Hi friend — have you ever noticed a recurring number, a song that plays at exactly the right moment, or a chance encounter that feels like more than coincidence?
Carl Jung called these moments synchronicities — events that feel deeply interconnected and purposeful. While some interpret them as messages from the Universe or Spirit, Jung saw them as windows into something larger than our everyday awareness.
Every synchronicity is a nudge. Some confirm you’re on the right path. Others redirect you before you make a misaligned choice.
And when you start recognizing them, something shifts:
You build a deeper trust with Spirit — and with yourself. You stop feeling so alone in your decisions. You notice more signs, not because they weren’t there before, but because you’ve learned to see.
I hope you enjoy my conversation with my friend Laura Gates, executive coach and host of Surrendering to the Signs.
TRANSCRIPT
Welcome everyone. I’m Sherold Barr, a master coach and writer. Today I’m thrilled to interview Laura Gates, an executive coach and spiritual teacher.
I’ve asked Laura if we could talk about her new podcast called Surrendering to the Signs.
Welcome, Laura, thank you so much for being here in conversation with me.
Laura: Thank you, Sherold. I’m delighted to be here, you know, I’m remembering being on your rooftop deck in your home in Portland when I went to the first World Domination Summit. You gathered the 2011 B-school attendees together, and it was so much fun.
When we kind of meet our other kindred spirits along the journey, and encourage each other. And then I took your Smart Women Make Money course. And we’ve followed each other and stayed connected over the years. I’m so delighted to be here with you.
Sherold: We connected and became friends because we realized we both were interested in spirituality - worlds beyond what we see every day in this reality.
Laura is an executive coach and facilitator who has spent decades working with leaders at Fortune 500 companies. She found a commonality that most people feel stuck. I would agree that many people, after working hard in their careers, begin to look for a deeper purpose.
On Surrendering to the Signs, Laura talks with people from all different walks of life about the challenges they’ve faced that have helped them find their purpose and align with their soul’s mission.
Laura travels around the world and has studied with shamans. She has always been immersed in her spiritual practice, but kept these two parts of her life separate until the sudden and unexpected death of her sister three years ago. When she went to her sister’s apartment, Laura found something in that room that she felt was assigned to her. She decided it was time to bridge these worlds and start this podcast. She recently completed the second season of Surrendering to the Signs.
Sherold: I’d love for you to tell everyone about a little bit about why you kept these the corporate and spiritual worlds apart.
Then how you merged them when you got the sign when the day you walked into your sister’s apartment and saw the sign.
3:23 Laura: Why I kept these worlds apart excellent question I would say that it’s interesting because I still have the same world. I’m still doing corporate coaching during the day and retreats and workshops on the weekends or online.
I listen to podcasts on my walk with my dog and it does feel more integrated and yet I still have this very corporate hat on. I felt like if I came out in the world as a spiritual person that there would be some kind of a judgment or criticism of me or it wouldn’t sound like I was professional. But I kept having experiences where people would say, ‘I read your LinkedIn profile and now that I’m meeting you and talking to you I’m realizing there’s this whole other part to you.
I realized I wanted to be a whole person and not these different sides. And so this is my intention to bring the whole me together and express all of me.
4:54 Sherold: What happened when you walked into your sister’s room after she passed? Tell us about the sign that you saw that day.
Laura: Well, obviously, my sister and I had a very close relationship. We were friends. We co-facilitated retreats. We traveled the world. We lived 15 minutes from each other, and we texted several times a day. Her death was quite devastating to me and quite shocking to me and I just will never forget I went into her room and in the middle of the floor was this podcast microphone and a podcast headset. I just knew I had to use them and do my podcast. I had to stop talking about, ‘I’d love to do a podcast…I’d love to write a book… I’d love to talk about these things. Just stop talking, dreaming and thinking and not doing it.
Then I called my ex-husband to tell him about my sister’s passing because he knew her from when we were married. We had not spoken in something like 20 years.
I have been married to my current husband for 23 years now. I am a huge music person.I didn’t listen to music for several years. It wasn’t until someone actually showed me a corporate assessment that’s called the Berkman Assessment.
