Three years ago I wrote THIS ....
It's about having wanted a garden, putting my name down for a local garden plot, and some years later getting to the top of the waiting list, getting my garden and realising I didn't enjoy it or choose to spend my time there.
At the time I wrote it, I was really writing about how we show by our actions and our choices what's really important to us, and that I wasn't choosing the garden.
And at the time, I still loved the idea of having this garden and thought that perhaps it just wasn't the right time for me ... so I went back on the waiting list.
And again at that time, I half suspected that I somehow just preferred being on the waiting list - so I could enjoy the anticipation of the garden and how next time I had it I would be totally at one with it, growing plants to pick to cook for dinner that same day (the way I enjoy it when I'm at my parents, where my dad gardens and there's the vegetables, the orchard, the fruit trees).
Anyway.
Here we are three years on and I got the key back to the gardens and my own little raised bed patch!
And again, I day-dreamed about picking the tomatoes and the herbs and the pak choi and all of it, ready to cook fresh that night for dinner.
Ahhhh AND IT'S SO OBVIOUS, ISN'T IT?
I was setting the wrong goal, asking for the wrong outcome for me, working towards the wrong dream!
I didn't want to garden and grow things.
I wanted to pick the freshest vegetables and salads and herbs and fruit to eat and cook with.
So I gave the key back again and despite being offered a return to the waiting list I said no this time.
At the same time, a part of the communal gardens where I live, was being turned from overgrown bushes into a beautiful space with raised beds, mostly for us all to help ourselves and enjoy the produce - a communal kitchen garden that I see every day when I look out the window.
I love watching it all grow - and I love taking a courgette, a handful of mixed salad leaves, a few tomatoes ... to make dinner.
So be careful what you wish for ...
Or rather, be very specific about what you wish for!
Set a goal for having a garden and no doubt you'll get a garden.
But if you really wanted fresh produce from the garden, well, that's a different goal ...
I've had this happen before - in another, very beautiful way - a different way, a different example but the same principle.
Several years ago, I set a goal, my DREAM to have a house on the beach.
I want to be able to be by the sea more often, to be able to walk out the door and be there on the beach - in my dream especially in winter, where it's empty, a huge beach to walk along, watching the waves and the surf, drinking in that air, hearing that crashing noise of the sea ... just being there and having that on my doorstep.
So there it was - my beach house dream.
I journaled and meditated and kept it in my mind's eye, I could SEE it ... and I changed my passwords so every day I'm typing and retyping 'mybeachhouse'.
And then .... my sister and her family moved from where they were in a smaller house high on the cliffs above the sea to a much larger house right there, round the corner from the beach. They have spare rooms and one of the attic bedrooms I always feel is 'my room'.
I realised that I had it then, I had my 'beach house' by being able to stay with my family where they have room for me - any time really I want and I get to be with people I love too.
Without worrying about keeping a house looked after while I'm not there, without worry at all.
So it might not be 'my' beach house, but then again it is.
It's where I get to go and be on the beach - oh and yes it is exactly the beach of my dreams too. It's where I love to go to walk and write and escape and dream - and chat and laugh and have fun too - how perfect, how much more perfect really than it being just me.
I've realised I need to be specific about what my goals are if I want to achieve them.
I got 'my beach house' - just in a different way than I'd been imagining.
And I got the garden I wanted ... and realised it wasn't the garden in itself that I'd been after - it was the produce from the garden.
I really love these little lessons in being super-clear with myself exactly what it is that I want and dream of and choose to call in and bring to life.
Be very, very specific about what you wish for!