One of the easiest ways to get a basic overview of this kind of [...]]]> Horoscope readings aren’t really meant to arm you with excuses about your life’s failures learning opportunities. But they can provide insight about why, for example, you’re not yet the head of your company, President of the United States or, you know, gainfully employed.

One of the easiest ways to get a basic overview of this kind of problem is by looking at where the planets fall in your horoscope chart. For a really basic understanding, you don’t even have to know which planet is which, or what they mean. But if many of them are bunched down at the bottom of the horoscope, it’s probably harder for you, on average, to come out of your shell, promote yourself and maintain a consistent climb toward your goals. On the other hand, if you have lots of planets hanging out atop your horoscope chart, you likely have the opposite problem: runaway ambition, very little to ground you at the end of the day.

Thomas Moore gives us a great pair of real-life images — towers and ruins — to illustrate these problems. Towers, he says, represent ambition and departure from the past, while ruins symbolize groundedness and a sense of being connected to where we’ve been.

I don’t see towers as places of power as much as products of anxiety and battlements of fear, the shadow elements of our ambitions toward perfection. … To honor ruins would be to express our ties to the past and to acknowledge the wisdom of those who didn’t enjoy our technologies and information. (Moore, The Re-enchantment of Everyday Life, pp. 94-95)

Moor’s insight echoes astrological wisdom. A top-of-the-chart, tower-of-ambition lifestyle can lead to excessive anxiety and workaholism; it can separate us from the things that most people agree really matter in life: family, home, roots. Nothing is ever big enough, tall enough, high enough.

On the other hand, a bottom-of-the-chart, holed-up-in-a-cave lifestyle can sink us into depression and lethargy, even hopelessness. We become afraid to express our individuality, to differentiate ourselves through goals and achievements and even quirks.

Both psychic structures are necessary at different times of life, but choosing one to the exclusion of the other can be harmful. It can separate us from essential parts of ourselves, and even belie our weaknesses in job applications and interviews. The highly-driven “tower type” will leak his ambition for the CEO seat when he’s interviewing with the CEO: generally not a great interview tactic. The “ruins type” often doesn’t get out enough to practice simply talking to people, much less to make herself visible and prove her uniqueness to potential employers. She might be too focused on the past and not enough on the future, the ambitions of the interviewer’s company.

Lucky for us, the horoscope chart not only describes our natural tendencies, it also suggests ways to overcome them.

And interestingly, whether you’re trapped in the tower or trapped in the ruins, the solution is the same: Get out and interact with people. That doesn’t mean managing, directing or leading others. It means: Talk and listen. Observe, put yourself out there, take back what’s offered you. Offer something in return. Exchange ideas, laughter, recipes. Move from a vertical orientation — too much looking up, or too much looking down — to a horizontal one, where you meet the world eye to eye, across the table, as a dance partner or a customer or a friend.

For some people that means networking. For someone else it might mean therapy, career counseling or life coaching (or seeing an astrologer!). For still others it could be having coffee with someone you’ve been neglecting, or taking a day off with your partner, or even going on a blind date. Whatever it is, it’s taking a break from the singular focus on that ladder from the ground to the stars. It’s becoming well rounded, interesting and interested.

If you’re floundering in the tower or in the ruins, engage with humans. Make eye contact. Listen. Talk. Listen some more, and some more, and some more. Enjoy it. Repeat.

Something will come.

Photo credits: Tower, Ruins

The tool uses the template of the horoscope chart to guide self-employed people in examining their internal life for its potential effects on their business and livelihood. Part II, just posted this week, asks questions about how your [...]]]> Just a quick note that I’ve posted the next installment of my self-assessment for aspiring (and established) entrepreneurs here.

The tool uses the template of the horoscope chart to guide self-employed people in examining their internal life for its potential effects on their business and livelihood. Part II, just posted this week, asks questions about how your relationship with possessions, both tangible and not, impacts your sense of personal power and self-worth. It also asks you to examine the effects on your business decisions of envy, jealousy or plain old want of what others have.

It’s an interesting and detailed exploration that is rarely touched on in traditional “Am I ready to work for myself?” questionnaires.

