Thothy wisdom from yesterday

So, have been doing various short readings and quick draws for myself with the Thoth lately, because this deck and me are getting on amazingly well. Though I'd type up some bits of Thothy wisdom from hier...

So how many times do we find ourselves in situations where we get nervous, or anxious or stressed about something, and a lot of that feeling really stems from a kind of self-doubt? For me at least, this is totally not uncommon. Self-doubt, and where does that come from? Sometimes it's about longstanding insecurities, but even those, if you dig deeper...a lot of the time there is an external connection. A situation that you, yourself really are sure is cool, but yet you can't help but think how it might sound to others if you tried to describe it. Or something a part of you is sure you can do, accomplish, manage, yet you can't help but think of how others might question you. Perhaps someone directly has said something to you, and that sets you off, questioning yourself. Or even better: once, years ago,  someone said something and ever since then, internalized self-doubt niggles relating to whatever it was that they said. Can you do it? Can you handle yourself? Is this really ok?

In a kind of situation like yesterday, and so I drew some cards, and got these - very approrpiate advice, really. The 9 of wands for strength: let those arrows pierce through that cloud of questioning, questioning...sun and moon, uniting the concious mind, the unconcious. Conciously, you know you can do it, but when you start questioning yourself its not so hard to talk yourself into thinking that maybe you cannot. Instinctively, deep down where you REALLY know yourself, you know you can do it. Push through all the mental noise. Find your inner strength, and the confidence that goes with that. Let it rise upwards, upwards, filling your mind, your thoughts and thereby, your actions. Hold onto that feeling, let is strengthen you, support you. And then? Go for it: leap into whatever it is that you are facing. Go boldly, go optimistically, go full of energy and readiness to try new things. I actually quite like the Thoth Fool...very dense, and I'm still learning all of the symbolism but...the green, for spring, for new things, and those upwardly pointed shoes - he is full of weightlessness, unburdened, ready to go. Butterflies for transformation, self-transformation. The danger of the tiger and the crocodile is there, sure, very real, and yet nonetheless...

Actually, that whole danger aspect brings to mind another card that came up in a different draw. The 5 of Swords, defeat. Defeat, failure, things going terribly wrong. Its a terribly disheartening feeling, when we try something and fail...and in fact, fear of defeat, feat of ending up stuck in that pentagram of broken swords and dying rose petals, can stop us from doing so much. But what if I fail? What if I make a fool of myself? What if they all hate me?

For me personally, a lot of that is also about...proving things to myself. I'm always trying to prove to myself that I'm good enough to do x and y, and conversly, fear that I will show myself to be incompetent or not good enough if I am "defeated" at this or that. But the thing is, this card showes, sometimes it really, really is worth risking it. First of all, because it truth most of us don't fail nearly as often as we fear that we will, and secondly...because sometimes defeat is NECESSARY. The pain of it can be a learning experience, a very useful one. See the light shining in this card, behind all those swords and rose petals? Yes, light, possibility, moving beyond the defeat and being a better person because of it. Learning to lose gratefully, to take failure in stride, to handle defeat with a certain kind of perspective, is very valuable: Ok, so I lost here; it happens. This doens't make me a worthless person. I made some mistakes. Let me analyze those and think about how I can avoid them in the future. What steps can I take to improve my performance going forward?/ What have I learned about my environment from this? What have I lost, and was some of it actually perhaps worth losing?

So yes. Good to work on: finding the strength and confidence to face difficult things about which you are uncertain - to take them on with all the spirit of the Fool, and to not fear so much the possibility of defeat, because even in that there is something to learn, to take away.