on where you are in each one of the spokes are you the closer to the hub is a zero closer to the rim is a 10 Are you two are you eight. How do you feel right now? How are you doing in the area of your faith? Are you a two Three, six and eight, what terrible are horrible. And then what about in the area of your fitness, mental emotional, physical fitness, and then about your family and then your friends and so on all the way through firm is basically your work.

So notice it's just one of the seven areas, because we live in an integrated life. And, and based on that, once you've done your hash marks, then you simply connect the lines and you see if you have a very small tire, or you'll see if you have a lopsided tire that's flat and going somebody somebody, somebody maybe like your life, or you see if you're really running on all batteries pretty well. Now, there's not a right or wrong, this is simply a gut sense of where you are. Number one, the second thing you do is you you list your critical activities, list your critical activities for the coming week based on what you just did. In your faith and your fitness and your family and the all seven areas. Just list one or at least one critical activity.

In each one, so you're giving intentionality to every area of your life, you're intentionally creating harmony. So give intentionality, each one of those areas of your life. And right right think write those down. And then the third thing you do is you force rank your list. Now, when you force rank your list, you may have seven if you only do one in each of the seven, or you may have 10, or 12. Listed I often do, because I'll have more than one in some areas.

But these are the things that I consider critical just that week. And then force ranking means you start with number one is the most important one. Is your date with your spouse more important or less than finishing a report at work, that kind of thing. So you force yourself to force rank them and you do all seven or 10 or 12, whatever number you have one through whatever. And a way to help you with this is ask yourself the question, Where is there been past neglect and where is their present need? And as you answer those two questions that may give you a sense on which one's more important than other ones, and it will be fluctuating all the time.

And then the fourth area is where you schedule your priority. So you start with number one, and you write it into your schedule number two, and you write that into your schedule number three, you write that into your schedule, you basically schedule your priorities versus trying to prioritize your schedule like so many of us often do. Well, you get the point. This is the process of integration. Now, I know you may have a lot of questions about this, we're going to again, open this up in the Facebook group. And if you're part of that, ask those questions we'll respond to them.

Many of you who've done this with me before will be able to respond but let's learn and grow together and, and and I'll I'll even create some live videos that will help you understand this a little bit better in our group. Bottom line is what you want to do is give intentionality to the vital areas of your life. weak. Because if you don't, your life can implode because of unintentional maintenance oversight. You're just not maintaining the things that are important. And then one day you'll wake up, and you'll say, Oh, I messed up, or there may be maybe there's a catastrophe relationally or financially or at work.

And at the end of your life, you'll say, oh, if I could only have lived my life over again, I would have done things different. The key is to be intentional. So meditation, and life integration, work life integration. Those are the two skills I want you to work on in this session. work through this process both of these before you go to the next video. And then as you work through it, start to turn this into a way of life so it becomes a real in your life and you start to become transformed by these principles.