Women Branching Out: Sarah Wagner Yost

Life Coach Sarah Wagner Yost talks about working and thriving in your heart-based business alongside all kinds of shiny objects and distractions.

Shiny Object Project School

Starts October 20, 2011
Sarah’s Shiny Object Project School is an online course with coaching options to help you quit running in circles and get your stuff done. You can take the course by yourself or with a partner and add on supplemental email and/or one-on-one coaching. Details here.

Shiny Object School

Shiny Object School offers free resources including: Shiny Object Syndrome (S.O.S) Rescue Mission, Accountability Day, and Call Your Life Coach to help you finishing projects and ship them.

Sarah Wagner Yost is a Martha Beck Certified Life Coach. She was a massage therapist for 13 years, is a Shambhava School of Yoga certified yoga and meditation teacher.

What a Cow Means

The Girl Effect: Sanchita and What a Cow Means

“Given the chance, girls are uniquely capable of investing in their communities and making their lives, and the lives of their brothers, sisters and communities, better. This is the ripple effect that happens when girls are given the support to realise their full potential. This is the Girl Effect.” – Girl Effect

Please watch this short video about Sanchita who lives in Bangladesh.

Like Sanchita, I was a girl with a cow. My cow’s name was Ginger. She was a brown-eyed Hereford with a large upside down heart on the side of her neck.

My dad let me pick her out myself. He wanted me to know what it was like to be responsible and take care of animals.

As much time as I put in on the family farm, summers spent staring down long rows of hay bales, hours hoeing corn and stacking wood, springs watching for Ginger’s newest calf, I knew this was not all my life would be.

When I turned 19 and headed off the college, Ginger would be sold and the money would go toward a portion of my tuition bill.

For me Ginger meant I was one step closer to being the first person on my father’s side of the family to graduate from college.

For Sanchita a $60 cow means milk to be sold to provide for her family, pay for her brother’s education and save for her future.


For a minute just stop and think about what a cow means to you. Think about that last burger you ate, think about that leather jacket in your closet and think about the absurdity of Where’s the Beef?

One cow, one single cow can change the trajectory of a girl’s life.

You can help: donate, spread the word or learn more at http://www.girleffect.org/

Motherhood and The Girl Effect

Last week Miki Devivo interviewed me for her Voices of Motherhood project. (She’s looking for more moms to share their stories, too.)

I was amazed by how much I was willing to share about all the internal work that goes into being a mother to two girls.

One of the things that emerged for me from that conversation is an appreciation for the way motherhood is making me a more capable citizen of the world.

In the eight years I’ve been a mom, I’ve learned to be an advocate for my daughters.

With their doctors, teachers, grandparents, friends, to continually be advocating for what is best for them. In turn, I’ve learned to be an advocate for myself in the same way.

This is not a skill I practiced before I had kids. Through college, through my first few jobs, I didn’t have an understanding of how to advocate for myself.

But when the ultrasound tech said, “Girls!” and their lives flashed through my mind like a movie on fast forward: first steps, bike rides, braces, dates, prom, college, weddings, children, I saw clearly their future in my hands.

Many, many girls around the world have a future that is completely different from the future I imagine for my girls.

I realize how incredibly lucky my children are to live where they live. How lucky they are to have a momma who can advocate for them, to have at their fingertips education and healthcare and bikes and braces and prom.

So, Oct. 4-11 I’ll be participating in the Girl Effect Blogging Campaign to support and spread the word about the efforts of Girl Effect.

As you can see from this video, time is ticking. But we can do something about that.

I’d love for you to join me in advocating for a better future for all the girls of the world. To participate in the 2011 Girl Effect Blogging Campaign go here and here.

Learn more about Girl Effect here.