There are many paths to success in life, and also several paths to burnout.
If you’re an entrepreneur, one of the most certain roads to burnout is to pursue a path just because it promises to bring you a good paycheck.
Running a business is hard; even the businesses that seem glamorous on the surface are filled with mundane tasks, grunt work, and numerous obstacles. If you don’t have a vision for what you’re doing beyond the paycheck, burnout and failure are inevitable.
On a deep level, we know this, yet it can be hard to follow our soul’s calling in practice.
The lure of the stable job or big paychecks, or the expectation that we pursue a certain path, can keep us stagnant even when we feel a pull toward a path that reflects our true passions and desires.
The fear of not having enough can paralyze us from moving toward a path that allows us to fully express our potential, to use our gifts and talents in service of a deeper calling.
The current cultural paradigms that focus so much on financial reward can keep us entrenched in old patterns of thinking and doing.
The Breakthrough Question
When I work with clients who are stuck in this paradigm — who clearly express a desire to explore something new but keep looping back to the safety of what they know — I like to ask them a version of this question:
What would you want to do if money stopped being the dominant currency of the world?
Sometimes, clients can be so entrenched in the paradigm that they fight the hypothetical. They respond that “this isn’t realistic” and shut down all consideration of an alternative universe where this could be true.
For those who can embrace the hypothetical, this question often opens the door for profound breakthroughs.
When we can circumnavigate the mind’s safety alert that tells us money is security, we allows access to stirrings of the heart and soul.
And the funny thing is: when we stop thinking about work only through the lens of “how can I make more money?” we often unleash a torrent of creative ideas for new projects and new ways to innovate in our work or career.
Most great innovations begin from this paradigm: a focus on what is being called from us and what we desire to contribute, rather than a focus on how to make more money.
Reconsidering What You Value
The question I ask my clients is a portal to help them reconsider their values and what they really want, without the fear around money hijacking them.
The truth is that it’s not truly “money” that we value — it’s the security we believe it provides.
As Venus enters Aquarius on February 16, 2024 (through March 11), it invites us to reconsider and revolutionize our relationship to love, money, art, beauty, and, more generally, to what we value.
Venus in Aquarius: Revolutionize Relationships to What We Value
Venus is well-known as the planet of love, relationships, beauty, and art. It is also the planet of money and wealth. More generally, Venus represents what we value and how we determine our values.
In the zodiac, Aquarius is the sign of innovation and paradigm change, the revolutionary and the rebel. In Aquarius, a sign of collective good, we look to how we can innovate for the benefit of all, not just for the benefit of our bank accounts.
While Venus is in Aquarius, we are invited to question our current assumptions about money, wealth, relationships, and beauty, as well as how we determine what we value.
This transit motivates us to reimagine existing models and paradigms in all of these Venus areas.
What would the world look like if money stopped being the dominant currency? What would you do differently in such a world?
Maybe you would do the same thing you’re doing now. But maybe not.
Aquarius is the sign of the collective. While Venus is here, we are invited to explore our relationship to groups and community.
As noted at Moon Omens, this is a time to notice how we may feel drawn to conform in exchange for group acceptance, validation, or an illusory sense of belonging.
On the surface it might seem odd to lump relationships with money. Yet many people do this subconsciously — or intentionally.
I’ve had clients who’ve expressed beliefs such as “nobody wants to be your friend if you don’t have money.”
Perhaps you know a few “social climbers” who try to get in with the “money crowd.”
This transit invites us to investigate the ways we might be subconsciously choosing to align with — or avoid — certain groups because of our own perceptions of how we fit with those groups, or what they could do for us financially.
Venus in Aquarius offers us the opportunity to break free of ways of relating to both other people and money that we took on as a response to how we were programmed in the past.
Journaling Prompts for Venus in Aquarius
Here are some journaling prompts for Venus in Aquarius:
- In a world where money has a diminished status, who would you be friends with?
- If you couldn’t support your favorite causes by writing a check, how would you contribute?
- If money had no relevance, what “inheritance” would you want to leave your children?
- If money stopped being the dominant currency, how would you use your gifts and talents to serve the world? What would you do?
- If money were not relevant, what would you value?
Venus in Aquarius: Innovate New Paradigms
Venus in Aquarius is an invitation to reconsider and revolutionize our relationships to other people, money, beauty, art, and what we value.
This is an opportunity to consider a new paradigm in which we value sources of wealth other than money.
A culture in which we see the myriad ways that we and others offer value beyond financial metrics is truly revolutionary.
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