YouandTheTarot

 The Tarot, as The New York Times documented, is about guiding you to self-awareness. Most mistakes, both in relationships and careers, happen because we don't know who we really are. Part of that awakening should be to recognize our shadow side. We all have it. In the 2016 movie "The Night Stalker" that's labled bluntly "evil." Real-life serial killer Richard Ramirez made ackowledging mankind's inherent evil his meme. Psychologist who broke away from his mentor Sigmund Freud - Carl Jung - coined the concept of the "shadow self" and recommended we all need to do our "shadow work." Once we own our own darkness it could become possible to forgive ourselves. In my Tarot sessions most clients struggle to reach the state of self-forgiveness. The result is that the emotional set hardens into self-hate.  We can prevent that by getting it that we are far from perfect. In America, founded by the self-righteous Puritans, that is so hard to ad...

 What drives most human beings to a Tarot card reading is pain. Usually they assume they know its source. For example, they received a "talking to" at work. Immediately they jump to the conclusion that the discomfort they feel is fear of losing their job or reducing the momentum toward climbing the ladder. Frequently, the Three of Swords card will come up. Yes, that is the pain messenger. But part of that message is to embrace the strength to dig around for the real pain center. For that professional who received the reprimand the suffering could spring from the recognition that they chose the wrong career path. It isn't the talking to per se that has them so agitated. It's that the trauma triggered a connection with the subconscious that the time is coming to phase out of that line of work.  You bet, the "threat" of a career change can be scary. Here is my article, published in O'Dwyer's PR , about the difficulty of that process. However the pain of...

"When our self-worth is tied solely to external rewards, we can spend our whole lives chasing carrots without ever feeling full." -  Insider , May 23, 2023   Back in April 2021, an atypical article in establishment  The New York Times  received and continues to receive a lot of attention. It documents how the mystical Tarot cards provide a tool for self-awareness. In addition, it explains how you can be your own Tarot reader. Here is my five-step guide for that DIY Tarot reading . That's not the only sign that those traditionally ambitious career types are searching for what is the "self" buried beneath all that wealth, power, and influence. It's part of the wellness movement sweeping through professional services such as law, management consulting, and finance. Professional anonymous networks such as Fishbowl and Reddit chronicle the pain embedded in “making it” – or scrambling to get there. Insider focuses on the journey of high achiever Khe Hy...

"These days, three to four interview rounds are the norm [for White Collar job applicants] up from one or two in years past."  -  The Wall Street Journal , May 19, 2023. This trend even has come to my line of work: Tarot reader. The usual had been a brief conversation about how we approach our art, then a 15-minute demonstration of how we actually do it. Currently, for a contract assignment I am expected to undergo three interviews.  The first one seemed to go well. But the reality of multiple ones has gotten me nervous. Today at 3 PM ET I will again have to showcase my gift. Then back at it again on Tuesday at 6 PM ET.  When I made the shift to psychic services from a White Collar career path I assumed that I had taken the exit ramp from the processes embedded in getting, holding, and moving on to better assignments for Professional Class gigs. My background is Blue Collar. I had always scorned all that corporatese. I preferred direct:  Here I am and here...

 Somehow we have evolved into a species who overthinks. Not only do we live in our heads. We increasingly trust what goes on there. The result is that the Professional Class has become stuck. That is the message of the Two of Wands.  In that Tarot card, a properous man stands with the globe in his hand and his gaze is outward. And that's that. He stands there. Like Shakespeare's Hamlet, he is frozen into indecision. He cannot take the action to get where he is and no longer wants to be to new possibilities.  The now-classic play-out of that is the unemployed who protest that they want to get back working and even though that isn't panning out they keep doing the search through worn-out 20th century formulas. It doesn't even occur to them that they should be trying out paths to a career change. Here is my recent article on career change, published in O'Dwyer's PR.   Instead they sit there in stale air, thinking. The reality - and the labor market winners have th...

