I had a client who wanted to focus only on the “big sexy deals” of their business but was resistant to commit to any specific daily actions that would eventually put those deals in place. As justification for this resistance, my client quoted something they had head from Tony Robbins:
Don’t major in minor things.
Of course, this is a mis-understanding of Tony’s advice.
“Minor things” isn’t the same as small tasks.
As another classic aphorism reminds us, the devil’s in the details.
Often in life, the big things are found in the little things. In any area of life, big results are the cumulative effect of a lot of small things done consistently over time.
As Tony himself says, most “big shifts” start as “2-millimeter shifts.”
The Skill of Holding Opposites
Life is full of seemingly contradictory advice and conflicting truths such as these. It’s part of our job to learn how to hold these opposites.
One piece of the skill of “holding opposites” is learning when to apply each truth.
As with everything else in life, it always comes down to timing.
There’s a time for focusing on the big picture and a time for focusing on the details. If you don’t know what season you’re in, you’ll get stuck trying to focus on both at once.
Mercury in Virgo 2024: Focus on the Details and Structure
As Mercury enters the sign of Virgo on July 25, it pulls our focus to the details of our schedules, to the practicalities of how we organize our daily routine and work, so we can be in service to our larger vision.
Mercury in Virgo will take place in two parts. It will be in Virgo from July 25-August 15, 2024 again from September 9–26, 2024. This 2-part transit is because Mercury will station retrograde in Virgo and go back into Leo.
Mercury will station retrograde on August 4, at 4° Virgo and will travel back to 21º of Leo, where it will station direct on August 28.
Read: 5 Things to Know About Mercury Retrograde in Virgo
Mercury will return to Virgo again from September 9–26, 2024.
Mercury is strong in Virgo, which is one of its two home signs.
Mercury in Virgo invites us to explore how to
- focus on the big picture without overlooking the details.
- hold high standards without getting caught in the myth of perfection.
- seek improvement without devolving into destructive self-criticism.
Also Read: 5 Ways to Improve Your Life When Mercury is in Virgo
5 ways to work with Mercury in Virgo:
Here are 5 ways to work with Mercury in Virgo:
(1) Create a Plan
“Don’t major in minor things” is a classic sentiment of someone who has their natal Sun in Pisces, as Tony Robbins does. It’s also what you’d expect from someone who is a big picture visionary leader, or people who have ADHD. I personally relate well to that mindset.
For people who are neurodivergent or creative, big-picture visionaries (often these are the same people), systems, structures, and routines can feel stifling, and restricting. The admin parts of life and business can feel tedious and boring. They don’t do much to boost our dopamine.
Big picture strategy is infinitely more exciting and stimulating. But without the structure of daily rituals and routines, the strategic ideas and visions remain illusory.
Pisces represents the ocean of dreams. But if you actually want to cross the ocean, you’re going to need to build a boat. You’ll need a plan: a blueprint, materials, and a schedule to get it done.
That’s the purview of Virgo, which sits opposite Pisces in the map of the zodiac.
In Virgo, one of it’s home signs, Mercury is all about the details of the plan.
(2) Implement Practical Solutions and Systems
Virgo is an earth sign, which gives it a drive to skill and utility. It tries to make things that are useful and practical. It aims to be efficient and effective.
In Virgo, Mercury assimilates and digests what it has learned to streamline the daily toil of working and communicating.
Mercury in Virgo brings a focus to finding practical solutions for our daily routines, rituals, and the admin of life.
This is a time to consider how to organize and streamline your systems to be more efficient and effective in your creative work and service.
If something hasn’t been working, Mercury in Virgo can help us see a simple solution that might have been staring us in the face.
(3) Apply Discernment to Your Routines
As the last sign of summer, Virgo is where we sort the harvest. This gives Virgo its qualities of discernment and helpfulness. It assimilates, digests, and applies information.
If a system isn’t working, it’s tempting to completely discard it and start over. Before you do so, consider that you might just need a minor tweak. Little changes can have an outsized impact. The big things are often found in the little things.
The devil’s in the details.
Instead of wholesale throwing out, get curious. Look for the small “2-millimeter shifts” that can create a big impact.
Maybe you just need to make a small adjustment to your schedule or change up your work environment. Perhaps rearranging the sequence of your tasks can make you more efficient in how you get them done.
(4) Refine Your Ideas
Mercury in Virgo is highly analytical. Virgo, a sign of routines and daily rituals, is the place where repetition is welcomed. This is a great time to test, retest, and refine your ideas until you find the idea or the approach that works.
Repetition may feel tedious and boring, but it creates revelation. Create a routine and keep with it. Tweak it until you find what works for you. Then test it some more.
(5) Clarify Your Standards
.The analytical nature and focus on the details that come with Mercury in Virgo can make this transit a breeding ground for perfectionism and self-criticism, which can easily create paralysis.
This is where we must come back to the advice to not sweat the small stuff.
The invitation of Mercury in Virgo is to get clear on our preferences and standards without devolving into perfectionism or criticism of ourselves or others.
Without clarity of standards, we allow everything in or we reject it all.
The more clear we can be about our standards — what we are willing to accept and what we are not willing to accept — the easier it is to be discerning about what fits and what works for us.
[…] Gemini, Mercury is all about the conversations and ideas. Mercury in Virgo wants to plan, sort, and get into the details for the purpose of bringing those big ideas into […]