My thanks to Colette Baron Reid for creating “The Wisdom of Avalon Oracle Deck
One of the reasons I love using tarot and oracle cards for divination is that the wisdom I receive tends to be not necessarily what I want but rather exactly what I need at the moment. As was with the most recent reading I did for myself.
You see I have a couple of ideas rolling around in my head that I am considering taking on as projects. While I have no problem coming up with creative ideas and detailing them in my head, I also tend to cause those same great ideas to die a painful death from being overanalyze to the point that they never get a chance to see the light of day as a manifested project.
My imagination grows my ideas so big in my head that I am overcome with fear and doubt that I don’t have the skills and the resources to actually make the dream become a reality so I talk myself out of doing the majority of these big brainwaves and stay safely in my comfort zone.
Does this analogy sound familiar to you? Are you a big idea thinker too? Do you come up with great concepts for projects or businesses only to talk yourself out of them? And to add insult to injury, have you also seen those same or similar great ideas successfully launched by someone else even when you know you could have done it better?
Why do we sabotage ourselves this way?
It’s because we know how to think big but don’t know how to plan small.
This is what my oracle cards gently told me this week. The question that I actually ask was to be shown an obvious sign this week that the projects that I have in mind are the right path for me to follow but the cards backed me up a bit to give me some insight to help me make whichever project I chose successful.
I think this is universally helpful for anyone who suffers from big thinker syndrome like me. Here’s what I learned.
1. Check you Ego at the door. The ego is an important part of our psyche. We need it to have a sense of self. It protects our individuality and let’s us stand on our own as a person but it also wants to protect the status quo. It doesn’t like change and it will act out to defend it’s comfortable existence with whatever means possible. It fights dirty by using fear, doubt, guilt, negativity and procrastination among other stifling emotions in it’s arsenal to hold it’s ground.
If you want to move past your ego’s defenses you must acknowledge it first. Yes I am afraid. Yes I don’t know what I am doing. Yes I will have to work hard to achieve this dream. Then stand your ground. Thank you for your concern but I am going to do this anyway so stand aside and let me pass because this is what I want to do.
Your fear and doubt will probably not disappear but you will have gained the control back from you ego. Repeat exercise as often as necessary.
2. Embrace the journey. Every master was first a novice. Every great adventure has to start at the beginning. It can be hard to not know what you are doing at first and you may have to rely on others for help. You will make mistakes, that is a given. You may even fall a time or two. Get back up. The more humble you are, the more open to knowledge you leave yourself, the greater the chances of success, even if it doesn’t seem like it at the time.
Stay open to learning. Be teachable. Ask for help and when you finally become the master of your dream, pay the gifts that you were given forward so that the next novice coming up can embrace their own journey.
3. One step at a time. A journey of a thousand miles starts with just one step. Whether it is a problem that needs solving or a brilliant idea for a new business, until you get it out of your head it will always remain what it is. Get it out of your head. Write it down. List the pros and cons. The act of putting your thoughts on paper is the first step to manifesting a dream or solving a problem because now it is a concrete thing. It is there in black and white for you to see and the best part is now your mind is uncluttered and free to focus on the next step.
By taking one step at a time and focusing only on it, insures you stay on task. Your big thinking has been safely stored on a piece of paper or in an idea journal or your computer, patiently waiting for you. You can access it any time. You can even add to it as you learn more or come up with other ideas. As a big thinker that is what you do best after all. New ideas may even become future steps on your journey. Be mindful though that in order to move forward with the current project all that is required of you is to figure out, and focus on, the next step. When you look back in a week or a month or a year you can’t help but be amazed by how far you have come with your project.
This is good advise from a source far wiser than me. A life lesson that I needed much more than being told which project to choose because when it comes to great ideas and big thinking, the one thing that I know for sure is that we human beings are creative vessels and that there is an endless source of divine inspirations in which to fill us with.