The Weekly Three 2/5/24: Chasing the beanstalk and “overnight success”.
When action at the expense of intention actually slows down our success and fairytales lead us astray.
Did you know it only takes one to two weeks for a chia pet (like this Bob Ross, this li’l hedgehog or this weirdly adorable Jack Skellington) to be fully grown? ONE TO TWO WEEKS! Bummer for us though, our businesses aren’t chia pets, and it might take a little longer. Please adjust your expectations accordingly… This garden, while fertile and promising, needs a different kind of tending.
Welcome to The Weekly Three! Each Monday, I share a three-card Tarot spread to help you focus your intuitive energy in real life, and take action with intention inside your business.
I pull these cards with the collective energy of my community in mind, but if you want a custom spread of your very own, you can get it right here.
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In The Cards: Blowing off potential + a reminder.
A celebration of a strong and beautiful beginning is brimming from the IV of Wands. There’s a real sense of stability offered here. There’s also a lot of passion. This card, being from the suit of Wands, is concerned with generative fiery things that act as motivating drivers in our lives. Is it something creative? An entrepreneurial venture? A blazing love affair? It could be any of the above, together or separate. But the connecting through-line is always the gut-centered generative quality of things.
Temperance reversed says we fucked up the recipe: there’s too much of one thing, not enough of another and the blend is kinda bleugh. There’s an assessment needed here and maybe a reference back to the recipe book. You may have been rushing so quickly through the steps in order to get to the end, you’ve missed something. Balance needs to be restored.
The potential for a flourishing and abundant garden is here, though, thanks to The Empress. This card is another creation-heavy, generative card. But the key with The Empress is that she acts as a promise: if you tend your garden—nourish it and show consistent care—only then can you see how bountifully it can bloom.
In Between: Chasing Jack’s beanstalk.
One thing’s for sure in this week’s spread: we’re at a beginning. It might be the beginning of the year, the beginning of a project, the beginning of an idea, the beginning of a transformation, the beginning of the next era of YOU. There’s a fuck-ton of potential here and the primordial soup is rich, my friend. Except you seem to have taken a good start as a sign of being at the finish line.
The ingredients are not the recipe. The batter is not the cake. The beans are not the stalk.
Remember the story of Jack and the Beanstalk? This quite literally poor child, sells his cow for some magic beans. The beans come as a sorry surprise to his mother, (who, PS, is actually starving and had to sell her only livestock today and now she’s even more stressed out because how is she going to feed her idiot kid, never mind herself.) She then chucks them out the window. Jack is bummed and goes to bed.
But lo and behold! The very next morning dawns bearing the ultimately fortuitous fruit of an enormous beanstalk that reaches up beyond the clouds, having sprouted from the very same discarded beans so eschewed by Jack’s mother the night before.
With stories about all kinds of “overnight success” being pounded into our brains as the ultimate in success, it feels like Jack and the Beanstalk has just been reprocessed, businessified and regurgitated into the realm of entrepreneurship.
The idea being peddled is: “I planted the seeds, and then the beanstalk grew.”
But, hi, hello, what the fuck happened in between?? What about the HOW of getting from tiny seed to gargantuan beanstalk????? In real life, there was a process. I regret to inform you that it most likely involved repetition and waiting.
But that doesn’t sound very glamorous.
And now here we are, grown-ass adults who likely know this story from way back when, expecting things in our businesses to grow at lightning beanstalk speeds.
It’s not real and it’s biting you in the entrepreneurship-ass.
In Your Business: What have you planted and what are you tending (or not?)
Action at the expense of intention is a whole entire mess. And potential mixed with impatience gets you nowhere fast.
You are where you are, and you have what you have. Trying to rush ahead of that without considering your own requirements for success will do nothing but slow you down.
Look around and figure out what you actually need in order to get from point A to point B. What’s the next step in growing the garden you’ve planted?
There’s a whole bunch of stuff that happens underground before the first little sprout even pokes its tiny tender leaves through the ground. And then, a whole bunch more stuff that happens in order for that li’l sprout to become a load-bearing beanstalk ladder to a giant’s lair and a golden goose, regardless of the misinformation and beanstalk propaganda spoonfed to us via fables and fairytales.
I AM BEGGING YOU: Don’t rush to climb your li’l sprout!!! You will crush it.
Instead: water it, feed it, make sure it’s getting enough sun. Over and over. For an extended period of time.
It’s already been planted in fertile soil—let it grow the way it needs to in order to bear fruit.
Until next week,
Zoha
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About The Author:
Zoha Abbas is a writer, Intuitive Tarot Reader and Business Coach who aims to explore the small business conversations around self-trust, critical thinking, reality checks and forging your (not so straight) path to success in the grey-area of real life. She is the CEO and Creator of The Ownership Method, a coaching practice where she helps fellow entrepreneurs and small business owners do business better through data, divination and dismantling harmful systems.
For inquiries, please email: zoha@theownershipmethod.com