Each time you’re faced with a logjam of tasks that seem far beyond your mortal abilities to resolve in the allotted time, here’s what to do. First, whittle these logs down to manageable size by writing each one out on a pad of paper. This act will also help you untangle some of your own tangled feelings about the jam you’re in. Just forget their order of importance for now. That will become clear later. Just get each pending task down on paper. Besides, your priorities can only be as clear as your thinking, so making this list helps to clarify both. Another benefit of your list is that it will keep confusion out of the picture, and confusion is to anxiety what wind is to a dust-devil.

Once you have your list of tasks written down on paper, place a star next to number one on your list. Then Do It! What does this mean? Exactly what it says!

Take number one on your list and just get that one thing done. Consciously refuse to entertain any other thoughts that push themselves into your mind with images of impossibility. It is possible to do one thing at a time. And it is possible to successfully complete one thing at a time, and to do that one thing to the very best of your ability. Then . . . move onto the next task at hand: Number two. Follow the same winning procedure as you did with number one! Then do number three, and so on, and so on, until all is done.

The main lesson here is that it only becomes impossible to succeed when you try to deal with what isn’t in your power. There are renegade parts of you that want you to waste your powers dealing with them. Your misguided attention to their punishing presence gives them a life they wouldn’t have without tricking you into giving them one. This means you don’t need power to deal with what’s been defeating you, only the Higher Understanding it takes to consciously dismiss it from your inner life. You have that power Now. Start using it.

Work with this exercise. Use its instructions. Get one thing done, one thing at a time, all the way down your list . . . whatever it may be. Proceed in spite of any thoughts or feelings that would have you believe you can’t. Just behind your certainty that your “list” is too much for you, lies a new and conscious capability to proceed one step at a time — to accomplish one task at a time — to your satisfaction.

Special Summary:
The most beautiful tapestry in the world
begins and ends with but one
of a hundred thousand threads.