Tarot for Real Life – Navigating the Crossroads

What’s possible with a tarot reading?

I have been thinking about this a lot as I’ve been creating my first tarot course.  So many of my clients are brand new to tarot when we start working together. They’re introduction to tarot is usually through some of the common pop culture tropes that I spoke to in my last two blogs, detailing tarot in pop culture which you can read here and here if you missed them.

They don’t realize that tarot can help inform choices in your daily life, bring insights about your year, or act as a mirror to some of your deepest fears and anxieties.  Sure, tarot is a fun experience and it can be exciting and compelling to get a reading. However, tarot can also be functional in your everyday life.

Today, I want to talk about how I use tarot to navigate transition both personally and with clients. Using tarot as a tool for navigating transitions in career or personal life can provide insight that is invaluable.  It is also the most common theme among the readings I do.

People find themselves at a crossroads, unsure which option is best for them, or torn between what they know is best and what they feel obligated to do.  A Decision Maker Reading can help to start to tease those things apart.

In this type of reading, I look at the many different options available to the client.  I pull cards based on each possibility and we look at what they can learn from those possibilities. 

This is the reading I did when I was ready to leave my corporate job.  I knew it was time to leave but I had so much fear about leaving. I equate money to stability so the idea of giving up a corporate paycheck was insane to me.  I had a good job that provided a lot of autonomy and flexibility. I felt foolish for even considering letting it go. But I was also feeling a very strong pull to come out of the spiritual closet and start to share about what I had been experiencing for the past few years.  

I wanted to take my healing work full time and I was feeling a strong pull to do that.  Even with lots of signs that I was on the right track, though, I still felt unsure. I spent my entire career in corporate America and giving up all that hard work to go out on my own seemed kind of insane.

So I sat down with my deck and gave myself a reading.  I asked what I would experience if I stayed at my current job.  Then, I asked what I would experience going out on my own. Finally, I asked what I would experience if I found something part time to help me feel more stable as I started to grow my own business.  

Going out on my own full-time was the clear winner.  These type of readings aren’t really about getting a yes or no as much as they are letting you know what you will experience with each option.  

I was anxious and overwhelmed by how scary it felt to let go of the structure I had in my life and throw myself full force into my own business.  I never wanted to be a business owner. I never had a desire to live an entrepreneurial lifestyle. It seemed very stressful to me (sidenote: it can be at times).  But the cards also gave me insight into how I would feel.  

With this reading, I did take note of the Star showing up in this part of the spread telling me I was honing in on a career that would not only bring healing to the world, but also to myself.  I would be tending to my own wounds by helping others heal and grow. It showed strength and empowerment.

When I looked at staying at my old job, I pulled a lot of cards indicating burnout, resentment, and feeling undervalued.  I already knew that was how I was feeling in my heart, and I think I also knew that it wouldn’t change, but there was a small part of me holding onto the idea that I might be able to stay there and keep running my business on the side.

Logically I was drawn to finding some part time work while I started to run my business.  However, I could see clearly in the spread that I would end up feeling too burned out and overwhelmed by trying to manage another new job along with my work.  The cards were spelling out that it wouldn’t be much different than how I was feeling at my current day job, so why go somewhere else and struggle the same way for less benefits.

The spread showed me what was possible in each scenario. It validated what I was already feeling, and gave me specific information about each option.  It didn’t decide for me. I took that information and made a decision that I already felt intuitively drawn to. It validated my own intuition.

This is what I do with the Decision Maker spread with my clients.  They get to list out the many options at their crossroads and see where each path leads.  It’s not all about good or bad. Not every reading is so clear but you might see something like, the new job you were eyeing looks like your dream job, but if you took it you would have to do a lot of presentations and public speaking and you hate that.  The purpose of the spread is to show you that so you can reduce decision-making anxiety, and be as prepared as possible.

I see tarot as this mirror that provides a reflection of what is possible.  I love doing these readings and I am so excited to start teaching other people about these readings in my upcoming tarot course.  

Starting this Friday, April 24th at 3 PM ET I will be hosting a FREE three-part training called Tarot of Real Life: Get Your Shit Together with the Tarot.  This training will talk about the top three mistakes people make when starting to learn the tarot, discover the neuroscience behind how tarot helps with decision making, and learn the steps to start reading tarot quickly and effectively to manage anxiety and learn to trust yourself.  You can sign up for that free training here.  Or you can get on the waitlist for my Tarot Course, Practical Tarot for Everyday Intuitives here.

And of course, if you are at a crossroads and learning tarot is not your thing and you just want me to do it for you, you can sign up for a Decision Maker online reading you can do that here.  

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