White horses and the power of intention

I just returned from a sublime week in California, wrapping up my Master Coach training with Martha Beck herself.  It was beyond special.  I've had difficulty figuring out how to describe the experience with words. There was a convergence of beauty and energy of place, people, horses and nature.  There was a collective intention to learn, love and share.  I am beyond honored to be called a Master Coach, and of course I'm still learning and always will be. While I was working on my application for the Master Coach program back in March, I created a super-quick vision board one morning.  It looked like this:

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My favorite part of it was this woman draped in filmy orange fabric, a beautiful white horse behind her, its eyes peacefully closed.  This was my intention for the horse coaching that I knew would come at the end of our training.  At that point I just wanted to survive the horse coaching.  I didn't know too much about it except that you couldn't hide anything from a horse.  I had a crazy idea that the horses would gaze deep into my soul, find me wanting, and ignore me or run away.  So this image , which I gazed at for many months leading up to my horse experience, well, it was there to comfort me.  Maybe I would be like gauzy-dress-woman and a white horse would follow me.  Peaceful.  (I ignored the reality that the horse was probably blinking from the wind machine that had the model's hair going all crazy like that.)

So, the months went on.  I completed myriad assignments. I received helpful feedback.  I cried some.  I hid some.  I stepped out some.  I tried all kinds of crazy ideas.  I took some risks.  I did my best to be present and to show up.  And finally, the time came to show up in person at Martha's ranch.

I arrived just a little bit early with Erin, a fellow Master-Coach-to-be who was familiar with the ranch and the horses, as she's an expert Equus coach. (Thank you, Universe, for making those arrangements!)  We had time to go see the beautiful labyrinth, which meant walking through a fenced area with horses.  Two white horses!

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So there I was.  Me and a white horse.  No boundaries between us.  Plenty of room for it to ignore me and stay far away, disappointed with my lack-luster soul.

Ah, but that's not what happened.  No.  This horse came right up to me.  Snuffled my face with his sweet velvety nose.  Exhaled his grassy breath onto my cheek.  (How had I never had that incredible experience before?)  We took a selfie together.  Erin said it appeared that he was very agreeably posing with me.

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Wow.  We hadn't even gotten to the horse coaching day and my vision had come true, minus orange see-through dress and wind machine.

Now I see white horses everywhere.  I saw this beautiful one yesterday.

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I bet he dresses up like a unicorn for Halloween!

I saw a spotted white and tan horse today, but didn't take a picture.  I'm seeing them everywhere, in catalogs, in paintings. Nearly every day, a white horse.  For now, they're talismans of what's possible, just like it said in the appropriately orange words I glued across gauzy-girl's waist.  "Think what's possible." So much is possible.  Me.  A master coach.  Hanging out for a weekend with Martha, Koelle, Jennifer, Bridgette.  And my wonderful Master Coach cohort. Learning.  Teaching.  Sharing.  Being.

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So much is possible.

Vision boards help  me with my intentions.  They provide images for me to connect with, perhaps even on a subconscious level.  And they are so much fun! If you're in the New Orleans area and love vision boards and wigs and dancing, it's still not too late to sign up for WIGS and WIGS this Thursday, November 14.  Who knows what you might put on your board that may come true in the best way? Intention is a powerful tool.

And if you see a white horse, please say hello for me!

Manifesting Madonna

Have you ever heard of a vision board?  It’s like a collage – a visual representation of what you’d like to have happen in the future.  It’s a fun way to articulate your goals or dreams, and strangely, once you put it out there in words and pictures, circumstances begin to align to allow your dreams to actually happen! Some people might call it magic, or harnessing the energy of the universe or angels – but it’s really quite practical.   It’s just like when you learn a new vocabulary word – one you never even knew existed, and then you see it everywhere.  You won’t notice something until you put your attention toward it.

I like to play with vision boards.  I like thinking about what I want and then finding the words and images to go with my vision.  So about six months ago, I made a vision board about my business.  And one of the images I put on it was Madonna.  She was in dark glasses and red lipstick.  She looked confident and composed.  She’s Madonna, after all!  I put her on the board because I wanted to channel Madonna’s fearless energy, her willingness to push boundaries, her total comfort in her own skin.  Madonna is a badass.  And I admire her for that.

A couple of days after I made the vision board I read somewhere that Madonna was coming to New Orleans in October.  And I thought, “Huh.  Maybe I can manifest some Madonna tickets too.  Wouldn’t that be cool if I end up at the Madonna concert in October?  Then I’ll really believe in this vision boarding stuff!”  And then I looked up the prices and thought, “No way.”  And I forgot about it for the summer.