Click here to access the Introduction, which describes the tool and how to use it, and click here to access Part I, which explores the image you project into the world and what you expect to get back from it.

Keep your eyes out for Part III next week. It will cover where you come from and where you’re going in terms of unique contributions to your field.

Once all six sections are posted, I’ll post a final PDF version of the entire booklet, which includes tables and tools, that you can print out for your own use.

He isn’t [...]]]> A fellow astrologer recently asked about earning a living through astrology. Though he doesn’t put it exactly in these words, his question boils down to three things: (1) What I do has value. (2) What I do helps people. (3) What I do is my calling. So why aren’t I making enough money at it?

He isn’t alone. I’ve heard his ponderings echoed many times over among astrologers and in other circles: massage therapists, energy healers, hypnotherapists, even psychotherapists. I know writers, artists and performers who struggle with similar frustrations. Why is this so damn hard?

As I chewed on the question, it struck me that the astrological triumvirate of livelihood was contained in my colleague’s question:

• 2nd House: Do I value what I do? Check.
• 6th House: Are others served well when I do it? Check.
• 10th House: Does it bring me closer to my highest self? Check.

Then why, oh why, are we still toiling behind filing cabinets and cash registers and delivery truck steering wheels just to fill the mewling mouths of our young? Why can’t we free ourselves from the leaden weight of worry, grow light with the shininess of self-realization?

Before I was a full-time astrologer, I was a fundraiser for nonprofit organizations. We asked these same questions, but we said them a little differently — something more like: Do we believe in this program? Does the community benefit from it? Does it help fulfill our mission?

I suppose any supervisor of widget-makers or fast-food restaurant manager could ask the same things, in yet again a different way: Can we get behind this hamburger? Do our customers big-heart it? Are we absolutely the best Yummy-in-my-Tummy Burger we could be?

It boils down to meeting needs in three areas: self-with-a-little-s, others, and Self-with-a-big-S. That last is kinda transcendent.

But as my bosses in the nonprofit sector liked to point out, meeting needs (even everyone’s needs) isn’t always enough. You can’t just educate people about the value of your work and watch them jump on board. They have a million causes to choose from — a million astrologers, massage therapists and energy healers; a million poets, painters and dancers. Six billion hamburgers and counting. Lots and lots and lots of people are already sold on your 6th House (what you do serves them — or could serve them — well). Ninety-nine percent of them don’t care about your 2nd (what you value) or your 10th (what you’re called to do).

So what’s an entrepreneur to do?

I went spelunking around the rest of the chart to figure out what I was missing. Because, yes, my colleague’s question quickly became a question about my own business as well.

And what I came to was this: Entrepreneurship — especially entrepreneurship that’s led by a calling — is way, way, waaay more than how you make your living. It’s more than value and service, more even than marketing. It’s your life and your lifestyle. It’s what you eat and breathe and play and dream. It touches, and proceeds from, and knits into, every single aspect of your everyday, your relationships, your self-conduct, your belief system, your trust in the world (or lack thereof), your internal life.

And that means the whole entire horoscope chart is implicated, from the 1st House to the 12th, and back, and around, and across. To take some simple examples:

• Just because people are helped by what I do (6th House) doesn’t mean they value it (8th House) in the same way I do (2nd House).
• Just because it’s my calling (10th House) doesn’t mean the people I’m closest to (4th House) will automatically support it.
• Just because I have a nice website (1st House) doesn’t mean it’s attracting enough people (5th House) or the right people (11th House).

And so on.

I’ve been running back and forth across the chart with these ideas, trying to ask (and answer, for myself) all the relevant questions about financial success in the land of the business owner, trying to see how they all get caught up in each other, trying to untangle them a bit for your benefit and mine.

There are lots, and lots, and lots of questions that dig deeper than the usual 10 Questions to Ask Before You Quit Your Day Job.

I’m now organizing those questions into a coherent and usable framework that you can use to appraise and tackle your entrepreneurial predicaments. I want to say, “It’s guaranteed to help you!” But I know that’s not enough.

But it will.

So keep your eyes out.

Photo credits: Lemonade stand, Crowd, Chelada