My ex-husband is a photographer and a graphic designer. We talked about the podcast and things just sort of grew from there. I off handedly mentioned this about the podcast microphone. He said you have to do a podcast, and I’m going to help you.
It all really started with that box in the middle of the room. So it really felt like not only a sign from her, but just like an invitation from her from the other side in a way.
I was doing a team facilitation, and when I got this Berkman assessment, it talked about music. I started listening to music again and it really helped me. I was like, I know for me, music is therapy. Music is medicine and I’m talking all kinds of music not just classical or you know what are those sounds those binaural beats, but like I listen to everything from Eminem to Fleetwood Mac to you name it. I will listen to one song over and over and over — it’s like a it’s like a therapy that works on me until I’m ready for the next song.
I think music is incredible and it’s fascinating that Daniel came into this project. It’s like this intricate weaving because you’ve been talking about starting this podcast for how long.
Well, I started a blog called Surrendering to the Signs in 2012 - 14 years ago, something like that.
Sherold: Tell us about the goal of the podcast because you’ve interviewed some of the corporate executives that you’ve worked with. You’ve said that you wanted people to see themselves in these stories.
Laura:Yes and you know I had I had someone come to me the other day who was doing some work in my home and she said you know, I’m listening to your podcast and I found it so relatable. This is someone who I don’t even know if she finished high school, but it’s really about what is our spiritual nature and how do we tune into that.
The first season was a little bit more focused on trauma that takes us down that path like yours, which was one of those interviews about your trauma of nearly dying on the side of the road in Baja, Mexico and the miracle of an ambulance driving by. I mean, you can’t even make this stuff up.
of a situation or you know why I mean I could feel that about my sister like why did I lose my sister why did this happen instead of this is an ongoing relationship my sister is communicating to me through signs and symbols and how do I interpret those signs how do I interact with that information in a way that is enlivening to me that is supportive to me in my life and my
10:31 Laura: The signs are guideposts on the path. And so it’s not just about oh there’s a sign oh there’s a sign it’s oh there’s a sign and that sign is telling me something and the more that I can see the universe as a participatory experience as opposed to something is happening to me I’m the victim of a situation or you know why I mean I could feel that about my sister like why did I lose my sister why did this happen instead of this is an ongoing relationship my sister is communicating to me through signs and symbols and how do I interpret those signs how do I interact with that information in a way that is enlivening to me that is supportive to me in my life
I think that’s so beautiful.
One of the things that, when you interviewed me, when I was in that trauma nine years ago, I was searching for deeper meaning with my life.
And lo and behold, after that accident and then having these really unusual events perk up, the ambulance that was brand new that was not called to the scene, there was another ambulance called and this one got there sooner and it was being delivered to a hospital up north and it took us back to the hospital sooner.
We didn’t know, but I had internal bleeding at the time, a seatbelt injury. But that whole experience completely changed my life and that’s why I’m interviewing you now. I am very much into this deeper meaning that life has to help people understand more about that.
How do we surrender?
How do we look at acceptance so that we aren’t this, say, victim of a trauma, that we have a choice and that’s really it. So I appreciate that you are helping people find that deeper purpose.
Tell us about the spiritual people you’ve taken courses from, you’ve studied with shamans.
Oh my gosh. Energy healers. And you also have a master’s on this other side in organizational leadership. So tell us first about the people you’ve studied with and then I’ll ask you to, how did you integrate that guidance for these two fields together?
One of the things that I talk about in my podcast is how the teachers find us. And so I had this experience where I really thought I was gonna die on a train in Machu Picchu and a woman came up and did an energy healing on me. This was in 1989 and I didn’t know what energy healing was. I didn’t know what she was doing to me.
I just knew that I thought I was dying and she did some work on me and next thing, she kind of waved her hands around. And next thing you know, I was sat down to sleep on the train and woke up like an hour later, look a completely different person.
And then I returned to New York City and this is on the podcast. I interview my former manager from Citibank. I got a job. I was at Citibank when I left for South America then I came back to Citibank, whole story there. You can listen to that on the podcast.
