Issue 47 - One Year of Following the Pull

This week marked one year since launching Manifest in Motion.  And I found myself reflecting on everything that has been created and everything that is still being built.  Sometimes you have to stop long enough to actually look at what has manifested around you.  A year ago, there was no journal and book in the works. There was no Walk Club. No Studio to Shore. No conversations about an online community. No brand shoot. No new website taking shape.  There was simply an idea.  A belief about movement.  A vision I couldn’t completely articulate yet.  And a feeling that I was being led toward something.  I didn’t know exactly where it would go. I just kept taking the next step toward what felt aligned.  And throughout this year, every time I moved toward what was building, something else seemed to reveal itself.  An idea.  A person.  An opportunity.  A redirection.  A door opening.  Sometimes, a door closing.  And slowly, something that once existed only inside of me started becoming something I could actually see.

I’ve thought a lot about that this week because I feel like my spiritual relationship has deepened tremendously over this past year. My connection with God, the Universe, Source, whatever word resonates with you, has become less about asking for signs and more about learning to trust the relationship.  To move when I feel the pull.  To listen when something doesn’t feel right.  To trust the redirections as much as the openings.  And to understand that I don’t always need to know where something is taking me in order to take the first step.

This week, I also hopped on a call to talk about the community aspect of Manifest in Motion, what I want it to look like, but more importantly, what I want it to feel like.  Community has always been an incredibly important part of this vision.  There is an energy that forms when you realize you aren’t moving through life alone.  Our stories may look completely different. Our inflection points will be different. One woman may be moving through divorce. Another through loss. Another through a health scare, motherhood, a career change, an identity shift, or simply the knowing that the life she is living no longer fits the person she is becoming.  But there is something powerful about coming together through movement.

Sometimes someone else can see your strength at a moment when you’ve temporarily lost sight of it.  And sometimes you recognize something in another person that reminds you of what is possible for yourself.  We borrow courage from one another.  We remind each other.  We hold a hand out until the other person remembers how to move again.  That is what I want this community to be.  A place to feel guided.  A place to move.  A place to feel inspired and connected.  A place to heal while continuing to create what comes next.  A place to explore spirituality, self-awareness and what movement can become when it is more than something we do for our bodies, when it becomes a way of moving through our lives.

Because if this past year has taught me anything, it’s that you don’t have to know the entire path to begin.  You just have to create movement behind the vision.  When you feel led by God, the Universe, Source, whatever you call that greater intelligence, you take one step.  Then you pay attention.  You receive feedback.  You adjust.  You meet people who help you.  You encounter opportunities that expand you.  Some things don’t work out, and months later you realize they weren’t rejection at all. They were redirection.  Some doors close because you’re supposed to keep walking until you find the one that opens.  Your job isn’t to know every step.  Your job is to keep moving.  And when I look at where I am one year later, I could never have predicted it.  The doors that have opened.  The people I’ve connected with.  The things I’m creating.  The lives that are beginning to move alongside mine.

Even some of the most painful things I’ve lived through look different from where I’m standing now. I can recognize what they gave me.  Depth.  Connection.  Perspective.  Empathy.  And an understanding of what it feels like to desperately need something to hold onto while your life is changing underneath you.

Maybe that’s why building the thing I wish I had during my own divorce feels so surreal.  This week, we reviewed the Manifest in Motion e-commerce experience alongside the final handoff of the informational portion of the website.  Seeing everything together was almost difficult to comprehend.  There are things I have pictured in my mind for months, some for years, and suddenly I was looking at them on a screen… real.  It’s one thing to visualize something.  It’s another thing entirely to watch something that once existed only in your imagination become physical.

And I think that’s one of the most beautiful parts of manifestation that we don’t talk about enough.  We spend so much time focused on the arrival that we can miss the unfolding.  The conversations.  The introductions.  The ideas that arrive in the middle of a walk.  The thing that doesn’t work.  The unexpected opportunity.  The person who appears at exactly the right time.  The version of the vision that keeps expanding because you keep expanding.

And lately, that has made me think about some of my other dreams.  The really big ones.  The ones that have lived quietly inside of me for years.  There is one in particular that I’ve found myself moving toward again.  I’m not ready to share what it is yet.  But what’s interesting is that I’ve reached toward it before.  The difference is that I’m not the same woman reaching for it this time.  The first time, Manifest in Motion didn’t exist.  I hadn’t lived this year.  I hadn’t built what I’m building.  I hadn’t written what I’ve written.  I hadn’t become this version of myself yet.  And maybe that’s another part of manifestation.  Sometimes a dream comes into your consciousness long before you’re meant to understand what role it will play in your life.  Maybe the first attempt isn’t a failure.  Maybe it’s an introduction.  And maybe when a dream keeps returning, the question isn’t:  Why hasn’t this happened yet?  Maybe the question is:  Who have I become since the last time I asked for it?  So one year into Manifest in Motion, I find myself standing in this strange and beautiful intersection between gratitude for what has already manifested and excitement for what I still can’t see.

I don’t know exactly what year two looks like.  And strangely, I don’t want to.  Because if I had been shown everything that would happen in year one when I first started, I probably wouldn’t have believed it anyway.  I’d rather keep doing what this year has taught me to do.  Listen.  Trust.  Move.  Pay attention.  Walk through the doors that open.  Let the closed ones redirect me.  And keep becoming the person capable of holding the vision as it expands.  Because maybe we were never supposed to see the whole path.  Maybe we’re only supposed to trust the pull enough to take the next step.  And then move.  Move.  Manifest.  Become.