What are the conditions you need to have in place to process information and ideas, to do your best learning, thinking, writing, speaking, or presenting?
What happens when, for whatever reason, you cannot create those conditions? How do you adapt to the situation as it is? How do you meet life on its terms and work with what you have in the moment?
Knowing what we need to create our best work is step one. Ideally, once we know what we need we can create those conditions consistently. But life is not always ideal.
It’s a privilege to have the ability to control all aspects of your working environment.
We can’t always wait for ideal; we need to learn how to work with what is real. Even if we could control our environment all the time, learning how to adapt can help us develop new strengths that we might otherwise miss.
The majority of the essays on my blog have been written under non-ideal conditions. If I waited for the time when I could create the ideal conditions, I’d still be swimming in a pool of unexpressed ideas.
Mercury’s annual transit through the sign of Pisces offers us an opportunity to practice skills that may not come naturally to us.
What to Know About Mercury in Pisces
Mercury is the messenger. It represents how we take in, process, and communicate information and ideas: learning, thinking, analyzing, writing, speaking. It also speaks to planning and scheduling.
In its strength, Mercury is highly analytical, precise, and detail-oriented. It cuts through clutter. It stays on schedule.
Pisces is a water sign that is dreamy and intuitive. It bridges gaps and desires oneness — the opposite of analytical, precise, and detail-oriented.
In Pisces, Mercury is in its detriment, meaning that it struggles to do the things it does best.
Mercury in Pisces is brain fog and hazy ideas that swim in your mind while you struggle to put words on the page.
When brain fog hits, you can’t approach creating and communicating in the same way. Trying to fight through it only leads to frustration.
That doesn’t mean work has to stop. The gift of Mercury in Pisces is that it teaches us other ways to convey ideas and process information.
Mercury in Pisces is more intuitive and emotionally expressive. It offers us a mirror to the sides of our communication and expression that we may not nurture as much, and an opportunity to develop those sides of ourselves.
How can we do this, specifically?
5 Ways to Work With Mercury in Pisces:
(1) Write Poetry
When I feel especially stuck in articulating ideas, I like to play with poetry. Alleviating the burden of sentence structure and grammar can often be a more effective way to communicate certain ideas. Sometimes I find poems resonate more with me than a more linear piece. And they often cut to the heart of an idea.
Personally, I love haiku.
forgo linearity
with Mercury in Pisces
speak in poetry
See what I did there?
(2) Communicate in Visuals
Make art. Draw. Paint.
Images are a universal language. Consider that in any country, you know what a stop sign means even if you can’t read the word on the sign.
Lately, I’ve been spending a lot of time practicing video editing skills and compiling videos to share on social media. I am finding this to be a fun way to tell stories and convey ideas without having to use so many words.
(3) Listen to Your Dreams
Keep a dream journal and write down any dreams you remember, as soon as possible after waking up. When we dream, we process ideas and information at the subconscious level. Notice what your dreams are telling you.
(4) Learn How to Hone Your Intuition
Intuition really just the process of analysis that has been refined over time through practice of pattern recognition.
To develop this skill you must attune to your body and learn how to understand the sensations it sends you.
The more practice you have in communicating with yourself in this way, and the more you see the patterns that arise in various circumstances, the more you can rely on intuition over detailed analysis.
(5) Create Space in Your Schedule
Mercury is that part of us that loves to plan (and even if you don’t think you love to plan, a part of you does). Schedules and structure are important tools to help us stay on track.
And, they are bound to be disrupted and interrupted by the ebbs and flows of life. You get sick. Or your kids get sick. People die. The basement floods. Or, unexpected opportunities arise.
When we try to cling too rigidly to our plans and schedules, we miss out on the opportunities that may end up providing important information for our life’s direction.
Create space in your schedule. Give yourself permission to let go of the rigid itineraries and plans and go with the flow.
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