October came.  And nothing.  Oh well.  Then the night before the concert, I was having cocktails with a dear friend and she mentioned a friend of hers was trying to get rid of Madonna tickets. My ears perked right up – Madonna tickets?  Say more!  Did my friend want to ask about them?  Did she want to go?  Yes and yes.  So she texted and asked if the tickets were still available.  We continued to sip cocktails and snack and chat while we waited about 45 minutes to hear back.

Yes – they were ours!  I thought, “Why not?”  I never, ever, ever buy big arena concert tickets – the last arena show I saw was the Grateful Dead in 1990 or so and before that maybe Peter Gabriel in 1987.  Seemed it was time to go ahead and go for it.  I told my friend my cool vision boarding story.  How I’d manifested Madonna.

She said, “That’s not manifesting.  You still have to pay for the tickets!”  And I said, “Hmm, that’s true.”  And then I checked my phone.  And about ten minutes after she had asked for the tickets from her friend, I’d received a PayPal payment for a class that had already begun the night before, from someone I’d never heard of – exactly enough to cover the tickets and a drink and food too!  This felt like free money because the class was already going, new person or not .  I thought, “Wow – the universe really is sending me a wink!”

It gets crazier.  Unusual circumstances led to my friend not being able to go to the concert.  So now – should I go alone?  Hmmm.  I went ahead and went.  And I ended up sitting next to an old friend who I hadn’t seen ages! What are the chances of our tickets being near each other? And because Madonna didn’t come on stage until about 10:30 p.m. when the tickets said 8 p.m., it was good that my original friend wasn’t able to come – she would not have been happy waiting around for 2.5 hours!  Somehow we heard through the grapevine that Madonna would be coming on very late, so we just settled in, relaxed, and people-watched.

Then, finally, Madonna.  She still has it.  She’s still pushing the envelope.  We sometimes forget when we’re recalling the lace and the perky songs about stars and holidays that she’s always done some pretty edgy stuff and stretched her audiences past their comfort zone.  This show was no exception.   There was so much to see, so much to process – it was quite a spectacle! She's definitely still a badass.

You can call this whole set of circumstances coincidence or luck or whatever.  I know that.  But I love this story, and I love my vision board, and I love that I manifested Madonna!  And I love that I can be open to great fun and amazing possibilities every day.

How about you?  What do you dream of?  Let me know what’s on your vision board, and if you have a great “manifesting” story, please share it in the comments! And enjoy the slide show of the concert and the fabulous outfits people wore to celebrate!

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WIGS and WIGS!

What do you get when you mix a group of smart amazing women in fabulous wigs , a great venue with scores of wines to sample, a bunch of magazines at the ready for vision boarding, a limo and a club playing exclusively 80s music?  You get WIGS and WIGS night! I'm not sure exactly when I dreamed up this night.  I imagined the whole thing in my head months ago. And then last week I manifested it in the flesh with a bunch of fantastic girlfriends.

In the land of coaching, WIGS are Wildly Improbable Goals - those ones you would love to achieve but they seem like almost too much to ask - like relocating to Italy, or hiking the Appalachian trail, or writing an Oscar-winning screenplay, or just whatever you want that you don't have yet and it seems like it might be kind of complicated to do it or get it.

One way to articulate your WIGS is to create a vision board - a bunch of words and images that represent your goal and the feeling state you'll have when you accomplish it.  And when I learned that these goals were called WIGS, I just imagined in my head a bunch of women in wigs working on vision boards of their WIGS and then going out 80s dancing - because part of the fun of making vision boards is to release attachment to the outcome, and what better way to do this than go out dancing to Madonna, Duran Duran, Talking Heads and Michael Jackson?  Oh, and did I mention the limo?

We started the evening at W.I.N.O - the Wine Institute of New Orleans.  I love this place because it's self-serve wine tasting - you use a card to sample tastes of wine in specially climate-controlled dispensers - it's like wine vending machines!

We chatted and ate and made our vision boards, then hopped in the limo, shared our goals, toasted with champagne and headed out to dance at One Eyed Jack's, where they have an excellent DJ and dancers and they screen 80s movies and videos all night long. And oh my goodness, did we dance!  What is it about music from the 1980s?

We had such a fabulous time- and I'll be doing WIGS and WIGS nights again, plus more cool, creative events to help us all live our wild and precious lives.  If you're a woman living in the New Orleans area and want to make sure you don't miss out on the fun, sign up here and I'll put you on a special NOLA email list to keep you posted about upcoming exciting, relaxing, rejuvenating and fabulous events I dream up! (And of course I will not share your email or do anything spammy.)

I love living my wild and precious life by taking beautiful walks in nature, and I also love living it by dancing the night away! What have you been doing lately to live your wild and precious life?