…and how I have used Tarot to overcome them
Our inner editors can be very loud and can totally convince us that we have a range of fears from fear of success to fear of failure. But I think that if we learn to acknowledge and address these fears, we can overcome them with journaling and Tarot.
In working with my clients, and in my own writing career, I have seen the same four fears come up over and over again. And they all stem from that loud inner editor.
The fear of failure – This book is not gonna be a success. Why am I even bothering?
The fear of success – Oh, this book’s gonna be great, but then I’m gonna have to write a second book…I can’t do that!
The fear of bad reviews – Just the thought of someone critiquing our books can cause us to completely shut down.
The fear of being “found out” as a fraud, otherwise known as imposter syndrome – Oh no, someone is going to come and take me away to fraud jail because I’m really not – insert thing here causing you panic.
I don’t believe these fears ever truly go away, but I do believe that if we work on acknowledging and working through them, we can quiet them down enough so we can take action and move forward toward our dreams.
That is a huge key to getting over writer’s block.
What I would like you to do is grab a journal and answer these questions:
- Which fear are you currently dealing with or which fear do you deal with most often?
- How does this fear show up in your life?
- How does it stop you from writing and how does it affect your writing life in other ways?
Once you’ve acknowledged the fear, keep journaling, let your mind wander and really get everything out about how this fear shows up and how it stops you from pursuing your dream.
If you are dealing with a few fears, start with one and work through both exercises and then you can go back and do the same thing with another one – in fact, it might be super helpful to do these with all four fears, but let’s start with one.
Once you’ve done the journaling work, the deep inner work, and you know which fear you are dealing with – let’s do something a little fun, a little different – a 3 card Tarot spread!
Grab your favorite deck, give it a shuffle and lay down the three cards – one for each of the following questions. If you’d like to watch me go through this process in real time with my own fear, click the YouTube video above.
Facing Your Fears Tarot Spread
What is my fear trying to tell me?
How can I face my fear with grace and acceptance?
What’s one action I can take to move forward through the fear?
So that is what I would do first. I would acknowledge my fears by journaling first, and then I would work through the 3 card Tarot spread to deepen my knowledge or the fear and to come up with action steps through the fear.
Because I really don’t think our fears ever truly go away. I think we just have layers of depth where we learn more and more about ourselves, more and more about the fear and why it’s coming up and how to effectively deal with it. BUT I do think doing this work quiets the fear so that it’s not so prevalent, it’s not so in your face, and you can then take the action steps needed to move forward toward your goal.
I would love to know if you try these, what came up for you or what action step you are now going to take, so leave a comment below.
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