Man, I spent years running on a half-tank. Seriously. I was doing all the “right” things—the job, the apartment, the whole deal—but nothing ever clicked. It was like every single decision I made felt heavy and wrong, like wearing shoes two sizes too small. I was constantly picking paths that just didn’t match who I was inside, and my energy level was in the toilet.
I finally got into this whole Birth Card idea, and it turns out mine is the Six, The Lovers. I laughed at first. Lovers? I just needed to pay my bills and stop eating cereal for dinner. But the more I read, the more I realized it wasn’t about romance; it was about Alignment and Choice. My core problem wasn’t bad luck; it was that I was making choices based on what I thought I should do, instead of what truly aligned with my gut.
I Started By Tracing The Energy Leaks
I decided to treat this like a real project, not some woo-woo therapy session. I wasn’t going to just meditate and wait for a sign. I needed data. I grabbed a notepad and a cheap pen, and I sat down and just wrote out every single thing I was doing that made my stomach clench a little. Everything that felt like a chore but not an essential one.
- I wrote down the names of people I spent time with who made me feel smaller.
- I wrote down the projects I was chasing only because they paid well, but killed my soul.
- I wrote down the stuff I owned that I didn’t actually like, but kept because it was expensive.
It was a horrifying list. Everything on there was a choice I had made to avoid the harder, more authentic choice. The Lovers card is all about merging what you think and what you feel. I was completely disconnected. I had to rip those things out, one by one. It was messy.
The Practical Steps I Threw Myself Into
This is where the actual practice came in. I didn’t get this alignment by just thinking about it; I had to move my body and change my habits. I focused on combining two things I thought had to be separate: my ‘obligation’ life and my ‘joy’ life. Alignment is just that—making the two lines run together instead of parallel.
Step One: The Core Value Drill.
I forced myself to come up with five words that defined my life. Not five words that sounded good, but five that I would literally fight for. Mine turned out to be: Truth, Freedom, Creation, Quiet, and Connection. Every time I had to make a big decision—like taking a new gig or agreeing to a social plan—I ran it past these five words. If it hit three out of five, I went for it. If it hit zero, I nuked it. This stopped the indecision paralysis stone dead.
Step Two: Clearing the Physical Clutter.
My apartment was a disaster. I realized the chaos outside was a perfect mirror for the chaos inside my head. The Lovers card speaks to balance and harmony, and my living space was anything but. I spent three full weekends ripping through every closet. I didn’t organize it, I just threw away or donated anything that didn’t bring me an immediate, solid “yes.” It was brutal. I got rid of the treadmill I never used and the stack of old work binders. The instant that junk was gone, I could literally breathe deeper. It felt like shedding 50 pounds of mental weight.
Step Three: Integration, Not Separation.
I used to keep my creative work (painting) totally separate from my actual work (writing reports). I was doing 8 hours of soul-crushing admin, then trying to cram an hour of joy into the evening. Total recipe for burnout. The major shift came when I figured out a way to weave my creative style into the day job. I started presenting data in a visually engaging way, using design principles I learned from my painting. It didn’t totally save the job, but it saved me. It was the first time my two halves felt like they were working together instead of fighting.
Why I Know This Stuff Works, Really
You might be thinking, “Great, another self-help guy.” Trust me, I get it. I wouldn’t be sharing this if I hadn’t gone through the fire and actually needed this level of alignment to survive.
This all came to a head the year before last when I was trying to juggle a full-time tech job and this stupid, demanding side business designing websites for local shops. I got greedy. I pushed too hard. One night, I completely screwed up one client’s database, a total amateur error. The whole thing crashed. He had to shut down for a day. It was humiliating, and I was going to lose the contract, maybe even get sued.
The panic was immense, but it was also a crystal-clear moment of choice. It was the universe slapping me with the Lovers card. I had to choose between the path of frantically trying to fix a job I hated and the path of stepping back, owning the mistake, and choosing my mental health over the cash. I apologized, paid for their fix, and walked away from the side hustle for good. Within a month, the space that opened up allowed me to actually find the kind of work that truly used my best skills, not just what paid the fastest. The whole disaster was the forced alignment I needed. If that database hadn’t crashed, I’d still be in that unaligned hell, hating every minute of it. You have to be ready to cut the line on everything that doesn’t fit those core values, even if it feels terrifying at the time.