  "How does the judge feel about the case so far?" It was a bench trial. That is there was no jury. The judge would hand down the decision. That was the first time a lawyer who was involved in an actual trial had contacted me. However, from the get-go, I knew to issue this disclaimer: I was not a clairvoyant, that is, the kind of psychic who predicts the future. As a Tarot reader I pick up the energy around the situation, interpret it, and then loop in with implications.  That said, I asked the lawyer if he wanted to continue with the reading with me. He did. The trial lasted four more days. He consulted with me every one of those. The sessions probably were useful. He has returned when engaged with other courtroom appearances and has referred me to other lawyers. Even in the world which operates on evidence-based data there has been an embrace of the invisible. Actually that already has gone mainstream. In an article on self-care,  The New York Times  salute...

2023. It will probably go down in business history as The Year of Volatility. The lawyers I psychically coach and the lion's share of clients for my Tarot reading service come to me in crisis. Those lawyers are in sustained states of high stress because it's the same situation with their clients: crisis.  So, here we are wondering: What business are really in and what is the mission? Often when a Tarot reading session wrapped I had second-guessed myself: Could I have done better with this or that? Currently lawyers often experience the same self-doubt.  The stress of this questioning headed me back to a marketing workshop I had taken in the late 1980s. It introduced me to the thinking of the late Harvard Business School Marketing Professor Ted Levitt. Levitt mandated that organizations, at least those intent on growth, keep asking themselves: What business are we really in? Had the railroads answered "transportation," they would have continued flourishing. Proba...

  "An epidemic of loneliness is plaguing Americans, jeopardizing well-being, health and sense of belonging." -  BBC ,  May 2, 2023  It is also upending productivity in the workplace and triggering a new form of burnout. That's what  US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy has documented.  Twelve-step programs such as Alcoholics Anonymous finger loneliness as a trigger for substance abuse.  In  Leaders Magazine,  chair of Paul Weiss Brad Karp hammers how collaboration is the glue which holds all businesses, including that law firm, together: "A collaborative culture – built on shared values, mindset, vision, and ways of interacting – is foundational to the success of any business, but it’s particularly important to a law firm partnership."  There was a time clients came to me, a Tarot card reader, with a specific problem. They briefly described the situation, then listened when I provided insight and made recommendations. Now and then t...

  I travel a lot so it had been reassuring that major transportation hubs such as the Port of Authority have a  Lost & Found  unit. That brings hope that if I leave an umbrella or even (horror) a cellphone behind it might have been carted off to that department. But it wasn't until I began conducting Tarot readings that I realized that human beings also wind up in Lost & Found. With so much current financial and social disruption, more people drift into being lost. The old moorings have rotted. We feel wobbly. We doubt if we will ever be centered again. And, you bet, we are scared. Most often the Tarot card which comes up in that kind of reading is the  Hierophant.   The card's message is about restoring an identity that is social - that is, a shared one. Again, the person belongs. The connection might have been broken through a layoff, a career shift, a divorce, being ghosted, or even a relocation across town or states. The journey to a new kin...

In the major arcana in the Tarot the Chariot card has two messages - both a perfect fit for the current preoccupation with earning a good living in these disruptive times. One message is: Yes, be strategic. Observe the rule book. Be determined. The other message is: Simultaneously, go with the flow, follow the current. Ignore conventional success guidance. I advise clients that the second message is the more important one. In my intuitive career coaching and in reading posts and comments on professional anonymous networks such as Reddit and Fishbowl I bump up against this tragedy: Professionals did "everything right," at least in terms of the professional playbook, and yet they weren't promoted, have been frozen out, or even terminated.  How I size up those situations is that they somehow missed what was really going on and therefore what mattered in getting ahead on a job and holding on to it. That is, they weren't going along with the flow. They weren’t foll...

"An epidemic of loneliness is plaguing Americans, jeopardizing well-being, health and sense of belonging." - BBC , May 2, 2023  There was a time clients came to me, a Tarot card reader, with a specific problem. They briefly described the situation, then listened when I provided insight and made recommendations. Now and then they would ask some questions. But, essentially I did the talking. That was then. In the past year the usual Tarot session more often than not has evolved into the opportunity for a human being to confide. They take over the Tarot reading with their talking. Initially I tried to stop that. After all, they are paying for me to provde a reading. Then I got it: These human beings need to talk. I have to assume they have no one else in their lives to confide in. I allow them to talk. Within about 10 mintues it is obvious to me that they have gotten some relief. There is less tension in their voice. They don't talk as rapidly. At that point I can shift int...