What's Clogging Up Your Pipes?
What if the real block isn’t out there but in you?
What’s clogging up your pipes?
This was a question recently asked in a group training session by one of my 'guides', Townsend Wardlaw (founder of The Coach’s Operating System).
I can’t tell you how much I’ve learned from him in such a short space of time, and this question really cut through the noise.
In fact, if I’m being honest, it was the one he asked before that really got my attention:
Why aren’t you killing it yet?
But it was asked in a way that carried no judgement, just curiosity.
The person he asked responded in kind, and so began a conversation around the subject of what was getting in the way. Once the conversation got going, something quite profound happened.
Everyone on the call started to open up, including the person who asked the question, Townsend.
Because I’m an empath, I could feel all of it. Everyone’s emotions hitting me at once, on top of my own.
It was all there: the fear, the not feeling good enough, the discomfort with slowing down to accept praise, the need for more, the imposter syndrome. On and on it went, like a never-ending well.
When something’s not flowing, nine times out of ten, it’s not just the external factors. They’ll no doubt play their part, but the ability to see beyond the external, to see past it, over it, and around it, to find ways through, no matter what, requires a certain amount of creativity, optimism, and self-belief. And even then, the flow can still be off.
It makes me think of a rubber hosepipe. You know the ones? You turn it on and a trickle comes out. You spot the kink, straighten it up, and the water flows freely - until another kink forms that you have to find.
It doesn’t matter how long you’ve been doing what you’re doing, or how much experience you have. There are always going to be moments when you’re clogging up your own pipes.
The key is being able to recognise it when it’s happening.
I remember years ago being invited to a Family Constellations weekend by my coach at the time. It was a two-and-a-half-day affair. If you know anything about Family Constellations, you’ll know that’s A LOT. I knew nothing about it, so I arrived on the Friday afternoon oblivious to what was about to happen.
To cut a very long story very short: I wanted to know why things weren’t flowing the way I felt they could be.
Do you want to know the answer I received?
“Because you don’t want to be here. You want to be with your dead husband.”
The truth cut through me like a laser beam. Finally, someone had seen through my bullshit and got to the heart of… well, all of it, really.
Why I worked so much.
Why I made so much time for people who worked with me, but no one else.
Why I burned out so regularly.
On the outside, I looked inspirational, committed, determined.
On the inside, I was just trying to get closer to the one person I wanted to be with but couldn’t, Abram.
It’s all I wanted.
It’s all I ever wanted from the moment he took his last breath.
And that – that - was what was clogging up my pipes.
I was also told that if I carried on the way I was, I’d end up getting my wish in the next one to three years.
It was a very specific timeline.
I don’t know if I’d have ended up dead or not. But I do know this: when you finally see the truth behind what’s holding you back, how you’re getting in your own way, you can’t unsee it.
You might not like it. But when the truth, your truth, is out, it’s like a bright light you can’t fucking hide from, no matter how hard you try.
I didn’t hide.
I went home and did some serious work. On myself. For myself. Often by myself. Talking to Abram, usually with tears streaming down my cheeks, explaining that I loved him. But I didn’t want to die. That I actually wanted to live. To be here, now, in this moment, on this earth. And that meant letting him go, but always loving him.
Apart from his actual death, that period of my life was one of the most difficult things I’ve had to go through. Saying goodbye again. Choosing my life for me and not living it for someone else.
It was tough. And it was also a process.
It was another three years before I left the Abram Wilson charity, and then at least another year of an extended existential crisis, trying to figure out who the fuck I was now I didn’t do this thing in my late husband’s memory.
Doing the work of unclogging your pipes is not for the faint-hearted.
It’s fucking hard.
And uncomfortable.
And messy.
But it’s also the most freeing thing you’ll ever do.
So my question to you (via Townsend Wardlaw) is this:
What’s clogging up your pipes?
Till soon!
Jennie
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