I have a friend who gardens. If you walked into her backyard, you’d think you entered botanical gardens. She spends evenings and weekends—literally every spare moment—tending her garden. Yet, despite all her efforts, weeds spring up right in the middle of her masterpiece.

Weeds are a fact of garden life, and of living your dream. Despite your best efforts, weeds will sprout up in your dream garden. If left unattended, the weeds will flourish and choke out the seeds you planted in your horticulture or in your life’s dream. Success cannot be realized unless you tend the garden.

Here are a few facts about weeds:

• Their sole purpose is to soak up all the nutrients to keep them going.

• They have a deep root system. Once they take hold, it’s very difficult to get rid of them.

• They are never as good as what you intended to be in your garden.

This is critical information if you intend to grow fruits of success in your writing, and your life. You have to know what you’re up against, as well as what will extinguish those wild, green leafed monsters.

Weeds in the garden of your life are just like any other type of garden. It takes work to keep your garden healthy. Yes, I do mean that daily commitment to uprooting those unhealthy growths. And it’s challenging. Perhaps even backbreaking, but it’s a lot easier to do it at the first sign of unwanted emotions than to try to exterminate a colony of negative thoughts. They will go on and on forever if you let them.

So how do you weed your garden? Glad you asked. Here are a few tips to help you:

1) You have to be out in the garden to see weeds when they begin to sprout. Rarely is an unwanted growth visible from afar. Get in there. Dig around. See what’s there.

2) Identify the emotional weeds. Some weeds have short roots and can easily be plucked out. Others have roots that are far reaching. Make sure you get it all or it will surely come back.

3) Sometimes, particularly at first, the absence of the weed may leave the ground barren. It looks ugly and dead. PLANT some seeds! Sod it! Plant begonias (I have no idea what those are). The point is, take advantage of the fact that you just gained new ground and plant what YOU want to grow there!

If you deliberately tend your emotional garden, little by little the weeds in your soul will get the message that your garden is not a place for them to thrive and will move on. So take a quick daily assessment of what’s in your garden and pluck out the weeds!

So, what weeds are in your emotional garden? Doubt? Insecurity? Rejection? Do you want them there? So why not pluck them out! I’d love to hear from you. Email me at reba@mybooktherapy.com with your garden stories. I’ll be watching!

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Links to Other Posts: Spring Into Action Part One: Plant Seeds of Success

Reba J. Hoffman is the MBT Member Care Coach. She has a PhD in clinical counseling and is the founder and president of New Hope Institute of Counseling. Reba uses her gift of encouragement to help writers overcome negative emotions so they can live their dream of being a writer. Her works appear in publications such as Running for the Woman’s Soul by Road Runner Sports and The Good Fight by Donna Hicken. She is the author of My Book Therapy’s Dare to Dream, a Writer’s Journal. Contact her at reba@mybooktherapy.com.