Transform Your Life - Just Count Me In

#9 When Life Redirects: Finding Your True Path Through Unexpected Turns

• Sari Stone • Season 1 • Episode 9

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Doubt creeps in just when we feel most certain about our path. That's exactly what happened when I packed my belongings into a small Pinto with a U-Haul attached and set off for Arizona at age 18. I had never been out West but felt an inexplicable pull toward a new life there.

When my car broke down in Colorado, depleting my savings for repairs, I questioned everything. Was this a sign I was on the wrong path? I continued to Arizona only to discover within hours that it wasn't my place after all. Alone, with barely enough money for a week of expenses, I made the pivotal decision to return to Colorado—where I would ultimately spend nearly 30 years of my life.

What looked like obstacles were actually perfect redirections. Like squirrels leaping between tall trees, we need to keep our eyes fixed on where we're going, ignoring the distractions and dangers along the way. When we face challenges in pursuit of our dreams, they aren't necessarily signs we're on the wrong path but opportunities for growth and confirmation.

This pattern appears repeatedly in our lives. A coaching client left a relationship with a narcissist without waiting for another person to come along. Despite holidays alone and moments of doubt, she maintained her connection to deserving love and acceptance. Within months, she met her life partner. Sometimes the unexpected detour—the obstacle in the way—turns out to be the biggest and best redirection possible.

Ready to trust your journey? Try making unfamiliar feelings familiar through daily practice, share your dreams with one trusted person who won't mirror your doubts, surround yourself with people who embody what you're seeking, and consider working with a coach to reprogram limiting beliefs. Remember my 103-year-old stepmom Clara Gee's advice: "Live life with bent knees," ready to pivot when necessary.

Have you faced a moment where life redirected you? I'd love to hear your story. Subscribe, share, and join me—we're all in this together.

Thank you for joining me!

Sari Stone:

Welcome to Just Count Me In a podcast about coming home to yourself and finding your expression, figuring out who exactly you came here to be also known as living your best life. I'm Sari Stone and I'll be your host. So have you ever doubted your path just when you were right in the middle of it? In this episode, I'm going to share my journey. There was an unexpected detour that actually led me exactly to where I was meant to be. Have you ever felt so sure about a decision and then you question everything when obstacles appear? Well, I hope you tune into this episode today because in this episode, I share what I did a couple of times when I faced moments where life completely redirected me. I share my journey of following my intuition, the unexpected turns that led me to the right place, and lessons from my life, as well as one of my coaching clients. It's been a journey and it's been a trip, learning how to overcome fear and trust. The process manifest my best life. But if you're seeking clarity, courage and inspiration, and if you've ever struggled with self-doubt in the middle of what you thought was your chosen flow, check this episode out and please share if you've ever faced a moment where your life was redirected Enjoy. So. Wayne Dyer was once quoted in saying trust in your journey and remain steadfast in your belief. Doubt has no power. Where determination and faith reside, even when nothing seems to indicate that you're accomplishing what you desire in your life, refuse to entertain doubt. Remain steadfast in your life. Refuse to entertain doubt. Remain steadfast in your belief.

Sari Stone:

So I'm looking outside my window, teaching my yoga class this morning, and I see some squirrels and they're just leaping from one tree to the next. They're pretty tall trees, but I noticed that the squirrels just keep their eye on the tree that they're jumping to. They ignore the barking dog next door, they ignore the hawks circling above them. Their eye is on that tree, they know that they're going to go there and they end up on the next tree every time. Okay. So I thought, man, I could take a lesson from these squirrels, because sometimes, when I know what I need to do and when I can feel what I want to do and what I'm meant to do and what I'm supposed to do, when something gets thrown in my path, I get a little diverted, a little bit of doubt creeps in and I think maybe this isn't the right path for me. Maybe this wouldn't have happened if I was in my flow state the way I thought I was, and I might abandon ship before I should. So point in case my trip to Colorado and how I ended up there. Actually, this should be called more like my trip to Arizona and how I ended up in Colorado.

Sari Stone:

So when I was 18, after a year of just not being happy where I lived, I decided completely from a knowing in my soul that I needed to live out West. I had never been out West. I did not research the West there wasn't Google then I just had a feeling about it and I had a feeling that it was going to be Arizona. This was not very logical. My parents were not extremely happy about it, but my mom knew that I need to really follow my heart. She knew me, she got it and they just made sure that my car was safe and I was safe and sent me on my way. I went with a girlfriend and she was excited about going.

Sari Stone:

The other friends that I had that were excited about going kind of fell away as the school year came to a close and we graduated. They ended up deciding that they were going to stay put in their zip code, which I am not knocking. There's nothing wrong with it if that's where you're meant to be. But I could feel that I was meant for something different and I was. So we headed out and we got to Colorado, got as far as Colorado, noticing what a big, beautiful country it was. I mean, I had never been west of Pennsylvania before, I was on the East Coast and I just was in awe of everything, just so excited for my journey. But I knew I was going to end up in Arizona and get my residency and then start school there in January and I just I had my plan and I felt my pull. Well, there were other plans for me on the trajectory that I didn't know about.

