Tips from the Tarot ~ Achieving Your Goals

 Posted by
Jan 282019
 

January is just about over. How’s your progress on those goals you made for the new year?

I pulled a few cards to get Tarot’s perspective on what it
takes to achieve your goals and here is what she said.

King of Pentacles:

He is steady, reliable, and follows through on promises.
Competent and committed, he creates stability. Goals don’t achieve themselves.
They require your commitment and follow through to go from just being a good
idea to being a reality. Say what you mean and mean what you say. If you
promise yourself you will do a particular thing then actually do it. This card
also speaks to stewardship and conscientious maintenance. Don’t lose sight of how
far you’ve come already and do what you need to to maintain that progress.

Knight of Wands:

This knight is confident and daring. He is willing to try a
thing to see what happens. He rises to whatever challenge comes at him and puts
his fear aside in favor of new experiences. This energy is a good balance to
the King of Pentacles. Where he is steady this knight is more reckless.
Together these two make a good advisory team. Somewhere between the two
extremes is a good place to land on most things.

“Be bold but venture to be wise” ~ Horace

Ace of Pentacles:

Embrace new opportunities. As you move toward your goal old
issues will fall away and new opportunities will present themselves. Don’t shy
away from them immediately. Take a bold, wise look at the new things that pop
up and see if they are in line with where you are going. The you that started
this goal journey is not the same you now. You have grown and changed and so
the challenges and good fortune that cross your path will be new and more
suited to the new you.

The Fool

Trust the flow. With each challenge you overcome on your way
to your goal you level up and are a beginner again. You are beginning at a
higher level. You haven’t been here before so you need to trust the process.
When you first started at the level you just completed, you didn’t know what
you know now. But you learned it as you needed to know it and here you are.
This will happen again and again with each new level. Step forward into the
unknown. You can do this.

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Best Laid Plans

 Posted by
Jan 212019
 
the worst part is the end of the driveway where the street plow piles it up

I knew more than a week ago that I was going to have the house to myself today. So, I made plans. There was art to make and a couple of readings to do. There were things to prep for the eclipse work I was planning. There was a soup recipe I wanted to try and of course, knitting and Netflix. I had a nice day all set for myself. I was going to have a day of just doing things I wanted to do.

What I did instead was spend most of the day removing snow and ice from my walkway and driveway. I wasn’t happy about it. I also know that how I felt about it was irrelevant. It had to be done and I was the only here to do it.

Once you know you have to do something, that there is no alternative, it makes no sense to resist that reality.

When I got up this morning, the snow that had started last night had turned to freezing rain. It made everything slick with a coating of ice and the inches of snow were that much heavier. If you live where it snows then you know what I was facing. I bundled up, grabbed my shovel and, with a sigh, went out to assess the work ahead of me.

The whole time we’ve lived here shoveling snow was a family event. Mr. Wonderful, me, and the kids each took a portion of the job and got it over with. Then we’d go back in the house and have cocoa. Being by myself this job felt huge. I also wanted to complete as much of my original plan as I could. Some of that stuff wasn’t just fun it needed to be done.

So I followed the advice I give to clients with big projects or goals they are working on. I broke it all down into sections and gave myself a deadline and a schedule to get it all done. The deadline in this case was actually imposed by Winter herself. This evening the temperature is going to drop to 3F/-16C. Whatever snow is still on the ground would be ice by tomorrow morning. The deadline for my other work was flexible with the exception of the eclipse work. That got priority.

When faced with a big project it’s important to be realistic about your capabilities. Knowing how far you can push yourself and for how long is a critical piece of information when planning out your strategy. I have also found, for myself anyway, that alternating things you don’t enjoy with things you do enjoy makes the whole job a better experience and makes me more effective.

Half an hour to forty five minutes of chopping ice and snow and moving it off the walkway and driveway was about all I had in me in one burst. I divided the territory into sections I thought I could do in that span of time and started. When I was done with each portion I would go back into the house, dry off, warm up, and work on the more pleasant things. It worked out.

I got all the snow and ice removed that I needed to before the wind picked up and the temperature dropped. I prepped some items for the eclipse, did some readings, and even made that soup I wanted to try. There was also a nice cup of tea, some knitting and Netflix once I was done.