But she invited me on a retreat in the woods outside of New York City and I went and it wasn’t until years later that I realized who these women were who were leading this meditation retreat because again, I didn’t know anything.
I just thought, oh yeah, I’ll go to a cabin, have some time out. I didn’t know, I really didn’t know anything. I was in my early, my late 20s. And it just happened like that.
Like I, people would show up, people would mention classes or teachers. So I’ve studied with Angeles Arrien who was the author of The Fourfold Way.
She had a one-year training program where you do vision quests in the woods and work with shamanic and indigenous cultures to understand how they operated, how, what tools they would use.
I’ve studied ancestral clearing with John Newton. I’ve walked with aboriginal healers in the middle of the Australian Outback. I’m hoping we’re gonna have the coach who took a group of myself and another group of people with him to the Australian Outback. This is something he does regularly. I’m hoping we’re gonna interview him on the podcast.
I’ve sat with Peruvian shamans. I’ve sat with Mayan shamans. I’ve done a vision quest in a national park over Labor Day weekend, which I would not recommend because I was sitting in a tent thinking I was all up on myself in the woods and suddenly on that holiday day, people are like walking by staring at me like, what is this lady doing?
I’ve done so many trainings. I mean, I could go on and on and on between all the list of people that I have studied with and who’ve gone before.
And I’m so grateful. I have a master’s in intuition medicine from the Academy of Intuition Medicine in Sausalito, California.
I’ve studied energy healing. Last year, I immersed myself in the tool of tarot, which I learned a long time ago because I was very interested in Jungian analysis and dream work and Jung incorporated the tarot into his work.
And so I’ve studied with a guy named Richard Knight who’s out of the UK. I just kind of follow my instincts to what interests me and the teachers who show up and the tools that feel important.
Right now, I’m really working on self-healing. I’m really working on keeping my energy calm, making sure I’m grounded, making sure I’m centered, scanning my physical body of like, where is the stress? Where is the tension? How can I stay calm?
Because we’re in a crazy world right now and my clients need me to be calm because I need to be centered. I need to be rested. I need to be well-fed, all of that. I’m so grateful.
I have a very large great Pyrenees and she needs to be walked a lot. And she’s sort of like my grounding force and she can’t be rushed. You have to be uber patient. A Pyrenees cannot be rushed.
So it’s like, you can’t take your dog out for a quick break. You gotta plan like at least a half an hour every time. So that’s kind of my therapy these days.
Sherold: Have you somewhat integrated since you’ve started this podcast?
How do you integrate it now with this corporate side or is it just a natural flow with you?Yeah, it’s interesting because I feel like the more tools I learn, the less I use.
Laura: It’s like fine-tuning my operating system so that I can really be present and really listen and not project my stuff onto my clients, not make assumptions about them, just really be in the moment with them.
And a lot of what I’m doing is either mirroring back and observing what I see or hear or asking questions to help them deeper their own self-awareness.
For some clients, I’ll occasionally pull a card beforehand and then we’ll get into the conversation and I’ll say, wow, I pulled this card beforehand and it exactly matches what we were talking about.
I don’t do it every time. I intuitively try to feel where people need support.
Sherold: Let’s talk about what are the signs and that, first of all, you said you spent decades developing your own sign language, which I love the whole idea of that.
So for someone who’s never consciously noticed a sign before, what is a sign and where do they start?
Laura: I’m trying to think where this even started for me. I do have one specific event that I remember very clearly.
It probably also was around the time when I was doing Jungian analysis work and paying attention to symbols and dream work and all of that. I think I was trying to hone my intuition and for me, those go hand in hand.
It’s like, signs kind of nudge your intuition to help you provide more information. So I had this one event where I was scheduled to travel to South America, I think it was 1999.
And there was like a huge uprising in Argentina and Buenos Aires and some of the outlying cities and they closed down the banks and there were riots in the streets and it was on the news. And of course my mother calls, she goes, you’re not going to Argentina, right? I’m looking at CNN right now. There’s no way you’re gonna go to Argentina.