Sari Stone:

So when I got to Estes State Park, we were supposed to camp, my girlfriend and I were camping across the country and the rings blew on my pinto. This was a pinto pulling a 4x6 U-Haul not the brightest idea, I know that. But I thought it was going to be okay. And when that happened I was pretty scared. But at least Estes Park was a really nice place and luckily a friend of mine had a brother and sister-in-law. Their family lived in Colorado Springs, so blowing smoke out the car all the way from Estes Park to Colorado Springs and I'm still apologizing to the people who were behind me at that time.

Sari Stone:

I made it, people who were behind me at that time. I made it Okay and was able to stay at their house for five days, which was amazing and kind, and explore a little bit of Colorado, because I didn't really have a car. But they kind of took me around and showed me a few places and this was while my car was being fixed. The man was able to fix it. It did take five days and it took $500, which was my savings. Okay, that was the money that I had for my cushion for when I landed in Arizona to get me a room for a week or two.

Sari Stone:

Then the plan was get a job, waiting tables, make my money and then get going, you know, with my life, root into my life a little bit. So I was pretty scared that that money was gone, but I still felt the pull so I still went. I decided to go. So I thanked the family I was staying with and realized, wow, colorado is really a very, very beautiful place and it felt pretty good there, but I was still going to live in Arizona. So I drove the 12 hours to Arizona, got there and within a few hours I was pretty disappointed is a light word for the way I felt. I can't even come up with actually the right word. I felt like the floor had just been pulled up from under my feet and I was falling down an elevator shaft because Arizona is a great place but it was not my place and I had thought it was going to be my place, and it was a moment. My girlfriend got completely hysterical. She wanted to go home. She had her plane ticket money, so literally I dropped her off at the Phoenix airport.

Sari Stone:

So then I was alone with enough money to get me through about a week of gas and living and no money for when I got there and didn't know what I was going to do but I knew I wasn't going to do it in Arizona so it occurred to me maybe, maybe I can just go stay in Colorado for a little while. It felt pretty good to me there and maybe that was just so much better. Maybe that was where I was supposed to be for a while and as it turned out, I was supposed to be there for a while. I lived there out of my life a total of close to 30 years and I definitely felt that it was a place that I needed to be for most of that time. So if I had just given up and gone back to New Jersey where I grew up, I think I would have missed out on a lot and I didn't know then, to be very honest, I didn't know about manifesting then. I knew about Wayne Dyer and I knew about he was into more like your erroneous zones and getting rid of your conditioning from your parents and all that and very valuable, but not this manifesting, not destiny, none of that. But I knew my pull and I trusted my inner guidance and my mom always supported me with that. To her I'm forever grateful.

Sari Stone:

I also thought of another example where this worked, where somebody that I was coaching took a leap out of her relationship with a narcissist into basically nowhere. She didn't wait for the next person to come along. She didn't wait for anything catastrophic or dramatic to happen. She didn't wait for anything catastrophic or dramatic to happen. She, just after a couple of coaching sessions, she realized that she was better than that and she started to feel the calling of her best life. She kept connecting to Source and just affirming that what she believed, clearing things. She cleared any conflicting beliefs.

Sari Stone:

That happen very often. We have one belief that says I'm going to get into a great relationship, I deserve that. And then you have another belief relationships don't last, or men can't be trusted, or there's some garbage in there that's conflicting with your belief, or you would just be totally. Your life would be a complete reflection of all of your highest and best beliefs. There's something that you need to just clear up and those things will become apparent in your path when you're on the right path. So it didn't mean that she was on the wrong path when she had doubtful moments and it didn't mean that she was on the wrong path when she was alone on Valentine's Day and on her birthday again, she just kept feeling. And when we coached, we just kept connecting her to that feeling and exploring practices to help her stay connected on a daily basis so that she actually became that feeling. That feeling was familiar to her and we made the feeling of love and belonging and acceptance familiar. We know that the brain likes familiar. And, lo and behold, within a few months she literally met the love of her life. They're getting ready to get married next year. I'm just I mean, I get teared up when I even think about it, because she's one of the most beautiful people I've met and I'm just so grateful that she's happy with her life now and she feels fulfilled, because everybody deserves that. Everyone deserves that. Because everybody deserves that. Everyone deserves that. We all deserve to feel the beauty and the freedom that we can only feel when we are being 100% ourselves.

Sari Stone:

So is the fear of failing greater than the risk you take by remaining on the same tree in your life? And how do you want to live your life? Do you want to make choices based on love or as a result of fear? It's easier said than done. I'm still practicing.

Sari Stone:

My stepmom, clara G, was a great example of this, and she was 103, and she told me that she lived her life. She said, sari, live your life with bent knees. Get ready to pivot at any moment when you need to change. Be flexible. And I thought, boy, she really had it. Faith is taking the first step when you can't always see the staircase. And courage isn't about being unafraid. It's about facing your fears and doing what's right in spite of them, and Martin Luther King said that.

