Career and Vocation

Chapter I - INTRODUCTION

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Finding a True Vocation

To make the best use of the astrological insights offered by this report, it is important to remember three things. First, a sound understanding of one's needs, potentials, and limits is far more important than the facts and figures presented to us by the outer world. It is not that facts and figures do not matter. But even if there is only one job available and four hundred applicants seeking it, we possess more power than we realise to create our own reality. If that job is truly right for us, and we are prepared to do the necessary preparation and training, we will achieve it - somewhere, some time, somehow. Second, we must not be afraid to try. Trying and failing and trying again are far better than not trying at all, for we can learn from our failures even more than we learn from our success. Understanding why we might unconsciously court failure or fail to seize opportunities may also be important. Many people are dogged not by lack of ability, but by a deep unconscious conviction that they do not deserve to be fulfilled. Understanding ourselves more deeply can help us to distinguish between real limits and unnecessary self-sabotage. Third, a birth chart cannot, of its own volition, create our opportunities for us, any more than a road map can make us take a journey. A birth horoscope can show us a direction and encourage us to make manifest our highest values and most cherished dreams. But each individual must make the decision to set off down the road. If we refuse through fear or cynicism, and remain sitting on the doorstep yearning for what might have been, we cannot blame either astrology or the world for our discontent.

Chapter II

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How You See the World

Each of us sees the world differently, and feels strong and competent in some areas and uncertain or ill-equipped in others. No person is perfectly adapted to every sphere of life. Finding the right direction may depend partly on your knowing how you evaluate and adapt to life, and finding an outer situation which matches your fundamental outlook. Of course it is not as simple as just looking for a place where you can exercise what you believe to be your strengths and avoid what you perceive as your weaknesses. Sometimes, working to develop sides of your personality where you feel unsure can generate the greatest feeling of accomplishment. But it does help if your perspective on life is in harmony with what you do, and you can therefore feel confident and able to meet the challenges which your work offers. It can also make a difference if you are able to remain loyal to your values and needs, rather than accepting a situation where you believe neither in what you are doing nor in the people you work with.

Use your practical abilities to help bring order into chaos

For you, life is all about being useful, and work must provide a vehicle through which you can leave the world a bit more orderly and integrated than it was when you entered it. You also need order for your own well-being, and hate chaos and mess. Your steadiness and deep sense of responsibility make you ideally equipped to carry the weight of organising others and attending to the practical details of any business or creative project with which you become involved. But you are more than a workhorse or a technician, even if you sometimes underestimate yourself. You have a lively, curious, and inquiring mind, and you love learning. If you choose work which provides stability but no intellectual stimulus, you can become exceedingly bored and restless. When you get bored and restless, you are too sensible to break out and go charging off into the blue. You are more likely to sit on your frustration until you feel unwell or suffer anxiety because of your underlying anger. Make sure you take this into account when choosing a field of work. The creative side of your nature is strong, and you need peace and refinement around you. You are too pragmatic to indulge in an artist-in-a-garret type of existence. You need to find a balance where you can feel useful and needed, but where you can also pursue your intellectual and creative interests. A good training - whether at university or in some particular craft, or profession - could give you the confidence to find that balance. If you have not acquired this training early in life, then acquire it late; you are a natural student, and there is no time limit on expanding the mind.

You are not an aggressive personality, and you may not find it easy to stand up for yourself or ask for your fair share in the rough-and-tumble of the marketplace. This can make you resentful, and when you are resentful you can become critical, difficult, and withdrawn. Then you can sabotage both your own efforts and those of others. Behind this is a lack of confidence. You need a realistic assessment of your abilities, and a clear, honest presentation of these to the world. Once you know your limits and strengths, you can move ahead with no illusions. You enjoy working quietly on your own, at your own rate of speed and in your own way. If you do get involved in a large organisation, you need a responsible position, well away from the interference of others. Left to your own devices, you will always come up with the goods; nagged at, you can quietly go on strike, or make yourself ill with worry and annoyance. You are refined, sensitive, and not cut out for the fray of battle, even if you have learned battle tactics from necessity. Make sure you have peace and quiet around you. You might enjoy work which offers you contact with nature or with animals, with children or adults who need education and are prepared to learn, or with history and the intricacies and mysteries of the past. In your own sphere you can be an excellent communicator. But you are fundamentally shy and do not like performing on a public stage. You need an audience who is willing to learn. Your ingenuity, love of craft, attention to detail, and love of useful knowledge can equip you to work in many areas which require a fine eye, an inquiring mind, and a true and deep interest in what makes the world work.

