YouandTheTarot

"We're supposed to share at support groups, right. Well I shared and all the crazies moved in with unasked-for advice. Brutal lesson learned." That's what a middle-aged woman told me. She was explaining why she was coming for her very first Tarot reading. This time she wanted what she called "protection" from the mob. And for her drinking problem she had switched over from a no-cost support group to paid outpatient one-on-one therapy. That was also for privacy. Sure, support groups can do good. The four months I had attended weekly Codependent Anonymous meetings provided tremendous insight on my compulsion to have all people think well of me. How exhausting that had been. However, I did not spill my guts. I knew: All of us members of the group were "sick'' - and some were sicker than others.  Takeaway: Be circumspect in support groups, especially those not monitored by trained professionals.  Tarot Card Reader. Medium. Intuitive Career C...

"How staring at candles for 10 minutes can snuff out stress" -   Daily Mail , January 28, 2023 Calming down, sorting out, and getting centered. We can all get that accomplished in a very simple way and cost-efficient way.  That is by first purchasing a candle. At Walmart the Starlit Skies Mainstays retails for $3.22. Then, light it and look into the flame. The minimum is 10 minutes. You can build up to more. Actually, as you get what you want out of this pause in your day you will crave more and more stare time.  No, you don't need a mantra such as the Zen "Clear Thinking, Don't Know" or simply the word "peace."  Of course, there are other low-cost paths to what we need in these uncertain times. In April 2021, The New York Times saluted reading the Tarot as a tool for self-awareness and introspection. Yes, you can do it yourself. The Times provides the how-to. And here is the guide I developed for DIY. Another is to take off your shoes and walk o...

  "It was after my divorce. I had moved from North Carolina to Pennsylvania. There I bumped into a college acquaintance. We hadn't been close when we were young. Now I realize that I shouldn't have been close with her then. She was toxic." That's what a middle-aged woman shared with me during a Tarot card reading. The Eight of Cups had come up. That's known for delivering The Walking Away message. Yes, the client had walked away from that brief brush with the past. But she was worried that it could happen again. No, she didn't think she had been the codependent type who forms weird attachments and grabs onto them like a crucifix. However, now single she was concerned she could be a sitting duck for that sort of syndrome. Insight about those types of dynamics is right in the seminal guide about relationships  "The Developing Mind."  The author is researcher Daniel J. Siegel MD. In the chapter on attachment and the shaping of the self he docu...

 The Catch-22 is obvious. These are had times. The guidance from the Tarot cards would be especially useful, right. But hard times, especially inflation and layoffs, are making money scarce. On the average a Tarot reading runs at a buck or two a minute. The wonderful reality of the Tarot, though, is that it is wide open to DIY. Yes, you can learn, without too much heavy lifting, to do your own readings. In April 2021, The New York Times praised the Tarot as a tool for self-awareness and provided a how-to for unleashing its messaging. And here is my five-step guide for DIY. Once you get confidence in your ability to connect with the universe (or whatever you prefer to call that force field) you can start your day or restart your day at any time with a one-card pull. Smart intuitive career and communications coaching, including using the Tarot. Try it, with a five-minute complimentary session. Totally confidential. Then fees customized for your unique budget. Please make an appoi...

  Six hours ago on Reddit Career Guidance was posted the question: Where did we English majors wind up?  Already 53 responses have come in. Here is the  thread. Many did well. The career slots range from association executive to lawyer to writer at Google to product manager. There were some misses such as the homeless person.  I provided only bits and pieces of my own long career history. Pile onto the undergraduate English major a Ph.D. in Literature and Language at an Ivy. Those stops along a very long career journey include university teaching at the University of Michigan, et al., probation officer, full-time corporate executive communications for brandnames like Chevron, operating a marketing communications boutique with clients such as law firm Paul Weiss, career coaching, and currently Tarot reading. In corporate I had earned more than a number of the engineers were pulling down. Later as an entrepreneur, within 7 months I earned 39% more than I had as worker ...

  Wharton Business School professor Christian Terwiesch conducted research which confirmed that a version of AI chatbots can perform the strategic thinking as well as the actual operations of the professional with the M.B.A. degree. Here is that  research  which describes how ChatGPT performed in the final exam at Wharton for the Operations Management course.   The grade Terwiesch gave was between a "B" and "B-." Two main findings are:   " ... it does an amazing job at basic operations management and process analysis questions including those that are based on case studies. Not only are the answers correct, but the explanations are excellent ...  [It] is remarkably good at modifying its answers in response to human hints."   Where it needs work is with basic math. That showed up in simple calculations way too often. Also it fell short in advanced process analysis questions.  So, as we say in business, what's the bottom line on this?   Obvious...

