Man, careers. We spend so much of our lives thinking about ’em, chasing ’em, trying to make ’em happen. For years, I was just like everyone else, you know? Head down, grinding away, always looking for the next big thing, the next promotion, the next shiny title. I figured success was all about being visible, making noise, pushing hard. Until I hit a wall. A big, brick wall of burnout and just feeling kinda empty, even when things on paper looked “good.”
I was in this head space, feeling totally stuck, when I pulled The High Priestess. I remember staring at it, really getting lost in that quiet, knowing gaze of hers. My first thought? “What the heck am I supposed to do with this? I need answers, concrete steps! Not some mysterious lady chilling between two pillars, holding a scroll I can’t even read.” I was looking for a roadmap, a five-step plan to get out of my rut, and this card felt like it was just telling me to sit still and stare into space. Which, frankly, wasn’t my jam at the time.
But that’s the thing with these cards, and with life sometimes. The message you need isn’t always the one you want. This card started to poke at me, subtly. It was like a constant whisper in the back of my mind: “There’s more here than meets the eye. You’re missing something crucial, something internal.” I usually went for the action-oriented cards, the ones that screamed “go, go, go!” This was the opposite. It was about stillness, about secrets, about that deep, gut feeling you try to ignore when the world’s telling you to hustle.
My Process: Embracing the Quiet Wisdom
So, I started to shift, not drastically at first, just little bits. See, for me, pulling The High Priestess for a career path wasn’t about immediately finding a new job or launching a business. It was about an internal pilgrimage. Here’s how it went down for me:
- The Initial Pull & Resistance: Like I said, I pulled the card, felt confused, even frustrated. I wanted external solutions to my career woes.
- The Lingering Presence: But she hung around. Every time I thought about my career, her image popped up. It was annoying, frankly. It felt like she was telling me to not do anything, which terrified me because I associated not doing with failure.
- Slowing Down, Reluctantly: This was the hardest part. I forced myself to slow down. Instead of spending every evening networking or strategizing my next big move, I started dedicating time to… nothing. Just sitting with my thoughts. Journaling without a goal, just letting whatever came out, come out. This felt so unproductive at first, like I was wasting precious time.
- Listening to the Whispers: As I quieted the external noise, I started to hear the internal whispers. It wasn’t a sudden revelation, more like a slow dawning. I realized I was ignoring a deep, quiet desire to learn about a completely different field—something artistic, something intuitive, something that had absolutely no direct connection to my current corporate ladder. It felt like a “secret” passion, one I had kept hidden even from myself because it didn’t fit my “successful career person” image.
- The Secret Study: The High Priestess is all about hidden knowledge, right? So I started my own “secret study.” I wasn’t telling anyone. I wasn’t enrolling in a formal course. I was just reading books, watching documentaries, messing around with creative tools late at night, diving deep into this new interest purely for the joy of it. There was no end goal, no certificate, no planned job application. It was just me and this quiet, unfolding knowledge.
- Trusting the Intuition: This period felt almost… illicit. Like I was having a secret affair with an entirely different possible future. Friends would ask about my career plans, and I’d just shrug, feeling a little guilty about my hidden pursuits. But that knowing gaze of The High Priestess kept nudging me: “Trust this. Trust your gut. This inner work is more important than any outward show right now.”
- The Unfolding Opportunity: And here’s where it got wild. After months of this quiet, internal exploration, an opportunity popped up. It wasn’t advertised, it wasn’t something I applied for through traditional channels. It was a connection, a casual conversation with someone I barely knew, who happened to mention a project that perfectly blended my “secret” passion with a practical, viable application. It was unconventional, unexpected, and it felt like it had been waiting for me to be ready, to have cultivated that inner wisdom first.
It taught me a huge lesson about career paths. Sometimes, the most powerful moves you can make aren’t loud and aggressive. They’re quiet. They’re internal. They’re about pausing, listening to that deep, intuitive part of yourself, and cultivating knowledge and skills not for show, but for your own soul. The High Priestess showed me that true career growth isn’t always about outward success, but about aligning with your deepest, most authentic self, even if that means a period of quiet contemplation and secret learning. It was a complete game-changer for how I understood not just my job, but my entire working life.
