Tarot's Three of Cups - Needing "Permission" to Experience Joy

 Ginni Rometty had held a variety of leadership positions at IBM during some challenging times.

What Didn’t Catch Fire (at least not yet)

Therefore we might have assumed that if she published a book after she hung it up, the memoir would catch fire. That hasn't seemed to happen, at least not yet. That is despite the fact that a target market for the book includes IBM employees, past and present. Current employee count is 345,000. The numbers from the past are massive. Millions.

Yet, "Good Power," published March 7, 2023, has only 27 reviews. That is unusually low for a major player. Shouldn’t more folks have lots more to say? What about the millions who did entire careers at IBM before its no-layoff policy went extinct? What about the vendors?

The week it came out the Amazon rankings were in the 500s. Very quickly those plunged to 4,735.

Keeping Our Sad Story To Ourselves

Since I had been a former IBM full-time employee and then a consultant I had to figure this out. To do that I swung by a large brick-and-mortar Barnes & Noble yesterday. There it was: There actually were books with “adversity” in the title. And there were lots of them. They included:

“Option B: Facing Adversity”

“The Gift of Adversity”

“The Art of Embracing Adversity”

“The Adversity Hack.”

Wasn’t the possible fatal flaw of “Good Power” this: It settled in all-cozy with an overworked meme. Yesyesyes, the adversity one.

Rometty tells her sad story of her father leaving her mother, three siblings, and herself when she was a teenager. That she positions and packages as the formative experience which became the platform for strength and problem-solving in business. A cute add-on is the humiliation of “the talk” about her weight.

Needing “Permission” To Feel Joy

Even in 12-step programs, known for oversharing of that sort of thing, I have observed something. There seems to be a pull-back from reinforcing a recitation in great detail of those broken pieces from a life. Instead what’s being encouraged is the theme of celebrating one’s blessings. What is being put out there is the reflection: What good is happening for you today? If nothing, why not restart the day and see what happens.

In the Tarot readings I give (a sideline in addition to my career coaching) there is a palpable shift in mood when the Three of Cups comes up. That mystical card “gives permission” to back off a preoccupation with problems and to experience joy. Yes, human beings need to be told it’s okay to not only celebrate their life but to strive to make that the new usual.

Opening To Possibility

Back in March 2020, what triggered my fascination (obsessive) with law firm Paul Weiss Chair Brad Karp was what I picked up as an aura of joy.

From the get-go I retrieved all the media clips about Karp. Yes, there were the predictable points of sadness in a lifecycle: the deaths of parents. But the rest was a spilling-over of optimism. Although he took over the top job in the worst of times for law firms – 2008 – he didn’t lay off associates. Here was no sad sack.

My mission has been to learn from him. That I have. The blessings include being able to turn myself in these confusing times toward possibility. I struggled out of glutted content-creation to in-demand intuitive coaching and Tarot readings. Business is brisk.

Incidentally, along this new journey I got it, unlike Rometty, that all that stuff that “they” did to The Professional Woman back then (like her, I am a boomer and like her I attract the poundage) is so old.

In Praise Of Followership

What I also noticed at Barnes & Noble were the tons of books on leadership. Couldn’t Rometty have selected followership? We followers should be saluted. In my decades as an executive ghostwriter I helped enhance the brands of corporate leaders. Even a few politicos along the way. How proud of that I am.

The Profound Responsibility Of Editors

The publisher for “Good Power” is Harvard Business Review Press. Where were the editors?  Or maybe the wrong ones were assigned to this publishing venture.

Takeaway

You can change the channel in your head from adversity toward a capacity for joy. There’s a Tarot spell for that. Go to the book “Tarot Spells” by Janina Renee, page 137 for the Emotions Section. Spell 37 is “For cheerfulness, good moods, and a positive outlook.”

Tarot Card Reader. Medium. Intuitive Career Coach.

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