To Change your Life, Start with your Feelings
A one-card tarot reading
I’ve been trying to radically change my life for the past year or so. I want to eat healthier, be more spiritual, and start a whole new career. I went back to school to get a degree in psychology while also working full-time. It’s a lot.
And like many of you reading this, I’ve fallen into the common trap of trying to change from the outside-in, instead of inside-out. I’ve been focused on trying to change my behavior — adding more books to my already-full backlog, buying more training courses, berating myself for not exercising enough — doing all these external things in a desperate, desperate attempt to turn into the person I want to be. I’ve been mentally, emotionally and spiritually worn out, but still trying to get the “perfect” habits that will make me feel successful and worthy.
Needless to say, it hasn’t worked out so far. Instead, this is what I’ve learned:
Trying to heal by focusing on your behavior rather than the emotions behind it isn’t sustainable in the long term.
Okay, let’s get to the tarot part…
The man in the 2 of Pentacles card is desperately trying to juggle his coins, ignoring the choppy water behind him. If the Pentacles represent our behavior and water represents our spiritual self, then you get where I’m going with this. No lasting change can be created on top of turbulent waters. And even if you’re able to start a new habit, imagine how much harder it’ll be to keep going when you’re constantly fighting hidden battles.
Real change, the kind of change that takes root deep in the soul, is not formed through just trying out a new behavior and ignoring everything else. In fact, I believe that behavior is the result of the change that’s already taken place. It’s the gift bag you get for showing up. You don’t go to an event and head straight for the shiny stuff. You stay, do the hard work, and then get rewarded at the end.
The Takeaway:
If you want to change your life — if I want to change my life — then we have to stop trying to fix things at the superficial level. We have to be willing to dig deep and look at the mental, spiritual, and emotional hangups that are holding us back.
We have to make time to listen to our pain.
We have to create space to sit with our fears.
We can’t run from our uncomfortable feelings and slap a new habit on in the hopes that it’ll stick and transform us overnight.
Healing is gritty and painful and annoyingly repetitive. But it’s also the surest way to lasting transformation. So here’s wishing true healing for you, and for me.
Every day, your mind and soul fight for your attention. (Spoiler alert: the mind usually wins.) As a spiritual practitioner and psychology graduate student, I use tarot to teach myself how to quiet the mind and turn up the volume of the soul. If you’d like to learn with me, please take a look at my website.
