An Uncommon Tool to Help with Tricky Decisions

Do you have a hard time making decisions? Could you use some guidance navigating your many passions and projects? Have you ever tried tarot?

— hold up. Tarot?

You heard me right.

I’ve been a fan of Beth’s for some time. Everything she creates is brilliant and beautifully designed. She’s a total multipod and I knew she would add something very unique to this year’s Must-Haves. I shot her an email, she was excited about the project, and then she did something super cool: she offered to create a tarot ebook specifically for multipods, specifically for this bundle!!

Beth’s contribution to MPMH is called 78 Cards, All of the Things: Tarot for Multipods, Projects & Planning. Since it is our first and only tarot product ever included in the sale, and a very different kind of product, I thought it would be fun to do an interview with Beth.

I think you’ll really enjoy this…

1. Tell us a bit about 78 Cards, All of the Things. What’s the ebook like? How did you come up with the idea? Why is it helpful for multipotentialites?

Most people think of tarot as some kind of weird, witchy fortune-telling device – and it can definitely be that! But essentially, it is an illustrated deck of 78 cards with images that describe the human experience. There are layers and layers of symbolism which we are free to interpret however we like.

I believe that we are all, in our different ways, looking for ‘signs’. Usually we are seeking confirmation that the path we’re taking is the right one, or help with a tricky decision, or something like that. I also firmly believe that we hold layers and layers of wisdom inside us that we don’t often access. Tarot is a way to access the signs we seek, and to tap into that inner wisdom and get answers that are right for us, right there in the moment. It doesn’t matter whether you believe it’s all totally random or that ‘the Universe’ or God or whatever guides your hand. The point is, you get handed a set of symbols and signs, and they almost always prove incredibly useful.

I use tarot cards for working through all kinds of questions and problems in my life. When I have something on my mind, an issue I can’t resolve, a feeling I want to explore… shuffling my cards and laying a few on the table gives me new perspectives and ideas. The cards shine a light on things I perhaps didn’t want to see, or help me to see things from alternative angles.

I believe we are all, in our own ways,
looking for signs.

Used in this way, tarot is a brilliant tool for multipods! As someone who is always coming up with hot new schemes, from small personal projects to ambitious business ideas, I absolutely love using tarot cards to help me plan and work through the different stages of my work. 78 Cards, All of the Things pulls together my years of experience of doing this, along with all that I have learned as a tarot teacher and blogger. The aim is to show anyone, regardless of previous tarot experience, how to use this awesome tool for working through their own projects and plans. It introduces the tarot deck and it’s basic structure, and then provides lots of different exercises which you can use at different stages in a project. It’s really fun – like inviting a really honest friend to come and talk over your ideas with you.

The whole thing can be as woo-woo or as down-to-earth as you would like. I firmly believe that everyone who holds a tarot deck in their hands will take a unique approach to those cards. That’s the founding principle of The Alternative Tarot Course, which I created to help people develop their own relationship with their cards. The tools provided in 78 Cards, All of the Things give readers helpful guidance and structure, but I imagine readers will take these tools and use them in their own ways. I see the book as a starting point for folks to begin a really exciting journey with a fascinating and beautiful deck of cards as their companion.

2. Do you consider yourself a multipod? If so, have you always had many interests and curiosities?

Oh gosh yes. I can’t remember a time in my life when I haven’t been seriously into at least two things at once, with most of those interests changing with the seasons. When I was a kid I was always up in my room squirrelling away on some new thing, and that’s still the case today.

My approach is quite an obsessive one – I’ll discover a new interest and throw myself into it with reckless abandon, finding it hard to do anything else for at least a few days (usually much longer). I just love getting completely sucked into a fascinating new topic or hobby and forgetting everything else! I used to think I had an addictive personality, but now I’ve realised it’s much more about multipotentiality.

As I grow older, I love looking back over this ever-growing list of things-I’ve-gotten-into and seeing which things stuck and which fell by the wayside. I definitely see patterns emerging – for example, I can see that my love of tarot, which is here for the long-haul, stems directly from my love of reading and analysing text. My degree was in literature and I simply loved raking though stories and poems, seeking hidden meanings, symbols, clues of a subtler story. That’s what I do with tarot!

I firmly believe that everyone who holds a tarot deck in their hands will take a unique approach to those cards.

The most obvious example of my multipotentiality is my tarot business. On the surface, I’m a blogger and a tarot reader. But like many solopreneurs I’m also a web designer, facilitator, graphic designer, researcher, photographer, shopkeeper, administrator, business advisor, bookkeeper and many more. I enjoy all of these roles and love that my job is never just one thing.

Like many multipods, I’ve always had that sense of embarrassment, that feeling that folks must wonder when I’m going to just choose one thing and settle down with it. Discovering Puttylike and your ‘loud and proud’ approach to multopotentiality was such a relief!

3. What are some of the things you’re involved with right now (both professionally and in terms of hobbies)?

Professionally, right now I’m in a really stable period with my tarot business and am not firing off in lots of different directions as I have in the past. I’ve just brought on a few new guest writers for my blog and I hope to very slowly move that towards a really diverse, alternative tarot magazine kind of resource. I have another tarot course in the pipeline which I work on occasionally, but for now, that’s on the back burner as my personal life is a little unsettled and needs a lot of my time and energy.

The interests and hobbies at the top of my list right now include herbalism, gardening, photography (that’s another long-timer) and charting my own path through the ‘wheel of the year’ (a practice of marking the seasons via a cycle of eight ancient festivals, which has its roots in Celtic, Pagan and other ancient western agricultural traditions). I’ve just resolved to pick up my accordion once again and learn to play it (but properly this time!) and I also plan to learn the very basics of the Gaelic language, which is spoken widely here in Scotland.

I’ve just moved to a forest garden on the Isle of Skye, with the aim of getting much deeper into gardening, especially herb growing. I’m also running a campsite (for my sins!) and doing lots of handyperson jobs, especially sign-writing, which I enjoy.

I was a web designer in a previous era of my life, and I still find myself doing voluntary web projects for people I meet, like I just re-made the website for the place I live, and I’m working on one for a local wildlife photographer who has become a friend.

Finally the biggie: my partner and I are building our first home (she’s a builder, which helps). We’re in the early days, having just ordered the farming timber, but designing and putting this house together is already an obsessive interest which I work on all the time.

4. Do you have any advice for multipods that you’d like to share?

Listen to your gut and blow what anyone else says.

Know yourself well enough to avoid overcommitting and then getting stressed and/or flaky. If you see yourself getting into something new and you know it’s going to take up, say, the whole of the coming week, go with that and don’t make a bunch of other plans and then flake on people.

When you think it’s time to quit something, spend a little time with that feeling and go into it. Maybe it is time to quit, and that’s fine. Or maybe you just hit a challenge or a hurdle and pushing through that tricky (or, gasp, slightly boring!) part will take you to a much richer and more rewarding level of expertise. Don’t be too quick to quit.

Always have breakfast. Blood sugar matters!