How to access your best performance even when you’re stressed, scared, or feeling like an imposter
The Three Bubble Theory of Emotions 🫧
Here’s what’s happening inside of you all day long.
All day long, your Automatic Brain generates automatic thoughts and feelings.
Thoughts and feelings about what’s going on right now.
Thoughts and feelings about what’s happened in the past.
Thoughts and feelings about what might happen in the future.
All these thoughts and feelings bubble up on their own, whether you want them to or not.
It’s like a spigot of bubbles that never turns off 🫧
And even though you can’t turn this spigot off (nor would you want to)…
You CAN choose how you react to these bubbles as they pop up.
There are three ways you can react to an automatic thought bubble.
Reaction #1: You can enter the bubble
You can believe the automatic thought and feeling 100%.
You can see everything through the lens of that emotion and that belief.
You can let that automatic thought color your view of yourself and the world.
Reaction #2: You can push down the bubble
You might not like the thought and feeling that just popped up.
You might recognize that they’re not helpful to you, or that they’re holding you back.
Or they just might be painful, or embarrassing, or uncomfortable.
So you push the bubble down — but the problem is…
Just like when you try to push a beachball under water…
The bubble pushes back just as hard as you push down.
And suddenly you’re locked in a fruitless fight with yourself.
Reaction #3: You can watch the bubble float by
You’re not entering the bubble and letting it color your view of the world.
You’re also not pushing down the bubble and trying to make it go away.
You’re just letting the bubble be there and watching it float by.
And as you do this, you know, 100%…
That you are not the bubble.
You are the person watching it float on by.
Now what does this have to do with accessing your best performance even when you’re stressed, scared, or feeling like an imposter?
Stress, fear, and imposter syndrome are bubbles passing by 🫧
If you enter the bubble, your entire worldview will become colored by that fight-or-flight emotion.
If you try to push down the bubble, the bubble will push back, and now half your brain is focused on fighting your own emotions instead of on the work in front of you.
But if you can let the bubble float on by…
If you can remember and anchor back to who you really are at your core — that steady, unchanging nature of you…
If you can be the steady watcher, letting the bubble pass on through…
Then you can access your best performance even when there’s a stress bubble in the room with you, or a fear bubble sitting on your desk, or an imposter syndrome bubble perched on your shoulder.
Because that’s where your best performance comes from — from the steady unchanging nature of who you are at your core.
Your best performance comes from the you that you are when your protective mechanisms aren’t activated.
And that’s who the watcher of the bubbles is.
That’s who you’re tapping into when you step back, become the watcher, and let the bubbles float on by.
Putting this idea into practice is what I help my clients do.
Learning the skill of tapping into your highest self, your best performance, your easy, confident flow state…
Not just when it’s easy.
But when it’s challenging. When the stakes are high.
When it’s unintuitive. When the fear monster is wanting to run you off the road.
Being able to tap into your best performance anyway is the single greatest skill you can invest in building.
It’s a skill that pays dividends in every area of your life, forever.
It’s the unlock that unlocks everything else.
So come talk to me, and let’s start building that skill today.
You can swing by anytime for a coffee chat ☕️
No strings attached.
It’s just an opportunity for us to discuss whatever’s on your mind, and brainstorm about how you can find your flow even in the face of your current circumstances.
And if you want more than just one-off problem-solving…
And you’re ready to systematically build this skill, week by week, for life…
Book a consult call and let’s map out a full coaching engagement together.
What my clients have to say…
“Pooja strikes a really strong balance between troubleshooting immediate problems but at the same time, really tying in that there are tools I need to solve all my problems.
And that even though a problem I run into this week is different from a problem I run into next week, you can use the same frameworks to work your way out of it.
Now, I feel like I have a nice tool chest of frameworks and habits that I can rely on that not just change my work life, but also my personal life too.”
—Client | VP at Major Financial Institution
My mission to help every high performer build their career around flow.
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