Nine of Pentacles (Reversed)

Happy December! I can not believe that we are in the final stretch of 2023. I feel like this year has gone by in the flash of an eye and now here comes 2024. Like wtf??

Every first day of the month I do a tarot reading asking what my theme of the month is going to be. I’m not sure if I believe that the cards are all magical, but they have been an extremely helpful tool while being on my self-improvement journey. They have really helped me sit down with my thoughts and really reflect on why things are the way that they are in my life, and what I need to do to become the best version of myself.

This December’s theme is the Nine of Pentacles (reversed). I usually translate my readings through Biddy Tarot (https://www.biddytarot.com/tarot-card-meanings/minor-arcana/suit-of-pentacles/nine-of-pentacles/). Which states the following for this month’s reading:

“The reversed Nine of Pentacles is all about self-worth. When you see this card in a Tarot reading, take the opportunity to reflect on your own sense of self-worth and value.

On the one hand, you may question whether you are ‘enough’ – whether your skills are valuable, whether you can charge higher prices or ask for a pay raise, or whether you can attract the right people into your life. You may be under-charging for your services, working for free or accepting a lower salary than you should. Know that you deserve to be wealthy in all facets of the word.

On the other hand, you may focus on increasing your sense of self-worth. Invest in yourself – get a wardrobe makeover, learn a new skill to enhance your career or take a personal development course. Practice self-love. Even if you are reluctant to spend money on yourself, know you can indulge in life’s luxuries, particularly if it makes you feel good and ‘worth it’. You ARE enough. You are more than enough. You are AMAZING!

Sometimes, the reversed Nine of Pentacles can appear when you are so busy working and hustling that you have no time or energy to enjoy the fruits of your labour. For example, in an effort to build wealth, you may work 70-hour weeks with no time for breaks, missing out on the opportunity to enjoy the riches you’re creating. Know where the limit is with wealth creation – at some point, you need to stop and smell the luxurious bouquet of long-stemmed roses. Remember what is truly important to you. Now may be a good time to retreat to a natural setting (a forest, beach, mountain or lake) to restore your energies and rejuvenate yourself.

Similarly, the reversed Nine of Pentacles suggests that you may need to release some of your need for a particular income or standard of living, especially if it gets in the way of other life priorities such as family or relationships. You may think you need the best of everything but, really, all you need is your family and loved ones around you. Do not be afraid to take a cut to your income for a short time or to reduce your hours at work… even if this means you have to eat rice and beans each night for a week to make up for it! It is vital that you focus on what is most important to you. Finances may need to come second, and while you need to at least put food on the table, there may be areas where you can cut back and reduce your dependence on material wealth.”

It’s crazy to me that this is the card that I got for this month because I have really been reflecting on my self-worth and self-image a lot recently.

Since I have quit my professional job and have gone back to serving, I have also been meeting with other entrepreneurs at Amway meetings. I have gotten really self conscious at the meetings because everyone there has suits, are clean cut, and have professional jobs. Then there’s me that barely has anything that qualifies as professional clothes, kinda rugged, and is no longer working a professional job. And when I have told people at the meetings what I do, they always rebuttal with a “kind” comment about how “oh well people need to eat” or some stupid shit like that. It’s like nice but judgey at the same time?? If you know what I mean. I get frustrated because I make roughly around the same amount of money that I was making at my professional job as I am in serving now.

Outside of serving, I do have skills. Kind of? I’m semi decent in Canva, I make mixed-media art, take awesome photos, can edit videos ight, and have dabbled with Photoshop and Lightroom (but not enough to really put myself out there). Which has made me think of learning some type of skill, something like web design or graphic design.

Building this website was easy and I found it to be super fun. I showed one of my coworkers at work and she mentioned that she had a friend that might be in need of a website and told her that she would give her my info. So if that happens, that could be a sign that I should pick up web design? Which is also weird because I hadn’t really thought about web design until building this website.

But we shall see how everything plays out.

I low key relapsed with my bad habits that I have been trying to avoid until 2024. I’ve been on Grindr and had gotten myself into a doozie last week. I met up with a dude who worked for a carnival that travels across the country. He lived in an RV and we ended up indulging in some things that I shouldn’t have. I ended up staying up all night because of it and then due to the lack of sleep my immune system had shot down. So I’ve been sick :)

But I can’t complain because that was my fault for making the decision. I had a good time but it wasn’t worth the aftermath honestly.

I haven’t felt myself in a few days and have been keeping to myself. Subconsciously I feel ashamed that I did that and haven’t been staying on track with things that I should be staying on track of.

I have a goal to be 200 pounds by December 31st and weighed myself today to be 169 pounds.

This has been the lowest I have weighed since I have embarked on my fitness journey on April 4th, 2022. Which has also messed with my brain because I haven’t been eating as much and have also been working out, so naturally I have been losing weight when I have been wanting to gain. Plus earlier this year I was at 196 pounds and I have somehow managed to go backwards.

Plus I have made it a goal to get 1,000 subscribers online by December 31st and I have yet to really do anything about it.

Then here I go again, putting so much pressure on myself to do these things that I find myself feeling stunned by being overwhelmed over the tasks that I have placed on myself.

I am in the process of getting out of the habit of putting to much on my plate. But forever a wip (work in progress). However, sometimes the thought of “putting to much on my plate” is really what is going on, or do I get overwhelmed because deep down I don’t believe that I can accomplish all o the things that I have tasked myself with?

