Your ability to successfully manage challenges far out weigh your ability to feel nervous. Yet, sometimes in the hours, days or weeks leading up to a situation that you believe will test your limits, you might notice yourself being nervous. Your thoughts of—“What if I say something stupid? What If I fail, I will be the laughing stock, etc.” flow through your mind in a steady stream.

While you may have previously regarded yourself as competent in all that lies ahead, you might find yourself creating self-doubt. You may become increasingly worked up, until the moment of truth arrives and you discover that your worry was all for nothing.

You are stronger and more capable than you believe yourself to be. Anxiety is not rational in nature, which means you cannot work through it using logic as your only tool. Reason can help you recognize the relative futility of unwarranted thoughts. Patterns of thought and activity that redirect your attention to a practical solution is empowering and changes your circumstances.

It is difficult to focus on two distinct thoughts or emotions at once, and you can use this natural human limitation to your advantage to stay centered in the period leading up to a perceived tricky experience. When you concentrate on something unrelated to your fears—such as deep breathing, visualizing success, pleasurable pursuits, or exercise—anxiety dissipates naturally. Meditation is a powerful strategy as it provides a means to ground yourself in the moment.

The emotional flare-up you create before you are set to embark on a challenging experience is often a mixture of both excitement and fear. When you take steps to eliminate the fear, you will more fully enjoy the excitement. Though you may find it difficult to avoid getting worked up, your awareness of your thoughts that create your feelings will help you return to your center and accept that few hurdles you will face will be as high as they seem at first glance.

Your thoughts are powerful forces in the creation of your experiences in life. Thoughts are energy. Energy has impact in ways we do not foresee. Feelings follow thoughts. Thoughts precede feelings.

“Every choice we make, every thought and feeling we have, is an act of power that has biological, environmental, social, personal and global consequences.” --Caroline Myss

You can monitor your thoughts and hear yourself in the middle of investing your energy. Are you investing energy on negative and self-limiting thoughts? Or are you focusing your thoughts on the infinite possibilities of the present. Taking a deep breath will help you center your thoughts on being in the moment right now. Regular meditation allows you to gain mastery over your mind so that you can still your thoughts to focus on the richness of being. If you dwell on the past or the future, you will miss the experience of living in the present moment. Setting and visualizing goals is wonderful, but you can bring your thoughts into your current experience by taking steps to create them now.

Your mind is a powerful tool that you can harness to create your reality. Through thoughts you move the unformed energy of the universe into form, which gives you direction for your words and actions. Each thought is like a pebble dropped into water, sending ripples out into your world to affect all you touch. You can choose your focus and how you invest your energy, which gives you the power to design your life to be whatever you choose in each and every moment.