"Let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance."--Franklin D. Roosevelt

    This morning I had a client who kept receiving the Fool card reversed. She was scared of many things, afraid to move forward with business plans that the cards indicated would actually be quite profitable, afraid to charge a fair price for her services for fear that people wouldn't want to pay them, afraid to say "no" to people who were taking advantage of her kindness, etc. In other words, she was finding it difficult to ignore her nagging fears and just ACT in her best interests, to risk failing in the interest of learning how to fly.

   
    In the beautiful version of the Fool card by Melissa Launay that is pictured above (image from the Google Creative Commons), you can see how the Fool's eyes are uplifted and fixated on a butterfly that flutters forward. He follows the butterfly's path, unaware and unworried about the potential risks he faces in doing so. Butterflies symbolize joyful transformation and metamorphosis. As he follows the path before him, the potential is like that of the potential of a caterpillar. A caterpillar emerges from its cocoon, where it has been in the dark, unaware, sleeping, changing, and it FLIES. It flies despite not ever having learned how to fly. Likewise the Fool is prepared to fly.
    Sometimes our fears, represented in the card's imagery by the dog who pulls the Fool backward, do protect us from impending danger. The dog (our fears) want to protect us. But sometimes our fears are the very things that hold us back from our greatest potential. We need experience in order to thrive. The client who came to me today had an idea for a business project that has tremendous potential. Even if her worst fears were realized about this project, she would still be losing out very little. If she takes the leap, however, the sky is the limit! The Fool tells us to strike a balance between INSPIRATION (the butterfly) and CAUTION (the dog). An over-reliance on either could be our undoing, but a healthy balance between the two will take us to new heights of achievement and self-realization! Again, the SKY IS THE LIMIT.         Take a leap of faith:


    I relate to my client's fears because I continually have to work against my own over-reliance on caution. I find myself at times fearful to act because I don't know what the outcome will be. Recently I submitted an article to a local periodical and fretted and fretted over what the outcome might be. Why worry? The worst that could possibly happen is that they won't publish my article. The best outcome would be that they do publish it and the article allows me to reach new potential clients, or even that they might be interested in publishing other articles of mine in the future as well.

    What fears are holding you back today? Verbalize them (i.e., I am afraid if I submit this article for publication, it will be rejected, or I am afraid to charge what I am worth because a potential client may not want to pay that amount). When you verbalize the fear, you gain power over it because you realize how insignificant it really is. Perhaps the article won't be published by periodical A, but if I had never submitted it, I would never know! (I still don't know, but I'll be calling the editor on Monday!). If my client charges a fair price for her services, there may be people who are unwilling to pay that price, BUT those people are likely not the clients she would want anyway, because they want her to give more than they are willing to give in return. When she charges what she is worth, she will attract clients who are willing to pay her what she is worth! She will never attract the payments she is worthy of if she doesn't face her fear. Make sense?
    Verbalize your fear. Acknowledge the REAL consequences of acting on your beautiful inspirations. If the fears are valid, are there ways to minimize potential damage while maximizing potential success?

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