I’m a bit sore from hours of lifting snow and annoyed that my FitBit doesn’t have snow shoveling as an exercise choice because it should totally count. All in all it was a good day.

It was windy and cold when I took this photo but the sunlight on the icy branches was so pretty

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Rethink and Reboot

 Posted by
Jan 142019
 

We are just about half way through January. How are you doing? Did you set goals for yourself? Have you done any work on them? Made any progress? Are you where you wanted to be at this point?

If you said yes then Congratulations! Keep doing whatever it is you are doing because it’s working for you. Seriously, you are doing great. Even baby steps, in the right direction, are better than staying still.

Two weeks into the New Year is when the bulk of resolution makers lose their oomph. Ask any of the regulars at the local gym and they will tell you that this is the time of year when they get their gym back.

A handful of those New Year gym members become regulars. Those people broke the code. If they are reading this they answered Yes up there in the first paragraph. They have a strong why, they found their discipline, and they put their inner petulant child in a corner somewhere while they got on with the business of effecting change.

When you want to make a real change in your life the first thing that has to change is your thinking. Not just your thinking about the thing you want to change, but your thinking about yourself. Who you are is a product of your thinking.

Always.

To be a different version of yourself requires you to think of yourself differently. Thinking of yourself as an overweight couch potato will keep you an overweight couch potato. To see the possibility of a lean, strong, fit you and to think of yourself as that lean, strong, fit person currently inside a chubby body is the way to move toward that reality. To remind yourself you are broke, in debt, and underemployed, is to keep yourself there. To see the possibility of yourself working the job you desire, making the money you want, and being debt free, and to understand you are that person, currently working through some hard stuff, is how you move toward that reality.

Two weeks is about all you can get out of sheer willpower. If nothing develops to bolster it, when your willpower falters you will fail. If your New Year’s goals are flagging perhaps what is missing is a shift in thinking about yourself and your life’s possibilities. Who is it that you want to be? Do you have a clear image of her in your mind? You need to know her well enough that you can judge your behavior by her standards. That’s how you move from who you are to who you want to be. You follow her lead. What would she do right now to get back on track? Do that.

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Distaff Day: When Life Goes Back to Normal

 Posted by
Jan 072019
 

The winter holidays have a way of distorting time. No one really, officially celebrates all twelve days of Christmas anymore but with family visits, and holiday parties, we sort of do. Work weeks are shortened. People take holiday trips. Businesses and schools are closed all or part of these days. We really should stop pretending that we go back to work after Christmas Day and embrace the energy of this time of year.

There is such a build up to Christmas. It’s a lot of planning, and shopping, and cooking, and decorating, and baking. To spend all that energy for one day is not very satisfying. Whether we mean to or not we extend the experience throughout the days around Christmas and, with a boost from New Year’s Eve, we keep going for a few more days. I think it’s in our blood.

Our ancestors celebrated the return of the sun in myriad ways. Rituals and celebrations with fires and feasting happen all over the world and as far back as anyone can reckon. We make our feasts in modern ovens and capture the moments of celebration on our smartphone cameras but we aren’t that far removed in time or place from the people who prepared their feasts on an open fire and captured moments as memories. They also practiced divination for the coming year. A lot of us do too. You might seek signs in nature during the Omen Days or have your cards read. Either way you are in good company.

Whatever you and yours do to celebrate the winter holidays it all comes to a close on January 6th. Whether you call it the twelfth day of Christmas, the Feast of the Epiphany, Little Christmas, or Three Kings Day, January 6th is about as far as you can stretch the holidays. (In the western world anyway) When all the celebrating is done, it’s time to get back to your regularly scheduled life. Once upon a time, not that long ago, that meant it was time for the ladies to get back to their spinning and the men to get back to the plough. From this we get Distaff Day, which is January 7th and Plough Monday which is the first Monday after January 6th. Every few years, like this one, they are the same day.

I hope your holidays were enjoyable and satisfying. I hope there was good food, laughter and lots of love. I hope your omens were all favorable. Today is the day to get back to work. I hope you are doing so with a full and thankful heart and that you don’t have to spin any fiber unless you want to.  

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