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Prosper in Peace!
Most of us have heard constant advice about successful attitudes and using our time well. Unfortunately, we usually haven’t heard that days are not created equal and that there are larger cycles or patterns that underlie each day’s potential. In fact, it appears that the universe has a completely different view of what good time management is! We would laugh at someone trying to get a tan at midnight, but many of us make this same mistake with other, less-obvious cycles. What we’ve long forgotten is that there really is a time for every purpose under heaven, and astrology, which is essentially the study of time and cycles, contains the key to understanding the best times for our purposes. In business, we expect constant forward progress in sales and growth, our speed to market, our daily performance, and product or service quality. (No wonder we’re so stressed out!) Many of us also experience every minute of every workday completely filled with more work than can be accomplished. To top it off, even though we’ve never experienced a year without challenges, delays, or setbacks, there’s an unspoken belief that we shouldn’t encounter any obstacles or delays if we’re competent. Regardless of how unrealistic these ideas may be, they permeate all aspects of business life. We’ve developed a nearly religious belief in always accomplishing something and pushing forward at all costs, but the universe seems to have a different agenda. Instead of constant progress, we see a well-considered order to the universe that closely resembles what we see in nature. When was the last time you saw constant growth and progress without rest and renewal in nature? Now consider how completely inappropriate our expectations must seem when viewed from the perspective of the universe. Unlike our goals and expectations, which tend to look like straight lines with an upward slant, our creative and learning processes are not linear! As in most things, the universe created regular cycles for these processes instead. What has creativity and learning got to do with business? Just about everything, including the results we achieve. The universe set up regular periods for renewal and replenishment as a part of the creative process. In astrology, these periods of time are shown by void-of-course moons (I’ll call them timeouts). The universe believes there is a need for downtime as part of the creative and learning processes. It thinks we need gestation periods to develop new ideas, gather all the information, and prepare ourselves for the right time to birth our projects or action plans. These timeout periods are also perfect for renewing our energy and ourselves. They occur from two to four times per week, and can last anywhere from a few minutes to nearly two and a half days. Most importantly, when we push forward during these times with important actions and make key decisions, the universe rewards us with nothing. Nothing? Yes, if we’re lucky we get nothing — or nowhere — with our actions and decisions. When we’re unlucky, we get led down a dead-end path with one obstacle and difficulty after another, and in the end it still leads to nothing; it just takes longer! The worst examples I watched over 15 years were when management approved new products to develop during these timeout periods. The result: several hundred thousand or millions of dollars later the projects were canceled. Since nothing positive comes of actions and decisions taken at these times, it seems only logical to stop wasting our energy, money, and time by trying to constantly push forward. Instead, these are great times to file paperwork, catch up on mundane tasks, and clean the office. It’s also great for reading, reviewing, or gathering information. Better yet, don’t plan anything at all; just follow your own instincts. It’s a great time to meditate, or just kick back and do nothing. We all need time for that! The point is to use these periods appropriately as cosmic timeouts for retreating, regrouping, and renewing ourselves. Once we’re refreshed, we can then push forward again at our harried pace, but after a break, we’ll have more energy for doing so. As part of our learning process, the universe also set up regular times to review, find our errors, catch up, and make corrections! The universe expects us to learn by looking back, rethinking, and redoing things. Here’s another reason why our constant desire for forward progress thwarts our goals. We don’t want to take the time to look back and rethink our erroneous decisions. Even the old song admonished us, "Don’t stop thinking about tomorrow," but until we do, it’s hard to make a course adjustment. For some reason, we’ve all gotten it into our heads that we shouldn’t have to make corrections, change our minds after learning more, or make changes to a project in midstream. I ask you to seriously think of any long-term project of at least six months in length that didn’t have or need any changes. If the universe is right, it’s not possible. The major periods for catching up and fixing our mistakes are known as Mercury retrograde. Basically, when Mercury appears to move backward from the earth’s perspective, we experience schedule delays and