(Today is a guest post from Casey Lewis! He’s a regular contributor to this site and is awesome!)

As a dreamer and entrepreneur I tend to go hard.

When there’s rubber on the road I only know how to go one speed. Fast! But I’m learning that the road to chasing a dream isn’t always straight. There’s sharp turns. There’s some winding sections of roadway. There’s some mountains and some areas with speed-bumps and some areas unpaved.

There are some obstacles on this road that are there intentionally to slow you down. They’re there to make you think. And as you’re approaching these obstacles it’s important that you pull your foot off the gas some. If you accelerate and try to navigate the course at the same time you’ll end up in a ditch.

Maybe you have a massive amount of consumer debt and you want to leave your current job to chase a dream. That’s an obstacle you have to carefully and slowly work through. Maybe you’re trying to decide if you can afford to be a stay at home mom. That’s not a decision you go full speed ahead toward without checking for speed bumps.

Maybe you have 2 kids under the age of 5 and your dream would have you out of town 40 weeks out of the year. Don’t accelerate into that dream without caution for the current life stage you’re in.

There are times where this road opens up into a gorgeous stretch of straight, flat, Texas style highway. And when it does, floor it. We have 85mph speed limits down here, it’s okay. But other times there’s some sharp turns to make.

I’ve recently been navigating through some curves in the road. I didn’t slow down. I’ve been trying to keep everything in life, like my relationships, my health, my businesses, and my spiritual walk going the same as if I were on a straight away. I ended up in the ditch.

The ditch forces you to slow down. It forces you to throw up caution and focus on where the road is going. It’s an unpleasant detour on the journey of a dream. When you’re going through a winding stretch of road take your foot off the accelerator. Voluntarily make the decision to slow down or the road, she will do it for you.

(For more great writing from Casey, check out his blog and follow him on Twitter!)