And I was like, well, I don’t know. I don’t know. I’m going to another part of the country far away from all of that. I was really trying to figure out what to do because I really wanted to go on this trip. It was all planned.
I wouldn’t be able to get reimbursed. I was sitting at a stoplight on my way home that night. The trip was the following day. I pulled up to a car in front of me and it had my initials LFG and it had my birth year.
And I was like, what are the chances that there’s gonna be a car directly in front of me as I’m kind of asking the universe for guidance? That’s the other part.
I’m actively asking, show me a sign, help me see where I should go or just give me clear insight. And so that to me was like, I’m going. The universe is on my side.
So I knew that I had to fly through Chile to get to Argentina. I assumed, well, if I get to Santiago and it’s really a mess over there, I’ll stay in Santiago or I’ll come home. Like, I won’t be stuck. And it was an incredible trip and I’m so glad I went.
But that was sort of the beginning of, one of the ways I look for signs is I look at license plates. I see my sister’s initials all the time. I see my initials all the time. I see my birth year all the time.
So it’s, for me, that’s kind of like this, you’re on the right path. You’re going in the right direction. Keep going. I feel like I need a lot of reminders to keep going because sometimes I’m like, what’s the point?
Why are we here?
This is crazy, you know? And it’s like, keep going, keep going, you’re going in the right direction. I feel like I have a bit of a cheering squad that shows up in license plates and other signs.
23:03 Sherold: That’s hilarious. So when you ask, are you asking every day? I’m sure you’re asking when you go into a training and things like that, you know, guide me, give me signs or, but how is it that you live your life with the signs?
23:23 Laura: Well, I think it’s sort of always in the background for me of just scanning my environment and paying attention to my environment. Like there are paired hawks that live in my neighborhood. I’m always listening for them, looking for them. I feel very warm, fuzzy feelings when I see them.
It’s not like I walk around all day saying, I need a sign, I need a sign. I think that’s a little overkill, but I will, especially around decision-making. So for example, I had a whole crazy story where I went into a bookstore, a book practically fell off a shelf in my hands and I read the book.
I reached out to the author, and I met with him. And then he said, you know, we’re doing a retreat, and he just happened to be visiting near me.I went to have a one-on-one session with him. Then he’s said, I’m doing a retreat in Hawaii, if you want to come. I wasn’t sure and said, I don’t know, Hawaii.
I was living in San Francisco, so it wasn’t so out of the question, but it was money and time that I wasn’t sure if that was the right thing to do. It was on the Island of Kauai.
I loosely hold the question in my mind, sort of tucked in the back of like, hey, if, and I’ll say things like, not out loud, but in my brain, I’ll say like, please show me an obvious sign of what I’m supposed to do here.
If I’m supposed to go, make it obvious, make it clear.
So I was sitting at my desk, kind of this in the background, just doing my job, not really thinking about it.
And one of my colleagues tapped me on the shoulder and asked me a question and I turn around and I’m in my chair and he’s standing up. I turned around and so I’m eye to eye with his chest and on his t-shirt, it says, Kauai. Okay, I’m going, I booked the ticket, we’re going to Kauai. Like, it’s that obvious.
25:30 Sherold: Well, you know, you call your podcast, you use the word surrendering, which I love. Why did you chose that word rather than using the word following. Surrendering is a big part of a spiritual practice. I surrendered to survive and then, you know, had to put myself in the higher power’s hands to, you know, just to let go because I was not, there was no control. I wasn’t giving up just letting go of control.
26:11 Laura: You know, we live in a culture that does not like that word. It’s the white flag syndrome, I think, you know?
Sherold: Right, I think people think of it as giving up or acquiescing or complying.
Laura: That’s not how I see it. I see it as what you’re describing, which is I am letting go of control because, as I like to say all the time, if I were in charge of my life and, you know, had the game plan for my life, it would have been so boring and predictable because, of course, I’m like everybody else. I want comfort. I want my cozy couch and my Netflix and my cup of tea.