difficulties in communications, transportation, and computers. This occurs three times per year, for about three and a half weeks each time. Anyone who has studied astrology at all has heard of these difficult times, but we wouldn’t experience so much frustration if we used this time more appropriately. What does the universe want us to do instead of speeding forward? It thinks we need some time to catch our mistakes, correct our erroneous assumptions and decisions, and fix them. It also thinks we need time to look back, reflect, catch up with people we haven’t communicated with in a long time, and get organized. It wants us to have time to learn, and very few of us learn by looking forward. Instead, we need to look back, review what happened, and take the time to understand what went right and wrong. our productivity declines. None of this can happen while we’re pushing full speed ahead. So guess what the universe did with these periods? It filled them with delays. Computers and all forms of transportation break down, along with our communications. (The UPS strike was during one of these periods.) I’ve always imagined that the planet Mercury changes outfits and shows up as Murphy and his crew, making everything go wrong that could go wrong, and it’s usually what happens! Mercury will be retrograde again between December 7 and 27. Yes, it will be a tough time to ship your boxes and cards, so ship and mail early. And yes, it will be a tough time to travel, especially at the beginning and end. However, Mercury retrograde is actually a good time to catch up with old friends and people you haven’t had time to communicate with for a long time. It’s also not a time to start something new, since you’re supposed to be looking back, rethinking or redoing things. In this perspective, it seems appropriate for the holidays! What’s truly amazing about these Mercury retrograde periods is that even though they occur regularly, three times every year, we still ignore them! We still pretend that we don’t need time to correct our mistakes. We still expect that we can do projects without any delays. We still believe that constant forward progress is achievable. But in fact, according to Mother Nature, constant forward progress is not only unachievable; it’s undesirable as well. I believe that the universe is trying to tell us that creativity, learning, and productivity are intimately linked together. When we fail to make room for the complete creative and learning processes, our productivity declines. Unable to replenish ourselves, or use what we’ve learned to remake better decisions, we burn out and become zombies, chasing the same problems over and over again. Inherent within the creative process lies the unknown, which is the seed of our mistakes, as well as what we need to learn, but we need these elements of the creative process or we couldn’t make something better. Without the unknown, we wouldn’t have anything to learn. It’s all part of the cycle, a process to be repeated again and again. How do we know this about the universe? When we look at all other aspects of nature, we find that there are no examples of constant forward progress. The seasons change; plants grow and then rest. The sun rises and then sets. The tide comes in and goes out; the moon grows in light and then gets dark. There is a regular rhythm of increase and decrease throughout the universe. How, then, can we expect something completely different for our businesses and the way we manage them? So what’s a person to do when the business world has no comprehension of the creative and learning cycles designed by the universe? Since the universe is not going to change its design, we’re left with learning how to match its patterns and cycles. We need to re-evaluate our expectation of constant progress and expect changes and delays in our projects as part of the way we learn. We have the option of knowing what time it is, according to the universe, and planning our schedules accordingly. All we have to do is check the daily cycles of any astrological calendar. When we begin planning our schedules according to what time it really is, and consider the potentials for each day, we’ll make major headway in the way we do business and how we feel about our work. We’ll have fewer losses and better outcomes for our projects, products, and services, and we’ll find better ways to be productive while renewing ourselves, too. Best of all, we’ll be in harmony with the natural rhythms of the universe, instead of working against them and ourselves. Madeline Gerwick-Brodeur is a certified business and personal astrologer. She produces The Good Timing Guide 1998: Better Business through Better Timing. She’s also the co-author of The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Astrology. Her astrology background includes over 20 years of study and practice. She can be reached by e-mail at <Madelinegb@aol.com>, or by phone in Seattle, WA at (206) 729-8820. |
Year
after year, we run frantically through our work lives, often
wondering if there isn’t a better way to approach business
or our work. Indeed there is, and it involves our attitudes,
expectations, and use of time. Time is one of those things we
tend to "swim in," so we often forget to consider its
impact.