Fire Horse Energy Is Here: Are You Ready for It?
Issue 2875— February 17, 2026
I don’t believe a calendar flip magically changes human behavior.
But I do believe there are moments—collective and personal—when energy shifts and we get to decide whether we’ll meet it with resistance or take its energy to propel ourselves forward.
Happy Lunar New Year, the Year of the Fire Horse galloping in on February 17.
If there is one word that threads its way through every description of the Chinese Zodiac Fire Horse year, it is energy. Not chaos for chaos’s sake, but necessary chaos to break through to a new paradigm. It’s motion, momentum that disrupts what’s been stuck and insists that something new wants room to emerge.
That kind of energy, incidentally, is close to my definition of power. It is purposeful, the power TO accomplish whatever you are courageous enough to try to do.
That’s how this Year of the Fire Horse feels to me. Plus red is its symbolic color.
People often ask me why I wear red so often. Partly, it’s simple—I love color, and red is my favorite. But over time, wearing red has become more than preference. It’s visibility without apology. A personal brand element people can trust. It gives me energy because it reflects my values.
I don’t wear red to be loud. I wear it to be authentic about who I am.
The Fire Horse can get misread the same way.
Because fire suggests recklessness. The horse suggests wildness. Put them together and the caricature writes itself: runaway energy, disruption without direction. But anyone who has actually spent time with horses knows better.
I asked my friend Dr. Nancy O’Reilly—founder and president of The Women Connect 4 Good Foundation and a multiple award-winning equestrian—what draws her to horses. She texted back:
“Horses have saved me over and again. Their beauty, their elegance—and they know you better than anyone. They are sensitive and they live in the now. They teach you about living in the moment. Each one has their own personality and temperament. Once they trust you, they are yours and you are theirs.”
Dr. Nancy O’Reilly,Take The Lead board member, founder and president of The Women Connect 4 Good Foundation and award-winning equestrian.
That’s not wild or chaotic energy. That’s disciplined presence.
Horses are powerful because they are exquisitely attuned—to their environment, to each other, to the humans they trust. They respond to intention, not force. You don’t dominate a horse into partnership. You earn it.
The Year of the Horse follows the Year of the Snake; the latter is often described as a time of shedding—letting go of what no longer fits.
The Horse doesn’t linger in that space. The Horse moves. That movement can feel destabilizing, especially if we confuse stillness for safety.
Historically, horses were among the most transformative forces in human evolution. Long before smartphones or artificial intelligence, horses were revolutionary technology. They allowed humans to travel farther and faster, to trade across cultures, to farm more productively, to connect beyond the limits of geography.
Horses didn’t change humanity because they were powerful though they are. They changed it because they moved us forward.
The symbolism of the Fire Horse points to what Eric Dean Montross called in his Instagram post, “embodied leadership”—leadership that similarly moves us forward. It doesn’t wait for perfect clarity before acting. Leadership that listens to the instinct as much as the numbers. Leadership that understands momentum is not the enemy of wisdom but the enactment of it.
Do I believe the Fire Horse guarantees transformation? No. History doesn’t work that way. But I do believe that naming moments helps us meet them. I do believe that ritual—whether cultural, personal, or symbolic—gives us a chance to choose differently. This Lunar New Year feels like that kind of threshold. Not frantic. Not reckless. Charged with the energy of opportunity.
I feel it physically. My heart races a little faster. My thinking sharpens. My energy lifts. Not with anxiety, but with anticipation. I don’t yet know the precise form of what’s ahead. I just know it matters and it will welcome the audacity that we’ve taken as our theme for the year at Take The Lead.
And that’s where leadership lives.
Leadership doesn’t begin with certainty. It begins with a predilection for motion. In fact, most of the time in my experience, responsible forward motion begins when you are clear about your intention or vision—you know where you want to go—but you don’t have full knowledge of how you are going to get there. You do have the willingness to move when staying still is no longer tenable.
And the Fire Horse isn’t asking us to burn everything down. It’s asking us to bring our full selves—values, instincts, intentions, and courage—into shaping what comes next. To trust that disciplined energy, once aligned with intention, will carry us there.
If you’re feeling this moment too, I invite you to keep going with me.
On February 19, the doors open to the 9 Leadership Power Tools course and community. It’s designed for leaders who don’t wait for certainty, but who want to turn energy into clarity, confidence, and career success—without losing themselves in the process.
Consider this your invitation to ride that Fire Horse with intention. Because the future rarely arrives with instructions. But it does arrive with energy. And the good news is you don’t have to ride alone.
As Taylor Swift would ask, are you ready for it?
GLORIA FELDT is the Co-founder and President of Take The Lead, a motivational speaker, and a global expert in women’s leadership development and DEI for individuals and companies that want to build gender balance. She is a bestselling author of five books, most recently Intentioning: Sex, Power, Pandemics, and How Women Will Take The Lead for (Everyone’s) Good. Honored as Forbes 50 Over 50, and Former President of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, she is a frequent media commentator. Learn more at www.gloriafeldt.com and www.taketheleadwomen.com. Find her @GloriaFeldt on all social media.