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Chapter III

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Your aptitudes and strengths

An honest and realistic understanding of your fundamental strengths can help you to orientate yourself in the world and put your energy into areas where you can hope to shine and achieve at least many of your most cherished goals. Recognising basic issues such as the capacity and desire to handle responsibility, or the need for stability and security, or the craving for constant new challenges, can affect your decisions and help you to avoid wasting your abilities in spheres where you are not likely to be happy or at home. This does NOT mean that, if this report seems contradictory to what you are presently doing, you should abruptly throw aside everything you have built so far. If, for example, new challenges and a degree of independence are important for you in your work according to your astrological profile, you should not immediately abandon a steady job and charge off into the blue pursuing an unrealistic dream. Further training may be necessary, and your domestic responsibilities must also be considered in relation to what is possible at any given time in your life. But a personality which fundamentally requires an independent creative platform from which to work means that you might need to consider new possibilities within the framework of your present circumstances, or work on a long-term plan through which you can gradually achieve the autonomy you need. The secret of real success - the kind which is rooted in an inner feeling of a worthwhile life - is to first accept who you are, believe in it, and stop trying to model yourself on somebody else. Then aim to shape your outer life in as many ways as are realistically possible in order to provide the right working vehicle for your true nature and values.

The pleasure of your own company

One of your greatest assets is the ability to pursue a goal even if others are uninterested, and even if you must work on your own. You do not need the company of the crowd to validate what enthuses you, and this allows you to make choices and develop your gifts without depending unduly on others' approval and encouragement. You are less likely to be pressured than many people when it comes to making up your mind what direction you want to pursue in life. Like other humans, you wish to have your ideas recognised and your work valued. You can be deeply hurt if you are not taken seriously. But you will not collapse if you do not get such a response instantly, or in the quantities that other, more extraverted types need. You might well prefer to work on your own, and it is possible that large companies or organisations are not places where you would feel comfortable - especially if a "family" kind of atmosphere is expected in the workplace. You like your privacy and prefer being trusted to get on with what you are doing without constant interference and overseeing. As an employee, you want to be given a particular project and then be left with complete freedom to do what you wish with it. As an employer, you want to be able to let your staff get on with their work, without your having to prop them up all the time. And as a working colleague, you believe in respecting others' boundaries just as you need your own boundaries respected. All this adds up to a depth of perception and a preference for solitude which, although they will not define what areas of work would suit you best, can certainly help to define what kind of environment you work best in.

You are not the sort of person who enjoys leaping into the fray and responding instantly with clever, fast solutions. It is not that you lack intuition. Far from it; you see more and deeper than most people, especially with regard to the psychological dynamics of the people around you. But you need time to process perceptions through the lens of your inner values, and you particularly dislike making a fool of yourself through a public mistake or a wrong answer. Spheres of work which require faster, more spontaneous responses might not suit you. You need time to work out what you are going to say and leeway to present a plan fully formed rather than piecemeal. Whether in the arts, the sciences, or business, you are likely to be at your best when you are able to work through solutions quietly and in private. An independent profession might suit you best, for then you would answer to no one but yourself, and the standards you attempt to meet would be those which your own soul dictates. You are not likely to enjoy serving on a committee, unless you are in charge of it. Seeking a position of authority may be necessary, not because you crave power, but because it may be the only way you can ensure that you are left alone in the way you need. If you do wish to be involved in a larger organisation, make sure that the place you carve for yourself gives you plenty of privacy, recognised boundaries both at work and outside it, and the chance to work out problems and solutions in your own way.

