Welcome to the month of Scorpio. As one of the only months of the year lacking in kabbalistic holidays, this month can feel full of challenges and has a reputation as a bit of a buzzkill. But inherent in this time where things can feel a bit dark, an equally powerful opposing energy exists.
Scorpio energy invites us to see all sides of things, to acknowledge the light and the blessing in any darkness or chaos. This dichotomy derives from the very name of this month:
Mar Cheshvan (Scorpio). Mar means bitter. Reverse the letters, and you get Ram, which means exalted. So, here’s the challenge of the month: turn Mar to Ram, bitter to exalted. Here’s what it can look like:
1. Thank you for not supporting me.
Opposition is a good thing.
It’s incredibly human and normal to see opposition as bad and feel sadness, frustration, and in the darkest moments, hopelessness. However, opposition is the thing that makes for the strongest, most successful people.
When someone stands between us and our goal, works against us, or even on a lesser scale simply doesn’t support our efforts, we have met our opposition. You can choose to feel hurt. You can choose to be angry. Some people may even give up. Feeling this range of emotions is natural, but if you get stuck there, you will never uncover the profound gift that the opposition has for you. It’s only when you stand back up, redouble your efforts, and determine that no opposition will keep you from your goal that the real blessings are revealed.
I speak from personal experience; adversity has forged me into not only a stronger person but a far more compassionate and humbler person than I would have been without the many struggles I’ve overcome.
Most of us are facing at least one challenge on any given day. I invite you to identify that challenge or that challenging person and try to imagine both the best possible outcome and what you will have learned or gained from overcoming it.
2. Knock off all that judgment!
Our life is the sum of all of our thoughts.
What we think influences our words and informs our actions. Are our thoughts supporting and loving or holding us back? Consider negative self-talk, which is almost always rooted in judgment. Overbearing, incompetent, lazy, selfish, a terrible parent, rude or temperamental… obviously most of us would never say any of these things to another person; yet these are the kinds of thoughts we often direct at ourselves. So, why on earth do we direct unkind (and clearly unproductive) thoughts onto ourselves? In a word: self-judgment. And judgment is one of the biggest challenges of Scorpio.
3. Turn that negativity around!
We all struggle with our negative self-talk and are all too often our own worst critics. Here is a journaling exercise for countering these thoughts and shifting our focus to love and kindness, where they belong.
Write down persistent negative thoughts or mean self-judgments.
Reframe each of them as an opposite, positive affirmation.
Negative thought: I’m a terrible parent.
Positive thought: I am doing my best, and my best is pretty good. I forgive myself for my errors and learn from them.
And just like that, you’ve flipped a painful self-judgment into a positive and supportive one. Bad to good, bitter to exalted, lemons to lemonade. This tool works equally well for external judgments, for example:
Negative thought: I am working so hard, and he/she doesn’t even notice or appreciate it!
Positive replacement: I am grateful that I have the resources and ability to do all the things that I do, and ultimately, everything I am doing is because I have chosen to. I know my value and do not rely on the validation of others.
With this tool, when negative thoughts enter your mind, you have a ready, opposite thought to counter it. Remember, negative thoughts are just thoughts, and a thought can be changed.
4. Totally unhelpful, if not downright incorrect, things you believe to be true.
Scorpio is an auspicious time to rethink and reframe our beliefs. Beliefs are powerful, and when they are in alignment with our integrity and goals, they support our success. As positive as a healthy belief can be, the same order of magnitude applies to the power of a negative, untrue belief. False beliefs wreak havoc and too often become self-fulfilling prophecies. Imagine if your false belief is that everyone will betray me, eventually. With that thought in your mind, it will have a negative effect on the way you speak and act towards others with the potential to create an environment wherein you are more likely to be betrayed, thus creating just the situation you most feared.
The quickest way to spot your less-than-ideal beliefs is to bring awareness to your thoughts when you find yourself reacting strongly to something. Do you hear, “Nothing ever works out for me” or, “I never get what I want?” If so, stop and ask, “Is this a fact?” Imagine a scientist is walking into your brain and identifying the thought based on history and evidence. This scientist would find it impossible that nothing has ever worked out for you and would then give you a list of everything that has.
Like the scientist, I invite you to discover and then analyze your negative beliefs. Write them down. Refute them. Then, write a new, true, and supportive belief.
False Belief: I never get anything I want.
New Belief: When I put my effort and focus toward a goal, I often achieve it. List examples of times you have received what you wanted. When it doesn’t work out the way I had planned, that’s okay. Sometimes it worked out better, and other times, I learned a valuable lesson.
Scorpio can be a powerful month for introspection, rooting out negative beliefs, and reframing your thoughts. Doing so will bring into sharp focus all the blessings that you might have missed by being consumed with your challenges. You have the power within you to turn what appears negative to positive—all by thinking differently.
Every single day.
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