In episode I talk with Stephen Sokoler, the founder and CEO of Journey Meditation, a company dedicated to a world where more people meditate! I wanted to talk to Stephen because the inner conversation we need to foster is often forgotten completely. Instead, we focus on our teams, our organizations, our communities...all of the other critical conversations we've discussed in past episodes. But without going inward, the whole thing falls apart.

Meditation is like when an actor goes backstage to freshen their makeup, change costumes, look over the script... In life, we go from role to role without pause...and meditation is a way to step back and let it all chill.

I screwed this episode up! I'll be honest. I've done it before. When you're doing your own field recordings, it's easy to press the record button once, watch it blink, check your levels and then get into the interview. Oops! You actually need to press the button twice! The blinking stops and the seconds counter goes up. I messed up and lost about 30 minutes of sweet, sweet conversation with Stephen. Noticing it during our interview sent a cold chill through my whole body. I  just wasted this man's time, terribly. I had two options. Say nothing and try to "fix it in post" or cop to it and try again. I went for honesty...and since we're friends, Stephen humored me and we started over.

I mention this, not because I love honesty or vulnerability (although I do!) but because you might hear how the conversation with Stephen starts off a little stiff, a little mechanical. We are both *pushing* energy into the system to try to get the energy of the conversation back to where it was!  It's not tremendously noticeable...but you'll hear, once we get to the halfway point, things relax, we find a new thread for the conversation instead of trying to pull back towards the old one, and the conversation finds a more natural tone.

Meditation is like this, too. Being present has a gravity, but we can lose it, drift off to wherever. And we have to "bring ourselves back" in a way that isn't forced or artificial.  In the episode, Stephen and I discover another really interesting point, a connection between meditation and conversation that I hadn't noticed before.  Meditation is about coming back to your center. Recently, I was talking to a facilitator friend of mine who described his role as "holding the center" ...facilitating a great team conversation is about holding that space for real dialogue, open, at the center, and keeping people who drift off from getting too far. We just bring things back, as gently as we can, to the thread and keep things going.

Enjoy the episode! Stephen is a gentle and passionate soul, building an amazing company based on something he truly loves...I learned a lot from this episode, and I hope you do too!

Journey Meditation

Buddhism for Busy People

The Four Core Conversations: Medium Article (coming soon)

The Costs of Burnout

Light Watkins

Sharon Salzberg

Why have a Coach

The benefits of Group Meditation

Open, Explore and Close: The Three Creative Conversations Medium Article (coming soon)

No Good or bad ideas: Episode two with Abby Covert

Stephen's Five MCs (in order mentioned, not ranked)

Biggie Smalls

TuPac

Eminem

Jay-Z

Rakim

Honorable mention:

Chance the Rapper