As I prepare for upcoming corporate trainings, I have been reflecting on how, paradoxically, extraordinary results arise from being ordinary. You perform your best when you are being yourself. I love the metaphor of walking across a plank of wood. If you put a plank of wood on the ground that is wide enough to walk across and ask able-bodied people to walk across it, they would have no problem doing so. They would also be able to run, skip, and maybe even cartwheel across it without a second thought. However, if you put that same plank of wood 100 feet in the air with no net underneath it, and then asked people to cross it, they wouldn’t. If anyone tried, they would most likely be crawling or shimmying across it. Their ability to perform would be significantly impaired.

I am using this example to show how fear does not support performance. We perform our best when we don’t feel pressure inside. Another example is getting tongue tied around someone you really look up to or have a crush on. I remember going to lunch with Angus and our mentor Linda Pransky, and Angus asked me afterwards what was wrong with me because I had behaved so awkwardly. I wasn’t myself even with something as simple as conversing over lunch.

We don’t, however, control whether or not we feel pressure. Feelings of stress and overwhelm come and go as part of our human experience, just like every other human feeling. Understanding this, however, is ultimately what allows us to experience less pressure overall.

When I understand that the feelings of anxiety, stress, and pressure come from thought, I relate to my experience differently. I understand that thoughts are transitory so I know my feelings will be as well. If my feelings are going to pass naturally, and I know I am not stuck in them for an eternity, then I am much less bothered and disturbed by  them. I also recognize that no matter how frequently, or for how long, I feel distress that is not my natural state. My natural state is one of love, peace, and equanimity.

When I see this, it doesn’t matter how intense my thought and feeling storm is or how long it takes for it to pass, or how chronically caught up I am in my thinking. Knowing this is not my natural state allows me to simply ride out my discomfort and trust that the innate stabilizing intelligence that is my true nature will set me straight. This takes the ultimate pressure off. I don’t have to worry about my feelings. They will take care of themselves, and I can get on with my life while having them. That is very ordinary, yet many people spend time and energy focusing on and worrying about how they feel or trying to manage how they feel, thinking they need to do that first so they can show up at their best.

Our best is what is — no matter what our emotional state. By allowing ourselves to be present and in the moment, we are being ordinary, and in this state of ordinariness, we give ourselves the best chance of being able to access our creativity, insights, and infinite potential. When we are just being ourselves — not trying to impress or achieve — we don’t have a lot on our mind. We are present, open, and living in the moment. It is in this state of mind that we are most responsive to the deeper wisdom, common sense, and clarity that we are part of.

You are enough exactly as you are. You are not limited to your personal intellect or restricted by your feelings. Thoughts and feelings are part of you, but they are not all of you. You are also the formless energy behind life that is pure potential from which everything is created. This intelligence is you. You are that.

Your essential nature includes the form of you and the formless intelligence behind life. You are particle and wave. This is normal and ordinary. You simply being you gives you the greatest access to your infinite potential. I am sure you have reference points in your life for dropping out of your personal thinking and feeling expansive and connected. This happens all the time. However, we can’t force ourselves to have less on our minds. In allowing what is, we naturally end up with less on our mind more of the time, not all of the time, but more of the time. No one gets to escape being human and having the full range of human emotions and thoughts that goes along with it.

Nonetheless, if you want your best performance — be you. Do what occurs to you. Engage with your inclinations. Show up no matter what is on your mind, and in the simple doing and being yourself, you are likely to drop out of your personal thinking and into the timeless now. There is no magic formula needed for being you. You are already there. There is just the ordinary miracle of your human existence unfolding in time and space and existing beyond time and space.

Albert Einstein said, ‘There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is.” I am in the camp of everything being a miracle. That makes miracles pretty ordinary, and yet still miraculous.

Rohini Ross is passionate about helping people wake up to their true nature. She is a psychotherapist, a transformative coach, and author of Marriage (The Soul-Centered Series Book 1). She has an international coaching practice helping individuals, couples, and professionals embrace all of who they are so they can experience greater levels of wellbeing, resiliency, and success. You can follow Rohini on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, watch her Vlogs with her husband, Angus Ross, and subscribe to her weekly blog on her website, rohiniross.com. Her program The Space: A Global Mastermind for Solopreneurs co-facilitated with Barb Patterson starts February 7th, 2018.