A deep and withdrawn nature requires a special working sphere

You are not one of life's innocents, and no doubt you find Walt Disney films irritating because they bear so little relation to reality. In fact, you have an excellent grasp of reality; and that means not only the reality of the marketplace, but also the reality of others' motivations. You are not materialistic in the greedy sense, but you know very well that money buys freedom and that compromise is necessary if you are to succeed in life. If someone comes to you in need, you are more likely to offer them help to learn to stand on their own, rather than giving your own hard-earned resources away freely. Creating and running an independent business might suit you; artistic work might also give you the privacy and depth you seek; and training in a profession such as medicine or psychology, conventional or alternative, might suit you. Criminal law, forensic work, or investigative journalism might attract you; and your seriousness and craving for solitude might equip you to work well with animals or with nature. You have a deep instinct for how the currents of the collective operate, and are self-protective enough to ensure that you are not exploited or taken advantage of. Sometimes you can be overly mistrustful, and you may not find it easy to let those with whom you work come too close - especially those in authority, and even more especially those in authority who have not earned that authority according to your own extremely exacting standards. In order to avoid collisions with such individuals, it might be better to pursue a path where you can exercise your own authority, as it is unlikely that the behaviour of the leading figures in many large organisations will ever be to your liking. Although you respect self-discipline and may be attracted to spheres where intense discipline is required, you could only offer yourself to such a structure if you knew there was a chance that some day, some time, you could reach the top.

Early experiences of a hurtful or isolating kind have probably taught you to keep your vulnerability under wraps, and you may have some very convincing masks which you can don at will when in need of self-protection. But you should not have to wear such masks every day at work; it can be very exhausting to pretend to be what you are not. Moreover, you can see right through others' masks, and are likely to have some very real feelings of empathy and compassion toward those who have been badly treated by life. You might consider the helping professions as a sphere of work, or anything which involves in-depth research or detective work, literal or metaphorical. You like puzzles which require deep and serious thought, and you are also very good at working out strategies quietly. This could make you well-equipped to work in spheres where you need to keep secrets and pursue subjects in great depth. You also have a lot of pride, and would not take kindly to being treated in an off-hand manner. The people you work with are critical to your "job satisfaction", since you need to be able to trust them - at least a little - and to feel they are worthy of respect. And perhaps most important of all is self-respect, rooted in the knowledge that you are engaged in doing something truly useful and relevant.

The advantages of X-ray vision

You don't miss much, and can sometimes disturb people with the depth and accuracy of your perceptions into what is hidden. This is a talent which could make you excel in any field where you need to uncover what is obscured, or penetrate to the depth of a problem to find the core of its solution. You probably enjoy challenging research, and love to be the first to discover something which others have overlooked - especially in areas where something has been given up as useless. This ability could serve you well in the helping and healing professions, but it might also make you a formidable opponent in the law courts, or a thorough and tireless investigator in financial or forensic fields. Your capacity to "diagnose" what is ill or damaged - whether human or inanimate - could equip you to work in the medical field, in industry, in insurance, and in government. As a quality of emotional perception in the arts, your X-ray vision can give you depth and power as an actor, a writer, a painter or sculptor or musician. Unfortunately such a gift may not be appreciated by those who have something to hide - and you may have had more than your share of conflicts with authority figures who are not as authentic as they would like to appear. You have a long memory when it comes to others' malice, and early experiences may have taught you, in the words of Theodore Roosevelt, to "walk softly and carry a big stick". If you can move beyond a sense of personal injury and vengeance, your conflicts with authority could teach you a great deal about the nature of power - and you will probably need to acquire such understanding, since you are likely to enjoy positions of power and want to be able to use your power responsibly.

The unseen and unknown are exciting to you, and you need to get your teeth into a sphere of work where you have depths to plumb. Many fields of endeavour could provide this, as long as you are not required to deal with superficial people, superficial subjects, or boring products. Your intensity and need to feel emotionally involved with your work may require you to seek an area where you can get passionate about what you are doing. For example, it might be hard to feel passionate about working as a teller in a bank; but you could get passionate about personnel work within the structure of a bank. Don't turn your back on a challenge just because other people tell you it is difficult. The harder it is, the more determined you are likely to get, and the more fulfilled you are likely to feel if you can beat the odds. There is a fighter somewhere inside you which, rather than being unleashed against others, is happiest unleashed in the name of a cause of some kind in which you can passionately believe.

The need for an orderly work environment

Not least among your assets is your ability to appreciate fine detail, and to create order in your working environment. You are not averse to attending to the small things in order to make sure the big things do not go awry. You are also not averse to doing this detailed work yourself, and would probably rather manage your own "cleanup" operations rather than have someone else messing about with your projects or papers. In addition to this ability to respect and give energy to the smallest facets of your work, you also have a strong need to feel useful, and are not averse to helping others to create better order in their lives and work as well. This could make you excel as a consultant or teacher, since you are prepared to put a lot of time and energy into helping others to understand things more clearly. You may have an academic turn of mind, in which case study and the acquisition of knowledge may give you enormous pleasure. Or, if you are a craftsman or an artist or writer, you may relish the constant reshaping and perfecting of a creative work. This quality of patience and attention to detail is a valuable gift which you can bring to any sphere in which you choose to work. At the most profound level, it means you are prepared to take responsibility for your creative efforts, rather than expecting others to clean up after you or correct your mistakes.

