“Step into my office”, your boss tells you.

“You’re leading the next project. It starts tomorrow. Are you up for it?”

“What!!!?”, you say to yourself. Your mind starts screaming with every excuse to get out of this one, but deep down you know you have to jump through this flaming hoop. You’ve never led a project before, but you know you have to put your big boy pants on and accept the challenge. The last thing you want is for your boss to label you as an incompetent loser who never should have been hired in the first place.

“What time do I start”, you say?

Later that night you are tossing and turning in your bed. “Why did I accept that challenge?” Your brain aches in pain because you’ve played out every possible scenario that could possibly go wrong tomorrow. You’re blood boils with self-doubt. All you want to do is take the easy way out and tell your boss you’re not up for the challenge.

So how do you get through it?

Avoid getting in your head by bringing your attention to the present moment. If you are successfully living in the present moment you will be so absorbed with what’s going on in front of you that there will be no extra room for negative thoughts. You will be in the zone connected to your higher self. When you are connected to your higher self you tap into your deepest intelligence. An intelligence that will help guide you through your toughest challenges.

“Take a moment today and purposefully connect with your Higher Self. It is the part of you that is always connected with Source. It is filled with love, compassion and wisdom. It holds no judgment or fear. It is you in your purest form of light.” – Laurel Bleadon-Maffei

The more situational pressure infused in the challenge, the easier it will be for a negative thought to slip in. Even if you’re impressive at staying present you can’t completely put an end to all your thoughts. The less thoughts you have the more Zen you are. In fact, the greatest Zen masters think the very least. The important thing is that you’re fully aware of each negative thought that arises. Pretend that you are a bomb squad detector, but instead of defusing bombs you are defusing negative thoughts. Try to catch every negative thought that comes up and reframe it into a positive one. If you let too many bombs go off (or negative thoughts) you will be out of sync with the timing of your mission, get distracted, and maybe even let the negativity persuade you into giving up on yourself. If you’re already aware of your negative self-talking phrases that usually hinder you, replace your negative self-talk with positive affirmations.

Next, once you’re fully present you must find your intuitive voice and take right action the moment it calls. You can find your intuitive voice by keeping your mind still. Without a still mind you will be disconnected from your intuitive voice and completely lost in thought. Once you’ve discerned between your thinking voice and your intuitive voice you must drown out anything your thinking voice tells you. Your thinking voice will only distract you from completing the challenge on time, while your intuitive voice instinctively knows exactly what needs to be done and when. As the challenge progresses you will begin to feel lazy, tired, and stressed. No matter how powerful these emotions get you mustn’t procrastinate the task at hand. Any time you put off a task you throw off the magical timing of your intuitive voice’s perfect plan. Even if a negative thought tells you the task won’t be completed on time, trust this process. Trust your intuitive voice when it tells you to take action immediately and you will be surprised how everything gets completed with perfect timing.

“Intuition is a very powerful thing, more powerful than intellect.” – Steve Jobs