My dogwood tree has bloomed, spring is in full swing. Yeah! I enjoy gardening and getting my hands into the earth. Soon, it will be time to water the garden. I find it peaceful, cathartic, when watering the garden. I go off into a blissful place while standing there. I hear the water gently showering the plants, the birds chirping away. I’m filled with the sweet scent of warm moist earth as a squirrel scurries across the top of the fence. All is well. I take a few steps further into the garden and, ugh…resistance jolts me out of my happy place. The flow of water is cut off. There’s a kink in the hose! Has this ever happened to you?

I was thinking about how often we kink the hose of our dreams. You know. That feeling deep within that yearns for something more. You may not know exactly what that something is or, like me, you may realize you want your life to take an entirely new direction. Visualizing – daydreaming – we see ourselves in this beautiful dream and, more importantly, we experience how good it feels to live it. We feel lighter, more carefree. And then, we get all tangled up in how we’ll make this happen. This, my dears, is the kink in the hose. We stop the flow of our dreams with all kinds of worse case scenarios, we ‘but’ ourselves back to what we perceive as our reality – but I don’t have enough money, time, education, you name it. Been there, done that! How about you?

Just like gardening, watering and cultivating our dreams matters and we can undo the kink in the hose. We can allow our dreams to flow. Negative thoughts are likely to pop up, nonetheless we can turn them on their heads, turn them to our advantage. They are after all just thoughts and we can choose what we think. When I first thought about shifting my career to life coaching and personal growth work, “who do you think you are?” put a big kink in the hose. This thought was a life long companion that kept me safely inside my comfort zone for years. Of course, within the comfort zone nothing new grows. When I flipped that around to “why not me?” I allowed possibilities to flow freely and, wonderfully, life began to move in that direction. The universe does conspire to make our dreams reality…we just need to go with the flow.

When I reflect on my life, I am filled with gratitude and appreciation for all the dreams fulfilled up until now – love and marriage, raising three beautiful and loving children, being surrounded with an amazing circle of friends, travel, education, spiritual growth, even buying a little cottage of my own to name a few. And, those things we perceive as negative are also part of the dream. I’d certainly never dreamed of divorce yet it was a necessary part of my journey to where I am today. I’ve learned to go with the flow.

Henry Ford said, “Whether you think you can or you can’t, you’re right.” We believe what we tell ourselves. Are you putting a kink in the hose of your dreams? Are you resisting what you feel deeply because you can’t quite figure out how? Try believing you can, turn those limiting thoughts upside down, and see what happens when you undo the kink in the hose and go with the flow.