And, you know, life has thrown me all these curve balls that, thank goodness, because it forced me to grow, evolve and learn in ways that I would never have chosen, right?
So I think it’s the idea of surrendering is, okay, my ID may not always be the best idea and my way may not get me where I need to go, so I’m gonna step back and allow this kind of greater wisdom to guide me versus my own will and my own ego that wants a certain outcome because I don’t know where it’s all going.
I’m hoping there’s some greater wisdom that’s greater than my limited little human being perspective.
27:48 Laura: You know lately I’ve been kind of feeling like, and if not, so what? But it makes me feel better throughout my day.
Sherold: So can you tell us just a little bit about season one versus season two? For people who haven’t listened to your podcast, just give us the types of topics you covered and then the direction in the second season.
28:21 Laura: So season one was a lot of what you described, which is the turning points, the inflection points, and in particular, those that have been challenging or traumatic.
We interviewed you, we interviewed Rude, who was given a cancer diagnosis, and while he was a C-suite leader at a leading medical institution, you know, the coincidences of all these things are crazy.
Season two is bringing in more people in both executives as well as coaches and leadership consultants who work with executives.
So again, it’s this idea of bridging these worlds, right? Because the executive leadership world is the world that I live in, that I move in, and yet we’re all human beings. Executives are human beings.
They have kids, they have carpools, they have basketball practice, and I think I’m also trying to humanize people and create those commonalities.
And part of my goal was, hey, I’m having these amazing conversations with people one-on-one behind the scenes. What if we open those up for other people to listen in on?
In Season two, we’re dropping an episode about someone I’ve known for many years who went through a recovery experience. I wanted him to share his story because I don’t think we often hear stories from men in particular outside of an AA meeting on their journey and the originations of why they even started drinking in the first place. He has some amazing spiritual revelations that he had along the way as well.
And so the idea is come on in, have a cup of tea, don’t put us on 10X because we’re gonna play music that’s gonna have a certain feeling and a vibe that we’ve curated for you. And hopefully you’ll be able to listen to into a conversation that you would normally never have access to.
30:36 Sherold: So is there, for anybody listening, is there anything else that you wanna say about surrendering to the signs?
31:01 Laura: Yes, I have done a lot of training but I am a ridiculous learner. Like I just, I’m voracious. I used to be a voracious reader as a kid and now that we can access learning online, I’m just in like three or four classes at a time.
But you don’t have to be like me. You can just ask for a sign and pay attention. It’s really, it sounds ridiculously simple but it really is as simple as that. And you know, you have to overcome your disbelief of like, oh, that’s crazy or that’s not possible or oh, that happens to everybody.
My signs are my signs built on who I am and what my life is about and what’s familiar to me. You’re gonna get your own kind of signs and trust that and be open to it. The main ingredient for doing this is to be open. You don’t even have to really believe in it. Just be open.
32:07 Sherold: I think being open is the best wisdom that’s, you know, because then we’re open to so much more life. We’re gonna live a larger life.
32:18 Laura: I was listening to an interview with Tami Simon of Sounds True yesterday. She was interviewing a gentleman named Richard Rudd who has a system called the Gene Keys, which is sort of an offshoot of a system called Human Design, which I’m a big fan of.
And Tami Simon of Sounds True, she’s very skeptical, but she has all these spiritual people on her podcast. They all published their spiritual books through Sounds True.
Yet she’s very skeptical. And, you know, so not being skeptical doesn’t have to be part of the formula here. Be skeptical. I’m skeptical. You know, I doubt all the time. That’s why I’m asking for signs and confirmation and another confirmation.
Well, for people who want to listen to Surrendering to the Signs, I totally encourage you to listen to Laura’s podcast. You can go to surrenderingtothesigns.com and find the podcast.
It’s, I’ve listened to almost all of it and it has really been an interesting ride to hear these people’s experiences. You can also download Laura’s free ebook at surrenderingtothesigns.com.
Laura: And that is basically the seven keys to surrendering to the signs.
Laura, thanks for your time. It’s been fun talking to you. Thanks so much.
Thank you, Sherold. Lovely to see you.
