11/6/12—Defining Your Mission in Life

Today's Draw: The Nine of Pentacles from the Crystal Visions Tarot. How much of what/who you are today was visualized long ago? How much of what you are came as a surprise development? And how does it all come together to help define your mission in life?


The Nine of Pentacles usually pictures a woman and speaks of someone who is self-sufficient and appreciates the finer things in life. The lwb for this deck says she has tamed the wild part of her (thus, the tiger) and has built the life she visualized for herself. 

This got me thinking about what I've visualized for myself over the years. Even as a little girl, I never wanted to be married. And I always wanted to be around dogs. At first I wanted to be a veterinarian, but as a grew older and my talents made themselves known, my desires moved more toward a career in the arts, first as an actress, then as an advertising copywriter. 

So today, I'm a single doggie mom who writes advertising for a living. I remember when I was young, passions and interests would come and go. The same is true of me as an adult. I cook, sew, do stained glass, craft, create and pursue all manner of artistic endeavors. But only writing has stuck with me as an ongoing passion that permeates my life. I can't imagine doing anything else. I believe I would be terribly unhappy earning a living any other way. In fact I was so unhappy the first three years of my professional life doing other things in advertising agencies, that I found a way to freelance and build a portfolio in my off hours. 

But as I was thinking about all the stuff I visualized that came true in my life...my writing, the dogs, the singledom...I also thought about stuff that happened in my life that I never saw coming. 

For example, I never saw myself being self-employed, though my early foray into freelancing (along with my rabid independence) should have been a clue. And I also NEVER saw myself becoming a spiritual writer or a tarotist. And now those things are essential parts of my life. Heck, growing up I was not only "shielded" from religion, I considered myself an atheist. Now I embrace all gods. And I didn't even know what tarot was growing up. 

In retrospect, of course, I can see how it makes sense...introspective, day-dreamy girl and all. But the whole spirituality thing wasn't something I ever visualized for myself. It just happened. And the "just happening" part of it has entirely reshaped my life and everything in it. I could still be a copywriter and doggie mommy without it, but it has opened a new path for visualization that I know will serve the second half of my professional life well. 

And I don't mean to say that everything we are today had to have been visualized in adolescence or whatever. It's just that I never visualized the spirituality stuff coming into my life—AT ALL. There didn't even seem to be a basis for it the way I was raised. It was a complete surprise development. And now it has sparked a whole new set of visualizations. And it has also changed something so deep in me that I would characterize it as changing my DNA. It feels like, outside of my creativity, intelligence level and sense of humor, I'm almost unrecognizable in relation to who I was when I first started visualizing a life. 

Even my hair color and eye color are different...haha. Honestly. I went from blond as a teen to auburn blond in my 20s/30s and now I'm more brownish. And my eyes changed from blue to green when I was about 30. 

So all of this makes me wonder. I define my mission in life as "healing people with my words". But part of the means to do that came from something I never visualized for myself—the spirituality. And part of it came from something I pretty much always knew was ingrained in me—the writing. If it's why I came here, why didn't I see it sooner? And if a surprise development was the missing link to having/finding purpose in my life, what might still be hiding itself within you?

7/7/12-7/8/12—Acknowledging Your Progress

Weekend Reading: Nine of Pentacles from the Mythic Tarot. This weekend do something to acknowledge all your hard work. Whether personally, professionally, domestically or some such way, you've accomplished a lot and grown. Sometimes we just keep forging ahead and forging ahead and forget to stop, take a breath and look back on how far we've come. So this is your cue. Take stock of yourself this weekend and do something to pat yourself on the back. Maybe it's something symbolic like planting a flower in your own honor. Or maybe you could celebrate with a nice dinner. Or a luxurious bath. Or a nice hike in the mountains. Whatever you do, though, make it something more than just thinking to yourself "yay me" as you forge forward. Commemorate your progress like the special event it is!

4/18/12—Scoring the Cherry Lifesaver

Today's Draw: The Nine of Pentacles from the Fishy Tarot. Are you proud of what you've built in your life? If you could change something, what would it be? What if you found out the secret to success, fulfillment and happiness was as simple as changing your vision of what they are?

The Nine of Pentacles is, first and foremost, a card about prosperity and expansion. But I often like to see it also as a card representing all you've built in the world. All YOU have built. When you move to the Ten, you can consider it more of what you've built along with your family or tribe. But this is all about you. 

And, when you think of it, it's all about you anyway. After all, you built the tribe or family that brings stability and security in the Ten, just as you brought the growth and abundance in the Nine. I think we never truly own our power and responsibility in the world until we realize that every choice we make—and don't make—goes into building what we have in this very moment. 

At this point people tend to ask, "what about the things that happen to you that you can't control? The layoffs, car accidents and muggings of life?" These aren't things you asked for, but they are things you have to answer for. And the choice comes in how you end up doing that. Whether or not you allow it to hold you back, spur you on or utterly defeat you. We've all seen stories of people who've suffered fates far greater than we'll ever know...disfiguring accidents, death camps, unspeakable abuse...and they still find purpose, passion, joy and love in their lives.

