Upright Keywords: Compassion, courage, influence
Symbolism & Meaning
A woman is shown gently holding the mouth of a lion. She is calm and controlled and using no force or coercion. The lion is ready to embrace being tamed and trusts her completely. The lion represents our wild instincts that are so often supressed by the need to conform to the demands of a civilised society. When this card shows up it is inviting us to examine the different sides of our personality closely. You are both the lion and the woman. There are parts of you that crave to be wild and free but there are also parts that you wish were more restrained. There may be something that you are desperate to unleash but you are holding yourself back. The Strength card is telling you not to be afraid. If you go forward from a place of love, and trust the process, everything will be ok.
How Strength is Relevant to Me
I am feeling very distracted this morning. Usually I do my tarot card before anything else but this morning I found myself online searching for silver chains and researching pricing strategies, before I even made it downstairs. I have spent my whole life feeling like I am holding myself back. As an employee, I always felt out of place and afraid to push myself. For example, in every job I have done I was always the person that people said should progress into management. Whenever I did that though, my confidence would plummet, I would be too scared of making the wrong decisions and I would end up leaving, usually moving onto something with less responsilbility.
Having my own business has always been what I wanted to do, even though I may not have verbalised it to many people. Steve certainly knows, mainly because he has born the brunt of my many escapades over the years! I know I sound like a broken record but it does feel very different this time. For a start, I absolutely love working with silver and gemstones. I have never been one for wearing lots of of jewellery but to be honest, that is because I can never find anything I truly love. I want to make pieces that I would want to wear myself and then hope that other people will want to buy them. I am even fortunate enough to have found a boat with the space for a silver workshop on board.
The wild side in me wants to just throw myself into this business and push myself like I have never done before. The cautious side of me is scared of making another mistake and failing miserably. It doesn’t help that everything is so public these days. It is virtually impossible to run a business without fully embracing social media and everything that comes with it. Deep down I am a people pleaser and I think that can hold me back.
I also have a very reactive personality in that I tend to make very rash decisions about major life changing events. I am trying to be more measured in my approach to things without talking myself out of them completely. In short, I am quite complicated but then, aren’t we all?