It’s 1988, I walked out of dance class, down the hall of the studio, stopping in front of the cork board where auditions were posted. Feeling dejected, the thought going on in my head was:
“Is this ever going to happen for me?”
I’d been pursuing a dream to be a professional modern dancer in NYC, and so far, all I’d accomplished was the habit of taking class, going to auditions and working several “day jobs” that weren’t profitable enough to make my ends meet.
I’d been fully committed, “all in”, burned the bridges of other more practical life paths, and for the first time in my life, I doubted my dream.
This is a scary place to be.
Have you ever felt doubt? The kind of doubt that has you questioning your whole reason for being? That’s where I was.
So there I stood, in front of that audition board with waning confidence. I was tired of trying so hard, not knowing when I’d get my break. From a feeling of doubt, I was hoping and wanting so badly to finally be hired as a professional dancer.
Hoping, trying, wanting, efforting, pushing. All of these energies keep us just shy of having the result we’re after.
In my case, I was exhausted because I’d been trying diligently, hoping someone would hire me and feeling as if I was on a merry-go-round, moving fast but going in circles.
I think of hope as a heart suspecting there’s more, imagining a possibility and taking steps toward that possibility, not knowing when or how it’s going to pan out.
Sometimes we know exactly what we want. Other times, we simply have a sense that another experience is available to us — more joy, more freedom, more fulfillment, a different way of working or living — even if we can’t fully name it yet.
Hope keeps that possibility alive. But I also see how easy it is to get stalled in using hope as a strategy for achieving a better life and for avoiding the pain of challenges.
Hope is good. Don’t abandon hope. But hoping, trying, wanting and “throwing spaghetti against the wall” isn’t the bridge that takes you from where you are to where you want to be.
For me, that bridge is coherence.
What Coherence Feels Like
When I use the word coherence, I’m talking about something more embodied than simply telling yourself to believe.
Coherence is certainty and a sense of expectancy.
It’s the sense of knowing and feeling confident that what you deeply want is genuinely available to you. It feels less like something you are reaching toward from a distance and more like something you can begin to live from now.
It is the difference between thinking, I hope this happens for me, and beginning to feel: Yes. I believe this is possible, and I am willing to move toward it.
That doesn’t mean you stop taking action. You still make decisions, take steps, have conversations, try things, make mistakes, and participate fully in creating what you want. The difference is the internal place those actions are coming from.
When I’m acting only from hope, there may still be a question: Will this really work? Is this actually possible for me?
When I’m coherent with what I want, the action has a different quality because it’s supported by belief and expectation.
The Tipping Point
Bring to mind the thing in your life that you deeply care about. The thing that you’ve been doing everything you can do to move it forward, nurture it and bring it into a thriving living breathing form.
Most of us have been conditioned to think and expect that achieving these types of things has to be hard and requires sacrificing something we value, like our health, our sanity, our children’s well being, our savings, etc.
Alternatively, there is a point, a tipping point at which everything seems to click.
Imagine the time saved, the challenges that would be easily solved, the freedom and confidence we’d have if we could master that flow.
Imagine having fulfillment and harmony in your life, your work AND your well being, all at once!
This is what coherence looks like.
It’s the point at which desire, decision and expectation align, the tipping point where nurtured dreams materialize:
- Burning Desire: “I would love this outcome, this result, this experience, this life.”
- Decision: Committed. “I’m doing this thing!”, “I am decided for being this person, for showing up as this person who is living the life I imagine, making the contribution, enjoying the connection and freedom and creativity.”
- Expectation: Inner knowing. “Of course this life is for me.” “I am in love with the idea.” “It’s IN me.” “It is a natural progression of my desire and action.” (Felt with gratitude and certainty, not hubris.)
This is coherence, knowing that the achievement I’m desiring in my heart and seeing in my mind and feeling in my body has already been fulfilled, before the achievement is actually completed.
When our heart, mind and actions align, there’s a calm confidence one feels. THAT is the first evidence of the dream fulfilled.
Coherence is all about embodiment.
Back to 1988 …
As I stood in front of the cork board, perusing the posted auditions, that’s when I saw it. On the audition board there was one audition that beamed at me. It may as well have been in neon. And at that moment, I knew.
Every cell in my body seemed to realign into one vibrant inner beam of certainty. This audition was for a modern dance company, in my favorite location on the planet, with pay and housing, food, and the whole nine yards.
I was staring at my dream.
I went to all three auditions, got the one I wanted, and after that point I worked consistently as a professional dancer until I retired.
My internal energy had gone from hope to coherence. I went from struggling to hired.
Why is This Important to You?
You may have something extraordinary, something truly amazing and life-giving that you want to manifest, share, or serve in your lifetime. And now’s a good time to bring it in.
An action taken from hope, from try, from want, from “make it happen” energy, all lack belief and expectation of success. Think “merry-go-round” results.
The expectation I’m talking about isn’t attachment. It’s an inner combination of relief, calm, ease, a sense of “I’ve already won.”
There’s no need for attachment when you already know in your bones that it’s done. It’s as if you travel into the future, see and feel yourself celebrating and enjoying the fruits of your desire, and then return to the current time knowing that it all worked out.
When our desire, decisions and expectation are aligned, the actions we take are powerful and shorten our path, making our dream an inevitability.
My own mastery of this did not come overnight.
It didn’t come because I learned a few mindset hacks, or because I gathered enough information about the subconscious or how change happens. I’ve learned a great deal over the years, and that knowledge has mattered, but knowledge alone was not what created the deepest change.
What made the difference was having the support in applying what I knew in my daily life.
If you’ve been struggling to break through to a new level of health, connection, impact, wealth, significance, freedom, or creative expression, you could be closer than you think.
If You’re Ready to Move into Greater Coherence
If you recognize yourself somewhere in this — perhaps you know what you want, you’ve already done a great deal of inner work, and you’re beginning to realize that what you need next is not just another piece of information but also support in living what you know — I would love to talk with you.
This fall, I am curating a twelve-month, mastery level experience for ten extraordinary women who are ready for that kind of support: a year of personal partnership with me, structure, application, and embodiment that allow the change you’ve been wanting to become part of how you actually live.
This is not about becoming more worthy of the life you want. It is about becoming more coherent with what you deeply want, and having the right support around you to keep returning to that place when life inevitably pulls you off course.
I’ve opened time on my calendar for women who know they are ready for this kind of work. If that is you, you can choose a time below, and we’ll talk about where you are, what you deeply want, and how this twelve-month experience I’m creating could support you.