  It looks like there will be a race for the 2023 Dem nomination for US President. The one who likely had the nomination to lose - Joe Biden - probably has lost it. DocuGate deepens, reports  Daily Mail : "The Department of Justice has revealed how a search of President  Joe Biden 's home in Wilmington,  Delaware , has found another six classified documents."   The guy could be finished. So, the fundraising has to begin in earnest by those who would be US President in January 2025. (Incidentally, that’s when AI chatbots will take over 90% of digital content-creation).   Of course, lots and lots of money is needed. That mandates that the politicos make themselves attractive to the big donors. Right now. Actually that’s overdue. Is a documentary a must? Yes. Let’s look forward to the impact of the documentary “Justice,” focused on the Brett Kavanaugh SCOTUS confirmation process. Forget the book.  Among the deep pockets are the large eli...

"Pull some cards on this. Will Artificial Intelligence close down my public relations agency?" That's what a client for a Tarot reading asked me a few days after Open AI released ChatGPT on November 30, 2022. He tried it out. Of course, like the rest of us, he was amazed by the quality that had been generated.  THE WHEEL OF FORTUNE The first card which came up was a major one in the arcana - The Wheel of Fortune. Yes, change was coming. The ethos of the Tarot is optimistic. So, the change could be interpreted as positive, if this professional was willing to experiment with other ways to earn a very good living. Here is my article published in  O'Dwyer'rs Public Relations  on career change. Today in  The Atlantic  Annie Lowrey nails it: "ChatGPT is coming for my job and yours, according to ChatGPT itself." KNOWLEDGE WORK Yes, most of the knowledge work we had been hammered to train for (The Chase After Undergraduate And Advanced Degrees) cou...

  Bloomberg Law , January 19, 2023 That's how billing looks for Big Law for 2023.  Sure, some clients might balk a little and shop around for pricing at midsized firms.  But, face it and Big Law knows this: With a high-stakes problem, powerful people and institutions are totally aware that those large top law firms deliver. That reality is embedded in their networks which refer speicific stars at law firms to them.  Nonono, they don't pore over the websites for evidence of excellence. Websites are mere window dressing. I learned that the hard way. I had pitched to a major firm how I could make the old-line tone and content more engaging. The marketing guy didn't seem to care. I wonder if he had been smirking. You know the rest. The humiliation continues to give me anxiety attacks. Let's look at how the law firm game gets played regularly. For instance, it did take Jones Day years to get Sherwin-Williams off the hook for allegedly creating a public nuisance in Rhode I...

"Texas prisoners continue hunger strike in protest against solitary confinement" -  The Guardian , January 19, 2023 In much of the correctional system, solitary confinement is standard punishment. And a brutal one. Research on mirror neurons proved out how social human beings are. We affect each other on the cellular level. When we are isolated from each other, as an solitary confinement, we can lose parts of ourselves. The irony is that more and more - including all generations - inflict that punishment on themselves. I hear it all the time in Tarot readings. Clients bellow in pain about being lonely, low on hope, and without even one close friend to confide in.  If you are on the depressive side, you could have slipped into a dark state of  being. Yet, the solution is as easy as simply getting out there.  During a reading I suggest the obvious: Instead of having groceries delivered, go to the supermarket. Talk to people about the produce, offer to help the aging an...

"The bank [CIti}, which has given employees more latitude to work from home than competitors like Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan, is calling employees back in for 'the coaching they need' if their productivity slips," -  Linkedin News , January 18, 2023  Yeah, bring on the coaches. And embedded forever in the collective ethos of that organization could be to steer clear of anything called "coaching." We whose mission is to help professionals learn to help themselves in their careers could be branded as The Enemy. So, it should be no surprise that more professionals come to me for a Tarot reading than for the coaching part of my practice. They want insight not "oughts." Many have been what they perceive as "victims" of coaches. Just as in some forms of psychotherapy there was the posturing of the coach as all-knowing and the coachee as needing much improvement. Organizations need to create a new lexicon for guidance. Why not try out a fun conc...

  "It isn't what it was." That's what I am hearing from my intuitive career coaching clients, both here in the US and in Canada. Universally they are gazing with horror at their businesses in January 2023. The lens they are using are the results from much better times. For many of them those had been 2021 and early 2022.  I address them the same way a sports coach approaches an athlete frozen in self-consciousness and fear. That is the Zen concept of Changing the Channel in Your Head. Be in the moment. Not more than a year back.  An actual tennis coach puts it this way: Hit the ball coming at you right now, not the one you hit brilliantly yeserday or missed a game back. That's  the wisdom of Tim Gallwey in  "The Inner Game of Tennis."  Next, the client and I play with what strategies and tactics can be rolled out or improved in the now.  Of course, in some high-profile lines of work being in the here and now is tough. The media outlets are all there tr...