Sari Stone:

So if you're at a space in your life where you're feeling the pull and you're feeling connected and you get a little bit spooked when something doesn't go your way, stay the course, feel the pull, cl, climb that rope and keep reaching for your dreams. Just take one step at a time and if you'd like to take those steps together, I would love the opportunity to work with you. If you know a child who would like to take those steps in their life, in whatever form that takes, I would love to work with them in any capacity. And if you know someone who might benefit from hearing this episode, please share it with them, because that's why I do this. We're all in this together.

Sari Stone:

So a couple things you can do to help you in this process. Number one on your own, you need to make familiar the unfamiliar and making this familiar, making the feeling familiar, or the emotion that you feel familiar, or the emotion that you feel, the feeling that you feel in your body associated with the circumstances that you're feeling pulled towards or just getting grounded with yourself. The more that you make that familiar because your brain likes the familiar, your brain will feel safe, and I know Kathy Heller always says that change happens at the speed of safety. So we need to make sure that we're making it familiar so that we do feel safe when we're making the change and we have faith in ourselves. And you can do this even just in five minutes a day of just practicing the feeling, imagining that feeling, listening to a song that puts you in that feeling state, maybe sitting outside or in the shower. You can think about that feeling state, just something that gets you there, something that gets you there, but something that gets you there daily. So that's the commitment part. But it's really not that hard because you love the way this feels, or you wouldn't want to be going there, you wouldn't feel pulled to go there. Another thing you can do that's helped me a lot is I share it with just one person that I trust a lot. And boy, this part is really important.

Sari Stone:

You've got to be very careful who you choose for this, because you'll have some people in your life that are your mirrors, as far as they mirror all of your doubts about yourself. A lot of times it's the people closest to you. Just a warning In my case, I'm very fortunate that I'm married to somebody who I do trust with these very delicate topics and he doesn't mirror all my doubts. He actually calls me out when I'm speaking my doubts, which is good, and that way, when I take a little dip or I feel a little bit off track or I think something's in my way or I'm losing sight of the next tree, the next pole, the next step, the next stage, he reminds me he's very, very patient and he reminds me to let go of it, because your control only goes so far and you can't control just does not take you where you want to go. You've got to let go of things, and when you actually let go, that takes you a lot further than your fake sense of control could ever take you. So scary at times, but definitely worth it.

Sari Stone:

Another thing that I would strongly recommend would be to be around people every single day that are it, whatever that feeling is. So it might not if it's another place. It could be people that love living where they are. If it's a different type of career, it could be people that love their jobs. If those people aren't in your physical proximity, go to a podcast, read a book, listen to an audio book just a few minutes a day, because we become and I tell kids this all the time the five people that we spend the most time with. We become an average of them pretty much, so it's really important to align yourself that inspire you and are at that frequency of living their best lives.

Sari Stone:

Another thing that I would strongly recommend is and it does not need to be me, but get a coach if you possibly can and do the work, Because it does take some work and often but not always often we need coaches to help us or counselors to help us reprogram our subconscious, which runs the show about 90% of the time, and a coach can help us clear up our conflicting beliefs. I don't know where I'd be without the coaches in my life, so, but there are plenty out there, plenty out there to choose from, and I'd say, even if you just do a few sessions, you'll feel something and it will be a shift. I have clients who shifted within three or four sessions, and there were adults that made huge life changes, and so it is definitely possible. I see a coach more often than that, but everybody has their own style and their own budget, so those are just a couple things that I thought I would share with you, and I wish you the best on your journey. I'd love to be part of it, so please, even if it's just listening to this podcast, count me in.

Sari Stone:

I trust in the process of life. Life happens for me, through me and by me. I trust. So I actually learned that the wrong turn ends up being my perfect path. Sometimes the unexpected detour, the obstacle in the way turns out to be the biggest redirection and the best redirection that could have possibly happened for me. I would never have even imagined that could have possibly happened for me. I would never have even imagined. So the key lessons I think from this are that doubt is normal, but I'm working my hardest to not let it make my decisions for me, and setbacks to me are starting more and more to mean redirection instead of failure, as they used to. Trusting my gut is definitely a skill. It's like a muscle and I strengthen it. I use it all the time and it's still a practice. So the more intuitive decision making I make, the more clarity I get with my life's choices, and it helps me to manifest success. The more I trust the process, the more I feel the pull, the more I follow my guidance and the more I just believe, the more I become.

Sari Stone:

So please, if you faced a moment where life redirected you, I would love to hear about it. I would love to hear about it in the chat, and if you enjoyed this episode, please like, subscribe, share and join me. We're all in this together. Thank you for listening. Thank you so much for joining me today. If you like this episode, please let me know. Stop by social media, on Instagram or my Facebook page, just count me in and please leave a comment. If there's anybody that you think could benefit from this episode, please forward it to them, and I look forward to seeing you next time. We're all in this together.