Self-doubt has been an emotion that I have been experiencing for a majority of my life. I haven’t sat down and asked myself why I have had so much self-doubt in the past.

I have succeeded in a majority of things in my life and have done things that I am extremely proud of. Yet there’s still something that is inside of me that keeps telling me that I don’t have the ability to create this-so-life that I desire.

This reminds me of Newton’s Second Law of Emotion: “Our self-worth equals the sum of our emotions over time.” I learned this in Every Thing Is Fucked by Mark Manson. Manson elaborates his thoughts on the Newton’s second law of emotion and states,

“Our feeling brains warp reality in such a way so that we believe that our problems and pain are somehow special and unique in the world, despite all evidences to the contrary.

Human beings require this level of narcissism because narcissism is our last line of defense against the Uncomfortable Truth.”

(Before I go on, earlier in the book, Manson defines the Uncomfortable Truth as, “One day, you and everyone you love will die. And beyond a small group of people for an extremely brief period in time, little of what you say or do will ever matter. This is the Uncofortable Truth of life. And everything you think or do is but an elaborate avoidance of it. We are inconsequential cosmic dust, bumping and milling about on a tiny blue speck. We imagine our own importance. We invent our purpose- we are nothing.”)

“Because, let’s be real: People suck, and life is exceedingly difficult and unpredictable.

Most of us are winging it as we go, if not completely lost.

And if we didn’t have some false belief in our own superiority (or inferiority), a deluded belief that we’re extraordinary at something, we’d line up to swan-dive off the nearest bridge.

Without a little bit of that narcissistic delusion, without that perpetual lie we tell ourselves about our specialness, we’d likely give up hope.

But our inherent narcissism comes at a cost. Whether you believe you’re the best in the world or the worst in the world, one thing is also true: you are separate from the world.

And in this separateness that ultimately perpetuates unnecessary suffering.”

I relate to this because I’ve been so caught up in my stupid shit that I have felt like I have been the worst since I relapsed on my bad habits that I have been refraining from doing. And in turn, I have been so caught up with the narrative that I suck for relapsing that I have secluded myself from people recently because I have felt ashamed. And because of this, I have been separating myself from people which has caused unnecessary suffering.

I have had so many limiting beliefs recently and I want to stop. Because ultimately I am just causing myself to be stuck with where I am at, for no good reason!

Later in the next chapter when Manson is going over Newton’s Third Law of Emotion, he states the following:

“There are two ways to heal yourself- that is to replace old, faulty values with better, healthier values. The first is to reexamine the experiences of your past and rewrite the narratives around them. Wait, did he punch me because I’m an awful person; or is he the awful person?”

To be honest, a lot of my self-doubt and self-worth issues have stemmed from previous relationships. I have gotten so invested in my partner that I have lost myself within the relationship and then when the relationship ends, I find myself feeling as if I am not worth much because I can’t even get a guy that I am madly in love with to want to stick around.

All I have ever wanted was love and I have destroyed major parts of myself in the process of finding it. And since I am single, I find myself feeling not worthy to be someone’s partner at times because I’m a fucking package. I love deep and have so much love to give. Yet, here I am without any one to show for it. Which is a lot of where my idea of self-worth has stemmed from.

Which I never really thought about til right this second honestly..

Which transitions back into the rest of what Manson was saying,

“Reexamining the narratives of our lives allows us to have a do-over, to decide: you know, maybe I wasn’t such a great boat captain after all, and that’s fine. Often with time, we realize that we used to believe was important about the world actually isn’t.

Other times, we extend the story to get a clearer view of our self-worth- oh, she left me because some asshole left her and she felt ashamed and unworthy around intimacy- and suddenly, that breakup is easier to swallow.

The other way to change your values is to begin writing the narratives of your future self, to envision what life would be like if you had certain values or possessed a certain identity. By visualizing the future we want for ourselves, we allow our Feeling Brain to try on those values for size, to see what they feel like before we make the final purchase.

Eventually, one we’ve done enough, the Feeling Brain becomes accustomed to the new values and starts to believe them.”

So that being said.. I find myself questioning what are the narratives of my future self? What would my life look like if I had these new set of values?

Here are some things that come to mind:

• I am single now because I am not the best version of myself nor am I close to it so the universe is waiting for the right time for me to meet the love of my life.

• I value myself and no longer beating myself up over stupid shit because I am human. 80/20 (meaning it’s okay to mess up from time to time as long as I am staying persistent with my goals 80% of the time).

• I value my time on this earth because I understand that I am only going to experience this life as Kyrin only once, so why not make it the best life that he can live? (Speaking in third-person because of the almighty I Am.)

• I value my desire to learning how to become the best version of myself

And yeah..

I feel like that’s a good list to start off with to shift my old values. I’m still a little shocked on realizing where a lot of my self-worth has stemmed form and why. But self-awareness is the best thing ever because now that I am aware of why I had been holding on to that belief for so long, I can finally let it go and make room for new beliefs that will benefit me now and in the future.

This brings this post to the end, but if you’re reading this, I hope some things stuck out to you just as they have stuck out to me.

If you are having any issues about your self-worth, set some time aside to sit down and genuinely ask yourself where your values and beliefs are coming from. And what can you do to change it? As humans we cause so much unnecessary suffering (speaking from experience), and I would love if I can help you let go of those things in your life that are causing that unnecessary suffering.

As always, thank you for giving me the space to share my thoughts and for meeting me with where I am at.

Let’s make the best out of December and end 2023 on a good note. Cheers y’all.

See you on the flip side.

Love always,

Kyrin.