If you can focus on a conversation even while music is playing, you can access flow even when you’re stressed
What does it take to access flow, even when you’re stressed?
What causes you to be able to tap into your best performance, even when you’re worried that you might not know what you’re doing?
Building up your confidence in yourself and your belief in your own capabilities is one part of it, for sure.
But another part of it is attention control.
Because guess what?
You already have confidence in yourself and belief in your own capabilities.
Your brain just tends to forget about that when it’s feeling a lot of fear or imposter syndrome.
Once fear gets sparked, your brain tends to shift its attention to what that fear is saying.
I want you to imagine a parliament in your mind — filled with all different versions of you 🏟️
Fearful You.
Uncertain You.
Confident You.
Capable You.
Playful You.
And many more.
These are all the different versions of you that come out when you’re feeling different emotions.
And they’re all sitting right there in your mind, ready to access whenever you want them.
And I want you to imagine a spotlight, that you can point anywhere you like 🔦
That spotlight is your attention.
And when you shine the spotlight of your attention on any particular version of you…
That version of you gets up and starts telling you its analysis of the situation in front of you and what it thinks you should do next.
Now, your Automatic Brain, because it’s always trying to be helpful and take work off your plate…
Often auto-directs your attention spotlight to the version of you it thinks would be most useful in this situation.
Which means that when your brain detects a potentially threatening or scary situation…
It will go ahead and auto-direct your attention spotlight to Fearful You.
And then Fearful You will get up and loudly start telling you what to do next.
But here’s the thing.
Even while Fearful You is loudly talking…
Confident You still exists in your brain.
Capable You still exists in your brain.
Highly Effective You still exists in your brain.
Which means you can redirect your attention spotlight to one of those versions of you instead.
And then…listen. Listen to what that version of you has to say.
Fearful You might still be talking loudly. That’s okay.
It doesn’t matter if Fearful You is chattering at volume level 50 and Capable You is whispering at volume level 3.
You can focus on a quiet voice even when there’s loud background noise.
You can listen to a conversation even while music is blaring.
You can pay attention to a movie even if someone is chatting next to you.
You can track a soccer ball during a match even if the players are moving around a lot.
You know how to focus your attention on something specific even while lots of stuff is happening in the background.
And this is the same mental muscle that you can use to listen to Capable You even while Fearful You is shouting.
And the more you pick out and listen to the quiet voice of Capable You…
The louder it will get…
The more it will gain steam and reinforce itself…
And the quieter Fearful You will get.
Until the only voice you hear is the one you want.
But even if that transition takes a while, it doesn’t matter.
Because you can focus your attention on the quiet voice, and take your cues from what it has to tell you, for as long as you need to.
This is just one tool, of many, that I teach my clients to help them access flow, no matter what’s going on around them.
And accessing flow anytime is just one part of the equation when it comes to building your career around flow.
You’ve also got to design a career strategy that angles your flow at a high-priority problem that someone will pay you good money to solve…
And tactically navigate your way from where you are right now to where you want to be.
If you want to put all these puzzles pieces together and fully build your career around flow…
Then come talk to me and let’s get started.
What my clients have to say…
“Coaching helped me get up and feel empowered and feel like I could actually change my outcome based on how I thought about things.
I moved from just sitting around in my room overthinking everything and not really taking any action, to having weekly appointments to move things forward, and having someone holding me accountable to getting stuff done.
And that just gave me a lot more self-belief and structure.”
—Client | Communications Consultant turned Lawyer
I help high performers build their careers around flow.
This requires…
Internally, learning how to access your flow no matter what’s going on around you
Externally, designing a career strategy that angles your flow at a high-priority problem that someone will pay you good money to solve
Tactically, navigating the transition from the role you’re in to the role you want
Today’s article focused on #1.
For more writing on all 3 of these, check out my table of contents.
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