YouandTheTarot

People usually don't come for a psychic reading to gush about how great things are going. No, typically they're in crisis. They talk fast and loud. The exception is when the issue is insanity. That category of deviation from norms is way beyond what we think of as "mental illness." You could only know what it is if you've been there when it manifests itself. And clients describe the it slowly and in hushed tones.  That's the ambiance in parts of the Elizabeth Holmes' documentary by Nathan Fiedler "You Can See Everything." It's palpable. Take in Holmes' parents. Observe also everything about actress Amanda Seyfried. She had portrayed Holmes in the film "The Dropout." I think I even catch snippets of the hush in Fielder's moments of silence.  So, who seems insane?  Of course, there's Holmes . She continually indicates that she's clueless about why she's on the way to prison for 11 years. But there's also her pa...

  The headline in the influential FT reads: "Nixonmaxxing: the strange revival of America’s disgraced president" The legacy of Richard Nixon is being restored. Meanwhile, come the day after the midterms, another GOP US President could tumble into the kind of reputation collapse as happened with Watergate and Nixon's stepping down.  Lucky for you.  So many of us Boomers, who lived day-by-day through such an upheaval, are eager to share how it was, what you might expect and what timeframe will it take for the new normal to solidify. About the latter, business for my tarot-reading/intuitive coaching practices already is increasing in demand.  Here's what I see now.  This time around there won't be a rush to journalism school, trying to be the next Bernstein-Woodward. Journalism isn't the path for the most earnest/best and brightest to follow anymore. Hasn't been for a while. Haven't you been reading postings on Reddit about all the unemployed/underemplo...

Many businesspeople, like myself, had been in awe of the strategic genius of Roger Ailes at Fox.  In network broadcast/cable, an industry that crowed about awards, he told staff not to chase them. Forgot all that. His focus was on boosting ratings. He thumbed his nose at America's Puritan ethos, featuring lots of female long legs on air.  There were no apologies for the strong opinions that became Fox's signature. Also, he had as his personal PR representative Bob Dilenschneider, himself an iconoclast.  Yet, today, the 30th anniversary of Fox, which kicked off on October 7, 1996, Ailes wasn't celebrated.  In the summer of 2016, Ailes came crashing down. In the Tarot that kind of catastrophic downfall is depicted by the Tower card. On July 6th of that year former Fox executive Gretchen Carlson filed a lawsuit alleging sexual harassment and wrongful termination. The interesting feature of that initial complaint, which caught the attention of media, was that the defenda...

Those in academia too long or in old-line corporations get shoe-horned into the cult of excellence. That is, perfectionism. Good enough is unthinkable.  Yet, experience and research prove out that it's often those focused on good enough who get to the top and stay there.   Remember the adage: The "C" students (who handed in the good-enough papers) become the leaders and the bosses of the "A" students (who chased the "A" for the over-the-top paper). A slouch at a number of his presidential duties and before that only a "B" actor Ronald Reagan surpassed so many of the grinds in access to life's goodies.  And, Boomers might recall that in the early 1950s children's medical doctor and psychologist Donald Winnicott saved us from helicopter moms. He presented the data that the good-enough mother turned out more balanced, grounded in reality, problem-solving children than the supposed perfect mother.  Both mom and the kid escaped the pressu...

"If I wanted to go into business, I would have worked on Wall Street." That was a reply a psychotherapist gave me when I asked how was business for their private practice. No, it wasn't a non-profit. But that it's-a-business concept also applies to not-for-profit higher education. BTW, its market value is more than $738 billion. And, of course, there's journalism with the noble purpose of providing truth. More of the content is behind a paywall. As it should be. After all, it is a business. But, that's just the tip of the iceberg. So many other services consumers pay for, including psychic readings, have to operate like businesses. Therefore, consumer beware. Approach the buyer's journey with the alert mindset that, despite the lofty branding and the seeming purity of motive, that this is a commercial transaction. Fortunately, that Ah-Ha is occurring among youth and their parents in career planning. Is enrolling in the university, once a revered instituti...

Before I learned to think critically (BA, MA, PhD, 1L at Harvard Law School) I was a very effective human being. Happy too. Like Caveman , I lived by my wits. I went out there from the tenement apartment in the early 1950s to the mean streets of pre-gentrified Jersey City, New Jersey and functioned splendidly. In fact, I was way ahead of my times. For instance, at age 11, I operated a Wallace Brown solopreneurship peddling greeting cards and religious icons. More importantly, I was free of clinical depression, imposter syndrome and self-hate. Those arrived during my MA studies.  You know the story. Our Boomer generation was the first in America to matriculate en masse in higher education. By then, the university have mutated from being the trade school the Puritans had established in 1636 to train ministers into a freak institution pursuing pure thought. In Freshman year drilled into us was the Scientific Method. Ah, the supremacy of reason. And there it was: We were separated from...