Run with the Horses This Lunar New Year: Coaching Reflections on Purpose
新年快乐 ~ Xīn Nián Kuài Lè!!
Happy New Year (in Chinese)
Prefer to listen? Click play!
Otherwise read on below…
In early 2009, I was living in Korea and my friends and I booked a trip to Beijing, China for the lunar new year.
Our experience there felt SO WILD. We saw fireworks being thrown out of high rise apartment windows while firecrackers cracked beside our feet in dark alleyways down below.
The wind whipped across the ancient stones of the Great Wall in a way I’ll never forget - I remember thinking, “THIS is the coldest I’ve ever been in my whole life,” and it’s still true. That was it. My water bottle froze in my backpack. And we screamed in our photos.
I was totally terrified of all of the armed guards in neat uniforms, standing so straight, all alone - aside from their big guns - in little glass boxes outside of important buildings.
In retrospect, I’m sure my eyes were wide the whole trip - it was absolutely stunning (and sometimes shocking) every time I turned my head.
I also remember thinking, “I could never live here.”
And that, friends, was not true.
A year later I moved to southeast China and the next year my sister and I moved together to… you guessed it, Běijīng.
And if you’re wondering why this turned into a travel blog, I’m coming into the takeaway…
I think during that first trip, I saw a lot. I experienced a lot. I felt a lot. And some of it was unnerving, but also it pulled me in.
That thought was a sort of intuitive message turned upside down by logic.
Truly, the food was incredible. Walking the narrow hútòng alleyways felt like exploring another world. The colors filled my soul. The temples soothed parts of me I didn’t know were unnerved. The big trees lining the streets seemed to cradle me even as we drove by. Speaking Chinese was like singing a mysterious song. There was so much to see, explore, and do. And a whole new me to be there. (Each year I lived abroad feels like a whole separate lifetime to me sometimes).
I just let the hard and scary parts get in the way of the goodness.
The Coaching Connection
I actually see this a lot with coaching clients too — at first, they push away the thing that they want the most.
They tell themselves it could never happen. It couldn’t be.
They tell themselves it’s a fairytale, a dream. For another person, or another lifetime.
They tell themselves they can’t have it or aren’t worthy.
And sometimes - like me in China - at first, they don’t know the thing they’re pushing away is actually there in front of them because it’s for them.
They haven’t (like I hadn’t) learned to tap into that awareness and that calling - the magnetic pull to their path and their truest purpose.
Sometimes life gives us a little taste of what’s to come and it’s up to us to stand up and say we want more.
Sometimes it takes time to come around to it.
And sometimes we need support to uncover the version of ourselves who has the power to claim it, hold it, and become it (Or become it again? if you believe you were born with the calling and the dream but blocks have gotten in they way of you remembering and living it).
Curious what’s holding you back? Take the quiz & see, then keep reading below…
Call to Aligned Action
While I realize this is a very marketer-y term, and in a way, I mean it like that — I actually also mean it quite literally.
If there’s something you know you’ve been pushing away that you want to pull in,
Or you’ve been feeling ready to embody your next version of self - your dream-turned-reality self, your call-answering self,
I would very much love to support you.
Either through my story — by empowering you here,
Or as your coach —
that person who believes in the best version of you so very deeply and reflects her back to you.
The person who listens deeply to what you’re saying and what you’re not saying, and the energy behind them both.
The person who empowers you and walks beside you as you move through who you’ve been and who you are into who you are becoming - the you who you can’t help but be once you let go of everything holding you back. You are her and I’ll make sure you know it, embrace it, and live it.
I’m ready to go.
My Chinese zodiac is the TIGER. I’m ferocious and I take decisive action. And I’ll help you do the same.
This lunar new year, I’m running with the horses.*
Are you coming?
Your future awaits…
If you answered, YES! I’m running with the horses too! Check out my signature 1-on-1 coaching program, Radiant Awakening:
*We’re going into the year of the FIRE HORSE on 2/17/2026 :)
You don’t have to be a horse (zodiac sign) to take advantage for this energy of galloping into the new year and your new self - you can be you. That’s even better. Let’s go!
Double happiness ~ may your new year be filled with abundant happiness!