Your critical eye and discriminating mind may make you very picky about the people you work with and the environment you work in. A factory on a messy site, or an office full of unsorted rubbish, can actually make you feel physically ill. Dirt and disorder have a bad effect on your mental state. So does chaos in other people's thinking and ideas. Routine matters to you, and most of all the rituals and habits which you yourself have established as necessary to your well-being. You may react badly if you are required to adjust to other people's structures, but you can be quite obsessive in your allegiance to your own structures. Provided you are the one who is allowed to do the organising, you could work to provide the structure for someone else who is more flamboyantly imaginative - but don't underestimate your own imaginative abilities, nor your need to maintain your dignity and personal boundaries. Your need for order does not mean you would enjoy being ordered about yourself.

The subtlety of the secret agent

You are a subtle person, and usually see and know much more than you are prepared to share with others - unless you have learned to trust them over a long period of time. You have a powerful survival instinct which has probably taught you, especially in your early life, that it is better to watch and wait before you put all your cards on the table. Moreover, you have a powerful sensitivity to the unconscious dimension of human nature, and have the gift of sensing on an intuitive level the undercurrents at work in your environment. You know many secrets, and you also know how to keep secrets, both your own and those of others. This special gift could give you great power as a creative artist, because you are capable of sensing and touching those deeper levels of emotional life that others are often ignorant about in themselves. You might make an excellent therapist or surgeon, or a powerful actor or public speaker. You have an instinctive understanding of the psychology of the crowd, and could therefore also excel in fields such as advertising, where you need to "second-guess" what the public wants before they know it themselves.

Your gift is, naturally, double-edged, as all true gifts are. The kind of insight and subtlety you possess is liable to make you deeply mistrustful of crowds and uncomfortable in larger companies or institutions where power-battles are rife. You can sense darkness and destructiveness around you, and you might excel at ferreting out the whereabouts or psychological dynamics of the criminal or the psychologically disturbed. But you also need to listen to your powerful survival instincts. You may be happiest working independently, or with those who, like you, see and acknowledge the darker side of life. Sometimes you can be prone to melancholy, because you are never entirely convinced that life is wonderful or that people are basically good. You know many of them are not. You are sensitive to tragedies and miseries in the world, and have no illusions about the destructive power of those who have not faced their own inner demons. Try to find work where you can utilise your gifts in the service of the collective. Because you are aware of many hidden dimensions of life, you can help to heal some of the damage in the world - even if this is on a small scale. Don't let suspicion and mistrust turn you against others, but listen to that discriminating instinct which warns you to be cautious in the face of blatant unconsciousness in the people around you. Although you may not wish to use your special abilities in the literal world of healing, at heart you are a healer, and have something important to contribute to the human community.

The greatest rewards lie in loyalty to your own soul

Overall, your nature is best adapted to those spheres where you can be self-motivated and can enjoy the maximum amount of privacy, independence, and respect for your boundaries in terms of space, time and work habits. A profession where you can work independently, in the arts or in a service or research field, might suit you best. This does not mean that you must be self-employed, or that you are unable to work with others. If you find the right niche, and can maintain an independent position within a larger organisation, you might be happy; and teamwork could also be rewarding for you. But the qualities of the people with whom you work really matter, and your depth and seriousness should not be wasted in spheres where you are required to think and speak superficially. Loyalty to your own soul and your deepest values is extremely important. Some people can happily work at just about anything, provided they have companionship and sufficient financial rewards. You are not so easily satisfied. You have never run with the crowd and have probably had to cope with feelings of intense isolation or "differentness" at various times in your life. This is not a failing, but is in fact the reflection of the gifts of insight and self-sufficiency which lie at the core of your character. You are neither lazy nor lacking in imagination; in fact you are capable of intense dedication if you are in the right field, and you have an acute intuition which allows you to perceive many hidden things. But do not be alarmed if it takes you longer than some to find your niche. A special nature requires a special place in the world.