The thing that usually trips people up is thinking everything is black and white. Remember Five Flavor Lifesavers? If you were like me, you hoped beyond hope that the next one would be cherry. Because yummy Lifesavers were red and all the others colors were second-class flavors. 

Reality was that all the flavors were good except the HORRIFIC pineapple (have you EVER tasted a pineapple remotely flavored like that?). But there I was merely tolerating lemon, lime and orange in hopes that the next one would be cherry. My vision of what the best "next flavor" was was so unyielding and absolute that I cheated myself out of enjoying the other flavors. I CHOSE to disappoint myself 4 out of 5 times in every roll. In fact, had I been in advertising back then, that's the headline I would have written—"Disappointment in Every Roll." 

Ironically, I could have chosen to win the "Five Flavor challenge" every single time by buying a roll of Cherry Lifesavers. Or I could have had variety AND a surplus of cherry at the same time by getting two rolls. But it never occurred to me that I had way more options than I thought.

We do this more often than we realize in our lives. Our vision of what success, achievement, abundance, prosperity and happiness look like is so narrow and absolute that we cheat ourselves out of experiencing the multi-flavored goodness that life puts in front of us every day. If there is something you want to achieve and you hit up against a wall, I guarantee you there is another way. The road there and the final destination may not look the way you imagined, but if you want what you want, achievement can be as easy as changing the picture in your mind. 

You either choose to achieve the things you want in life or you don't. It's like that saying, "do you want to be right or do you want to be happy?" If you'd rather receive your happiness the "right" way—the way it appears in movies and books and other dramas that dance in your brain—then you choose the disappointments that come when it arrives in a different package. But if you choose to be happy regardless of how you get that way, chances are you'll get there faster, revisit more often and reside there longer.

1/11/12—Aligining Your Spirituality With Your Work

Today's Draw: Nine of Pentacles from the Shadowscapes Tarot. Are your spiritual and material beliefs aligned? Do you see your job as something you do in service to a particular community? Do you treat others the same way at work as you would treat them at church?

The Nine of Pentacles is traditionally about prosperity and security. It's about the satisfaction that comes from a job well done. But this particular Nine of Pentacles puts a little different twist on that. It's about working and earning in integrity with your beliefs. 

As you probably know by now, I work in advertising. I'm the person that writes the words that, hopefully, convince you to buy. A lot of people have negative views about advertising and probably about my job in particular. My father was one of those people. Raised during the depression, he was suspicious of snake oil dealers and the false claims people feel are made in advertising. 

That said, I've never encountered anyone suggesting that you should bend the truth in my entire career. And I've never written words I didn't believe to be true about the product or service in question. Only once did I ever come upon a situation that made me feel skeevy and we were able to resolve it to the liking of everyone involved. 

Doing what I do, I get to talk to a lot of company owners, inventors and company presidents. Without exception, these are people who have a passion for what they do and truly believe in what they have to offer. People are out there are on a mission and I get to help them achieve it.

But aligning your beliefs with your spirituality is about more than passion. It's about honesty and integrity and what's fair. So the question then becomes, "are you the same person at work that you'd be at church?" I imagine a lot of people compartmentalize their "lives" and justify different tactics in different places. But you're either in integrity to your beliefs or not.

As I move toward a second career as an author, my spirituality *is* my career. And with that comes a lot of responsibility that I'm not taking lightly. If you look at the woman in the card, she's a musician, but her instrument is as much a part of nature as her soul is. There is no separation between her earth-focused spirituality and her work. She doesn't slip into the "love of money" trap. She doesn't treat those around her with disrespect. In fact, she doesn't work, she serves. 

All of us serve in one way or another. The question is, are you cognizant of it? Do you approach your job in a way of service? And do you treat it and others as though God were watching...as though God were who you were serving? I'm sure some of you out there are thinking, "what do you want, lady, it's just a job!" To that I would say, "so I take it your answer is a no?"

Last week I took people to task about other facets of maintaining your spiritual integrity. And this is another one of those posts where we have to at least ask ourselves if our spirituality encompasses and informs our entire life, or is just for showy talks by the fireplace. This isn't about needing to change jobs, it's about needing to change the way you walk on a 9-5 basis. 

I didn't always see my job as service. Someone else opened my eyes to that notion many years ago. And seeing it as service completely changed the way I approach it. Yeah, sometimes it makes bitchy or whiny. My spirituality isn't as mature in my job as it is by the fireplace, but it's there and the way I run my business and my business partnerships is very much aligned with my beliefs. In those moments I'm not in alignment, I'm very aware of it and use it as an opportunity to see where I can do better.

So just noodle this. That's all I'm saying. I will say that if you can do that one thing...see your work as service...it will change the way you feel about your job and the way you approach others. And before anyone says, "yeah, but you don't know this beyotch I have to work with", keep in mind your spiritual integrity is not dependent on anyone but you. The way you respond is a choice. Sure it's hard. And it's also easy, because the roadmap is laid out before you. You always know the right thing to do.