  "I can't live without him/her." That is one of the most common reasons human beings are in pain. At least that's my experience as a Tarot reader. The formal name for that suffering is "codependency." Essentially it's the assumption - more like an obsession - that your entire sense of identity is shaped by another person.  That attachment could also be to an entity like work. Currently, those laid off on Wall Street by firms such as Goldman Sachs could be experiencing "withdrawal" from that force field of compulsive achievement. Interestingly some of those let go had recently been promoted. As a result their belief system could be in upheaval. The Tarot card which symbolizes that state of being enslaved is  The Devil. Often those coming for a reading tend to be aware that they are "hooked" on externals for who they are and their self-worth. They know that they "collapse" if they don't hear from their significa...

Wall Street careers are shaped by success in sizing up and exploiting risk. Now, with the ongoing layoffs, those financial professionals who are now jobless hit up against risk that's personal: Figuring out how to land and hold comparable jobs. There are bills to pay. There is a new professional identity to graft on. Suppose a former Goldman Sachs financial professional came for a Tarot reading. There are no coincidences. What is a likely pull is The Fool card. Its core message is being bold but calculating about risk. To do that, explans Jessica Dore in the 2021 book "Tarot for Change," you have to ditch preoccupation with what others might think or say.  Specifically Dore notes: "You have to get out from beneath the structure of ideas about what's orderly. You have to get okay with looking silly and being misunderstood." Often the worst source of guidance during unemployment are those on what your network used to be. Smart is reaching out to a whole new s...

 Among Tarot readers the Eight of Cups is known as The Walking Away Card. But to me that has always seemed too negative. Isn't the Tarot a platform for building optimism. My experience with doing readings in which the Eight of Cups comes up is that the client is moving towards. Rarely do human beings just walk away. That's usually emotionally too difficult. In order to let go of the known they have to envision possibility.  No, the details don't have to be all worked out. The core feeling is a lightness of being. Some label that "hope." Tarot Card Reader. Medium. Intuitive Career Coach. No-pressure complimentary consultation about what you want. Then, fees custom-made for your budget. For an appointment, please contact janegenova374@gmail.com.

Recently in a client transaction I left money - too much of it - on the table. But my dog Arizona didn't look at me any differently that day and all the days since. She sees our world together through only one lens: total love.  That's captured in the Ace of Cups among the Tarot cards. The Ace of Cups portrays love from all sources, with the universe having our backs. But the catch is this: We have to be willing to acept that love. A subtext of the card's messaging is receptivity. That's a meme in 12-step programs - let us love you until you can love yourself and don't block the passageways. Whenever life tries to beat me up, I take Arizona on the couch in my office. I allow the life to radiate. Those negative forces don't have a chance to get through. Tarot Card Reader. Medium. Intuitive Career Coach. No-pressure complimentary consultation about what you want. Then, fees custom-made for your budget. For an appointment, please contact janegenova374@gmail.com...

 So much of the chatter about mental health has to do with lowering the escalating level of clinical depression and anxiety. But what is really percolating in the collective unconscious is an epidemic of shame.  In a Tarot reading that comes up with the Five of Cups card . Most of us know that as The Spilled Milk card. In this situation the obsession from the past which human beings can't shake is: shame, including the obsessive kind. In my intuitive coaching and in participating in 12-step program sessions I bump up against taller and taller walls of shame. Because of those they are unable to zero in on and go after potential in the present. Yes, this is a form of being stuck. The first step around those walls is self-forgiveness. That requires self-love. That is, the acceptance of all of you. Your all includes strengths, talents, and the shadow side.  In her teachings American Buddhist nun Pema Chadron always hammers: Start on work on yourself where you are. Not where ...

 I am honored to have my thought leadership article on the challenges of career change published in O'Dwyer's Public Relations. Here you can learn about the 3 major pitfalls and the 4 success formulas. 

"Jeff Bezos, in the style of Bob Iger at Walt Dsiney, will come back to lead Amazon.com after the stock’s 50% drop last year, he [Michael Batnick of Ritholtz] reckons." -  Yahoo Finance , January 4, 2023 Some are not surprised that this could actually unfold. They were also not surprised when Iger did one of those Return of the Hero acts at distressed Disney. Those "some" have as a mindset the Zen meme: Clear Thinkng/Don't Know.  In the Tarot, that is symbolized by the Wheel of Fortune card. The message is that everything is changing, including ourselves. There is nothing we can do to cancel out that process. The sense of satisfaction investors have about the new leader could change to growing concern if that CEO is up to the challenges. In succession that shift is becoming the new usual.  Yes, Iger is back. But can he work his magic again. And, is Bezos in touch enough to restore Amazon to its innovative greatness? Zen masters would say: Clear Thinking/Don'...