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Additional aptitudes and strengths

Although these are your main strength, there are other qualities which you can build on as you consider the best ways to utilise your energy and talents. These may not be as dominant in your nature, but they are important nevertheless and need to be considered in any assessment of your work situation. An astrological chart, from the perspective of vocation, presents us with an essential character pattern; and the "ideal" sphere of work is one in which as many of one's essential character qualities as possible can be given an avenue of expression. There is no perfect job for anyone, just as there is no perfect world. But these important characteristics need room in your life, somewhere, somehow, to be honoured and offered some vehicle through which it can live.

The gift of a rational spirit

You are a clear and logical thinker, with an inquiring mind and a powerful desire to understand the fundamental principles behind how and why things operate. You need work which stimulates and utilises your particular mental abilities. You have the capacity to penetrate beneath the apparently random surface of life to the patterns and laws which underpin material existence; and this ability to recognise essential principles might equip you to work in fields such as the legal profession, or many areas of scientific research. You might also make an excellent economist or securities analyst; or you might be drawn to medicine or genetic research. Sociological and psychological spheres could also interest you, for the laws by which society and the individual operate are also intriguing to you. You do not like muddled thinking, and if you are to do a job well, you need to know exactly what is expected of you and why. If you are drawn to the arts, you are likely to be attracted to theory as much as practise, and you tend to bring as much intellect as feeling to any creative work. If you have a gift for writing, your clear and precise use of words, and your ability to organise ideas in ordered structures, could make you excel in history, biography, or articles for scientific journals. You might also do well in the sphere of university education. If you have a more practical bent, you could combine your love of order with an appreciation of fine craft, and you might make a fine engineer, computer programmer or architect. Your work needs to offer you a vehicle for your mental curiosity, your love of logic and order, and your preference for careful, thorough analysis. If your present work does not offer the mental stimulus you need, consider furthering your education or training so that you can find work which makes the best use of your special mental gifts.

Needing a place to exercise the power of reason

Reason and rationality lie at the core of your nature, and you need to utilise your mental gifts in your work. But the application of reason immediately implies that chaos, disorder, and the non-rational exist on many levels of life, which need to be brought under the rule of order and subjected to rational thought. You have a complex nature, for your basic temperament is aligned with the forces of reason, yet you are fascinated with the reasons why life is so unreasonable. Use this complexity in seeking a vocational path, for you need challenge in your work and are most likely to find it in grappling with those spheres which will always defy any human attempts to explain them: human nature, the nature of material reality, and the ebbs and flows of the vast collective psyche which secretly unites all living things. Don't use your love of order as a defence against those things which you fear in life; for if you choose a field of work from a position of defence, you will eventually find it boring and unrewarding. Take the plunge and train your mind to struggle with the unexplainable. Whether you pursue the arts or the sciences, your methods need to be those of a scientist, while the subject of your endeavours needs to be those realms which so many artists attempt to invoke through the magic of their creative vision.

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Chapter IV

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Know Your Limits

Recognising your innate limitations can help you to focus your energy in the right direction and get the maximum fulfilment from your work. All human beings have limitations, and these need to be seen, not as "faults" or "failings", but as the inevitable result of having strengths in other areas. No individual has everything. Being able to understand those areas where essential character qualities might restrict your capacity to engage in or enjoy a particular kind of work, is part of the building of self-understanding and self-confidence. Sometimes we have to try and then fail before we are able to recognise that we are undeveloped, unsuited, or simply uninterested in a particular sphere of life. Pressure from family and peer group may push us into attempting to become what we are not, and much time and energy may be wasted in attempting to fulfil someone else's expectations when we know we are not comfortable in that particular kind of work. It is important to recognise that limits do not signify any irrevocable flaw in character. Working hard on an area of limitation may, in fact, produce great confidence born out of hard effort, and sometimes real talent may be discovered beneath the surface of what appears to be a block or difficulty. It is up to you to discern whether a character limitation needs to be worked on, or compassionately accepted, or both.

