1/17/11—Creating Strategy

Today's Draw: The Eight of Fire from the Tarot of the Four Elements. So you have a dream and/or goal, but have you formulated a strategy for how to get there? Or are you just winging it? Do you see how this goal fits into your bigger life plan? And are you willing to weather the bumps, miles and detours along the way to reaching your goal?

 

The 8 of Fire equates to the 8 of Wands, which is an interesting card. The traditional interpretation that I have in my mind of this card is speed or swiftness. But this deck interprets it as having a strategic plan. And many traditional in...terpretations might have it meaning some sort of pause in the story of our life...an opportunity to pause and reflect. Even more interesting is that all of these interpretations can work together to reveal some important advice in the pursuit of our goals.

Sometimes in the frenzy of "wanting" and looking for avenues to achieve our goals, we overwhelm ourselves with input and end up pursuing paths that may waste our time or send us in too many directions. So it's good to just pause for a moment, assess our goals, develop a single clear strategy and then follow it. This can simple act of pausing and reflecting can result in developing a more efficient and swift manner of achieving our goals. Having a clear vision of what we want to achieve and a reasonable of path of how to get there can also help the universe start to roll in the same direction as we're going, thereby laying our path before us in magical ways.

Thinking all this through while writing up this card description has given me insights into my own issues with meeting my goals. I have a clear destination in mind, but I haven't set a clear course of action on how to get there. The reason I haven't is because I believe that our job is to decide the "what" in our lives and the universe's job is to decide the "how". But I also believe that we have to take some clear steps in the direction of our goals to set the snowball of manifestation in motion. My *personal* issue, though, is that without a clear "how" in mind, I have trouble making those first steps.

I've been a freelance writer for 15 years and was a writer for 10 years prior to that. I don't have an issue with self motivation—as long as I have a deadline and a schedule (the how) to meet. But when considering writing a book....I don't have enough motivation when there's no deadline...there's no burning reason for me to draw a line between today and that point in the future when I submit a proposal...the rough path of how that sets the universe's snowball rolling. That said, I'm being a little hard on myself here, because while I haven't been writing my book, I've been building a foundation in other ways, seemingly inadvertently, but guided by the universe. I now know many published authors, for example. I've taken some workshops, etc. And both in my personal life and here online, I'm not shy about demonstrating my knowledge in certain areas. But today's card tells me that if I want to speed my path, I need to pause, consider my strategy, make any needed adjustments, and set out on the revised path. So food for thought. How about you?