Photo-Illustration: by The Cut; Photos: Getty Images
You could feel a bit cranky today, as the moon clashes with the sun in the morning, then with Saturn in the afternoon, and finally with Neptune in the evening. Nothing is coming as easy as you want it to, and you worry that everything you say keeps being misinterpreted — possibly willfully. While all of this might seem dramatic in the moment, it’s likely that your and your friends’ bad moods will blow over quickly, and today’s problems will be forgotten by tomorrow.
You might be a little lazy today — and you might feel coincidingly guilty that your work ethic seems to be slipping. You’re torn between wanting to make the most of every minute you have, and wanting to sit around doing nothing at all. Try to go easy on yourself: You can make important progress in the big picture without pushing yourself hard every single day. Rest is a necessary part of the process, so if that’s what you need right now, there’s no reason to deny yourself.
Deep down, there might be part of you that imagines that you’re to blame for the problems in your life, that you must somehow deserve all the stress and difficulty. Even if your conscious mind knows better, it’s a hard feeling to fend off. Today, especially, it’ll be easy to slip back into the headspace where you blame yourself for everything that goes wrong; your challenge is to refuse this kind of thinking. Maybe some things are your responsibility, but that doesn’t mean you deserve to be unhappy.
This could be a great day for working alongside others; there’s no need to struggle through difficult problems alone when together, you could solve them in half the time. The challenge, right now, is to actually work collaboratively: It’ll be all too easy to awaken your competitive streak. When your friends make valuable contributions, try not to take it as a personal challenge. If you can appreciate others for their own unique gifts, you’ll be able to stop striving to keep up with them and start focusing on yourself.
When it comes to goal setting, you try to be practical. Though you have big ideas about how to fix the world, you understand that you aren’t in charge of everything, and if you want to make real, impactful changes, you’ve got to be realistic. Today, though, you might be overly pessimistic in your assessment of what is and isn’t possible. Don’t set your sights too low — you’ve got more power than you give yourself credit for.
You’ve always found it irritating when people encourage you to “just get over” your difficult feelings. Maybe that’s easy for them to do, but you feel everything strongly, and if it were possible to just get over it, you’d have done so long ago. But today, while you won’t be able to permanently rid yourself of your jealousy or frustration, you can temporarily set them aside. The bad feelings will still be there, but you don’t have to let them control your actions or your life.
It’s smart not to be too trusting — you know that not everyone has your best interests in mind, and you’re cautious about who you let into your life. But today, there’s probably more of a risk of closing yourself off to someone wonderful than of opening up to someone untrustworthy. As you encounter new people, don’t dismiss your common sense entirely, but make an effort to embrace your generosity, too. It’s enough to keep an eye out for red flags; you don’t need to actively go looking for them.
You try not to be fussy about the things that don’t really matter — this way, you have the leeway to dig in your heels about the things that do. The only problem with the strategy is that it can be challenging to actually distinguish between what merits that effort. Things that seem all-consuming in the moment can turn out to be inconsequential, and vice versa. Today, you might end up fixating on the minor problems — or ignoring the big ones — but asking someone you trust for a bit of perspective will likely help.
Today, you’re likely to be disappointed by anything that isn’t grand and dramatic. Instead of being happy about your wins, you’ll feel let down that they weren’t bigger; all the slow-but-steady progress you’ve made will seem paltry and unimpressive. Try not to listen to the inner voice telling you that nothing you do is enough — achieving anything worthwhile takes time. Most of life happens in the small and ordinary moments, and there’s nothing wrong with that.
The more insecure you feel today, the more you’ll want to prove your worth to the people around you. If you could just make a strong enough case for yourself, you imagine, you wouldn’t be so stressed anymore. But imagining that you need to be — or at least, appear — perfect will only heighten your insecurity, making you feel brittle and judgmental. If the goal is to avoid doing anything wrong, you’ll always feel inadequate, but if you instead try to be accepting of yourself, you’ll have a chance to actually grow.
You aren’t the sort of person to exaggerate your own knowledge or experience — if anything, you’re more likely to downplay your skills out of caution. Any information you share is most likely reliable, and if you say that you know how to do something, it’s because you absolutely do. Just remember that not everyone is like you in this way. Today it might seem like everyone knows more than you do, but some of them are probably inflating their own expertise, so don’t be intimidated.
You might get the sense, today, that you’re constantly missing out. You’re afraid that while you’re plodding along at work, everyone else is out having adventures; while you’re feeling confused about the direction of your life, all your friends are making major strides toward their goals. But the truth is that you aren’t alone — most people don’t have life figured out, even if it seems otherwise from the outside. Everybody’s just doing their best; you haven’t fallen behind.
Most of the time, you try to view others with an open mind, basing your ultimate judgment on their actions rather than any preconceived notions. Today, though, it could be harder than usual to remain unbiased. Just try to remember that your strong reactions to people might be based more in your own emotions than in reality. Your judgments might be spot on — but stay open to the possibility that you might be a bit off base, too.
Buy Claire Comstock-Gay’s book, Madame Clairevoyant’s Guide to the Stars, here.
