It is mid-April and there is a blizzard howling outside. There are buds on the trees, but now they are covered with a veneer of ice and snow. Spring has been blocked. Temporarily, I am sure, but it doesn’t feel that way today.

Spring is the time of renewal and freshness, when the creative force is strong in the earth. There are times when you need to come up with new and fresh ideas, and you wish they would spring from you like new growth, unstoppable and abundant. But the ideas, like spring, are blocked. They won’t come because they can’t.

When you are under pressure and you feel blocked from your own creative flow of ideas, there is only one thing you can do: relax. Why is that the best advice, when it feels like the most impossible advice to follow? Because it’s the only thing you can do to allow that flow to spring up again, with abundance. Just like there is nothing to be done about the weather outside – winter has blocked the progress of spring, for the weekend at least, and no amount of work or wishing will change that. But if I just relax and let the blizzard pass, focusing my attention on things that are blizzard-friendly, I can relax into what the day is actually bringing instead of what I wish I had to work with.

When our conscious mind has a problem, it clues the sub-conscious mind into the fact that it may need some help. The sub-conscious doesn’t do anything for the moment, it just sits and mulls over the information without you even being aware. Then, when you’re so relaxed that the sub-conscious mind can be heard above the chatter of your normal conscious awareness, when you’re in the shower or about to fall asleep, for instance, the sub-conscious mind presents the solution to the problem that you couldn’t figure out earlier. Even when you were thinking as hard as you could.

So stop pushing to change what is, and focus on what can be done right now. Do whatever it is that you can relax into, going with the flow of what today has brought you. As soon as you can, take time to relax in the way that is best for you, and allow yourself to let go of whatever creative problem you’re trying to solve. Give yourself permission to let your mind wander. If you trust the process, the solution will present itself to you when you least expect it, or more likely, as soon as you stop expecting it.