How we handle ourselves when things don’t go our way says a lot about our character. It’s also very predictive of what is likely to happen next.

If we blame others, we are likely to not make the self-corrections needed to create a win in the future.

If we blame ourselves, we are likely to stay in a place of low self-esteem rather than rising to meet our goals at the next opportunity.

No one likes to lose. No one enjoys failure. Yet, on the way to achieving our goals it is inevitable that we will make some mistakes, and that not everything will go the way we want.

Very often people decide not to even try to set goals for what they truly want because they fear the possibility of failure so much.

Many people have childhood trauma based on the way their parents, teachers or peers dealt with their academic, social or athletic losses. These childhood losses, and the scars they leave, very often determine how willing we are to take risks and fight for our success in adulthood.

I think the best way to process failure is to decide that failure doesn’t really exist. In the absence of success there is the opportunity to learn in order to create future success. Alternatively, sometimes when we fail at something, we can take it as an opportunity to make a different choice. If we fail an important test, it might mean that we need to redouble our efforts, study harder and pass it next time. Or, it might mean that we are better suited to take a different path. In either case, we can see that failure as a win because it moves us closer to finding our path and achieving our goals.

Sometimes we deal with people in our families and at work who make us feel like a loser. Sometimes we do this to ourselves with negative self-talk. Yet, our language is full of expressions that remind us that we can’t always expect a win.

“You can’t win them all!”

“You win some, you lose some.”

“It’s not who wins or loses, it’s how you play the game.”

Whether we are thinking about sports, business or politics, our culture is often focused on winning, and on valuing competition over cooperation. Yet, very often, when we cooperate with each other, everyone has an opportunity for success.

The best way to create success for all is to consider that our personal wins do not necessarily mean besting another, they mean doing our personal best. When we fail to meet our mark, rather than feeling badly about the loss, we need to discover what we have learned, and use that to move us forward, toward our future success.

See Me in the Tampa Bay Area!

I will be back in the Tampa Bay Area July 19 through 22. I will be available for house calls and parties while I am there. As usual when I visit the area, we will have a Tarot Meetup! Join us Sunday, July 21, at 3 pm at the Panera Bread in Lutz.

Please reach at to me at 561-655-1160 to schedule your in-person reading, and make plans to join us for our free informal tarot workshop at Panera!

Divination to Find the Win

The term ‘FTW’ often means ‘For the Win’ in gaming. Here, we will use it to mean ‘Find the Win’, because that is the best way to process something that feels like failure.

When something doesn’t go your way, the best thing to do is to consider what positive things you can take away from the experience.

What did you learn?

How did this experience help you?

What caused things not to go your way, and what can you learn from that?

How can you mitigate problems that come from your less-than-desirable results?

These are questions you can ask yourself in reflection and meditation, but also in divination.

Simply shuffle your tarot or oracle cards and pull one card to answer each of these questions.

Consider if there are other questions you want to know about what happened, how you can process it and what comes next. Pull a card for each of these questions.

Continue this process until you have found a way to frame your experience that is helpful instead of hurtful.

Use this process to find the win anytime you have an undesirable outcome. This way, you will spend less time mourning your losses, and more time getting yourself on track!

The Week in Review

This week I shared a post about reading for people who are not present. In the tarot world we call this ‘third-party reading’. There are many ethical considerations when doing these sorts of readings. In this post I share my personal ethics and ideas about this thorny issue.

If you missed my Three-Card Reading for the week on Facebook Live, you can find it in archive on YouTube.

From Around the Web

T. Susan Chang is exploring astrology and tarot in her blog. It’s definitely worth reading her posts to help understand the way astrology associates with the tarot cards.

The Tarot Blog Hop happened on the Summer Solstice. Here is the Master List. You can follow the links to see what eleven tarotists had to say about handling timing with tarot.

Here is one tarotist’s take on cards of success and failure.

Cards for Your Consideration

There are many cards in tarot that can speak of competition, wins and losses. My three favorites are the Five of Swords, the Five of Wands and the Six of Wands.

In the Five of Swords we see an unavoidable battle. There will definitely be a winner and a loser. Very often I see this card as a warning to gird your loins, rise to the battle and fight to win.

When reversed or ill-dignified, there is a sense of cooperation, diplomacy and negotiation.

The Five of Wands shows a conflict that might be playful, or creative, or acrimonious, depending on the situation. It may be that too many cooks are spoiling the meal, or that we have too many ideas on how to proceed.

When reversed or ill-dignified, we may be avoiding a necessary conflict.

In the Six of Swords we see a hero riding home from battle, victorious. To me, this card predicts success, and urges us to believe in our own possibilities for achievement. This card can speak to the positive side of a competitive nature.

When reversed or ill-dignified, there is a feeling of not winning. Sometimes, when I see this card reversed, it seems like my client is feeling like a loser.

In which cards do you see winning, losing and competition?

Upcoming Events and Tours

Tarot Topics Newsletter
Volume 2 Issue 27
July 3, 2019