I enjoy reading my horoscope. I don’t make major life decisions based on it, but it’s helpful for me when processing information. It’s almost like having a daily therapist ask me, “Is that the only way to think about that?”, which is by and far one of the most helpful questions I learned to ask in therapy. We get so focused on our interpretation of events that it is sometimes hard to see that someone might have had a different experience. Horoscopes, tarot, and oracles cards tend to reframe major issues as moments of transformation- shedding the skin of who we were to become a new version of ourselves. It’s a painful, awkward process, but necessary if we want to grow and develop into better people.
That can mean leaving bad habits behind, or saying goodbye to toxic relationships to friends and family, learning healthy selfishness or even just making the effort to eat all your servings of vegetables every day. One of the major steps in maturity (IMO) is learning to be self-aware. Being able to identify poor behavior in yourself, and then to apply whatever techniques necessary to adjust accordingly. This involves quite a bit of pride-humbling, which is a major hurdle to achieving this goal. Not everyone has the capacity to look at their own actions and say, “Wow, I messed up and behaved badly”. That would mean admitting you were wrong, saying you are sorry, and working through whatever emotion was triggered. It’s not an overnight change- but nothing real ever is.
But for some reason, a lot of people really struggle with this step. It is almost impossible for some people to look themselves in the eye and say, “I made a mistake”. I often joke that my anxiety doesn’t allow me the luxury of that ignorance— my mistakes are on play 24/7 in my head, painfully detailed in technicolor. Because of this, I put a lot of time and effort into making decisions- there will be no escaping a poor one, so I take as much time as needed to make a good one. We put so much emphasis on how EVERYONE makes mistakes, but we don’t really seem to believe that when it comes to the nobility of taking responsibility for your own actions. We are more than happy to spout that to other people who have messed up, but it’s a cold comfort when your butt is up on the chopping block.
But what I think they are missing is the freedom that comes from being upfront about stuff like that- there is a major confidence boost that comes from accepting not only your strengths but your weaknesses. We all have at least one major flaw, and there is absolutely no sense in pretending that we don’t. No one escapes life without trauma, so everyone is dealing with something. Time to own up to it and take charge of your actions in life. You have so much more free will than you think you do, so take the gift you are given and make the most of it. Be open about messing up, be quick about apologizing, and be gracious about allowing that process in others as well. We are all doing the best we can, and no one is perfect. Let’s give ourselves a break today.