Anne Heleen Bijl, board member of The Coincidence Project, is a leadership consultant who guides companies, governments, and communities through their most complex challenges. Known for her gift in creative thinking and unconventional problem-solving, she approaches corporate and civic issues differently.

Anne Heleen believes that much of her success comes from something many overlook: noticing synchronicities — and having the courage to follow where they lead. To her, meaningful coincidence is not random. It is guidance.

She says the first step in allowing coincidence to move your life or work forward is simple, yet profound: believe in it. Synchronicities are more than chance. They are invitations.

What follows is the moment she first began to understand this — and how the universe echoed it back to her fifty years later.

(Find Part 2 the Synchronicity Lessons series here: For the Greater Good)

When I was eleven years old, I was cast as the witch in my school’s theater production. I had the opening scene. Alone.

Six hundred people sat waiting behind the heavy velvet curtains. I could hear the rustle of anticipation, feel the weight of expectation pressing in. My teacher whispered over and over, “Don’t be nervous. Don’t be nervous.”

Then he stepped away.

I stood alone in the dark.

The curtains began to rise.

Applause swelled through the auditorium — and in that very moment, I saw it.

At my feet, illuminated by the stage lights, was a butterfly.

It was December 15. Outside, the air was cold enough to sting your breath. And yet there it was — large, delicate, impossibly alive — gently opening and closing its wings as if bowing to the audience.

Everything inside me shifted. The noise dissolved. The fear vanished.

All I could think was: Wow.

A butterfly. In winter.

If that was possible, then anything was.

Calm washed over me. Wonder replaced fear. And the play was a triumph.

Fifty years later — again on December 15 — I found myself inside a friend’s home, retelling this very story. We were standing near a window, the winter air sharp beyond the glass.

As I described the butterfly that had quieted my childhood fear, something extraordinary happened.

A butterfly drifted into the room.

And landed on my thumb.

It stayed there — wings softly moving.

In the middle of winter.

Time seemed to fold in on itself. The eleven-year-old girl and the woman I had become felt like the same person, standing in the same quiet miracle. My friend and I looked at one another in astonishment.

The feeling was unmistakable: warmth, joy, connection.

Not a coincidence. Continuity.

These are the moments when I know — not intellectually, but deeply — that we are interconnected with everything. That life is not random, but responsive. That we are being spoken to all the time.

The butterflies are always there.

To feel joy. To feel that flutter of excitement. To move your company, your life, your decisions forward — begin by believing that what you notice matters.

Perhaps the coincidences you see are not accidents.

Perhaps they are playful, loving signals from something far greater than we yet understand.

Believe in the butterflies.

Photo by Anand Ramavath on Unsplash