No man or woman is an island

John Donne once wrote that no man or woman is an island, but you are not inclined to trust that dictum. You often do your best to ensure that, even if you live on the mainland, you are protected by high walls and barricades. This enhances your inner life and ensures that you are loyal to your own values. The opinions of others are not the driving influence on your life or on your choice of work. But there is a paradox inherent in your temperament and your situation in relation to the outer world. You need to be what you are, and any work you do needs to be motivated from within rather than from the world outside. Yet without the sense that you are living a useful life and contributing something practical to the ongoing improvement of others, you may find yourself locked into a rather melancholy isolation where you feel you cannot communicate those values and ideals which matter most to you. Your chief limitation, when it comes to your working life, is your reluctance to let others in - and this is largely due to a combination of pride and mistrust. You would probably benefit from a close look at the ways in which this tendency to wall yourself in affects not only your relationships with work colleagues but also your ability to "put your goods in the shop window" - in other words, to risk offering what you have created to the outside world. This is not a limitation which has to create a prison for you. It can be worked with and transformed into a deep insight into others' fears and insecurities. Ultimately it arises from one of the deepest and most creative needs of your soul - to assess and evaluate life according to the dictates of your own inner values rather than according to the often limited and narrow perceptions of the collective.

Mistrust can block others' support

Your fundamentally defensive view of life can sometimes be a great asset. But it can also be a limitation, because your mistrust of others may make it difficult for you to ask for the help you need. You may also give others the clear message that you do not quite believe in them, and this can hurt and offend those who are genuinely on your side or trying to offer their support. Delegating responsibility requires a certain amount of trust, and if you allow yourself to be taken over by a general dark view of human nature, you may find it quite impossible to delegate tasks to others. This means you may be constantly subjecting them to scrutiny or criticism, which is not a good recipe for getting the best out of those who work for you. Equally, if you are asked to carry responsibilities by someone else, you may be over-sensitive to criticism. Mistrust can make you touchy and secretive, and then you yourself may become the object of another's mistrust. The whole issue of mistrust is one which will always be central to both your strengths and limitations in the sphere of work. Mistrust of authority may, in many cases, be thoroughly justified, and no doubt you have learned this the hard way through your life experiences. This is one of your gifts, for you are not easily fooled and are not inclined to be gullible. It is also one of the reasons why you may work best on your own, or in a position of authority where you can call the shots. But isolating yourself too much may not be good for you. You need to find a balance between your fundamentally self-sufficient nature and your need to engage with other human beings. Try to learn to separate realistic perception from the general assumption that all people are essentially untrustworthy. Recognising that you must always look after yourself does not mean that others are always dishonest or acting with selfish intent. Take each person and situation individually on its own merits, and try to view what the past has taught you in a more objective spirit.

Early experiences can undermine self-confidence

Sometimes you have surprisingly little real sense of your own worth. This secret insecurity can cause you many difficulties in the working sphere, particularly if you allow self-doubt to undermine your ability to ask for what you are truly worth. Possibly early experiences have contributed to this sense of low self-esteem; or there may be an innate tendency to set too high standards for yourself. Try to face this inner difficulty and work to turn it into something positive. It is likely that you have, at some time if not presently, accepted far less financial reward for your efforts than you merit. Think hard about what you feel you should be worth. And then ask yourself why you might be accepting less, and how you can go about changing the situation. A little introspection might lead you back to financial or emotional issues connected with your family background. Sadly, the world will give you what you ask of it, and no more. You have to believe you are worth more to receive more. You might also be reluctant to aim for what you would really like to do. If you have creative talent, are you using it? If you have always wanted to do a particular thing but have never tried, why have you let life discourage you? Why not make the effort? You may be carrying a "hair-shirt" attitude which makes you put your own pleasure and fulfilment at the bottom of your list of priorities. The reasons for this may be deep and complex, and it is up to you to unearth them and bring them into the light so that you can break a self-destructive pattern. You do not have to feel frustrated in your working life. If you can see the ways in which you sometimes sabotage your success by aiming too low and asking for too little, you could begin to break this pattern.

A secret need to belong should be acknowledged

Your independence and introversion do not tell the whole story about your complex nature. Deep down, you yearn to be accepted by others and genuinely liked rather than merely respected. Although it would be extremely difficult, and perhaps even impossible, for you to "sell out" in order to get that approbation from others, it can cut you deeply if you are made to feel an outsider or are segregated from group activities within your work environment. Like the proverbial leopard, you cannot "change your spots" and become somebody else, and it is far more rewarding being you than being a person with less depth and substance. But you could make things a little easier on yourself if you are able to acknowledge your desire to be liked, and to overcome some of your deep suspicion of others. Don't hide your kind and decent nature. Because of your need for contact, friendships are very important in your working environment. This may not mean chatting away with all and sundry, but it could mean putting effort into cultivating those few people whom you like and have learned to trust. You need to be able to exchange ideas and get a more balanced view of the world, which can help you to come out of your shell and recognise just what your efforts are contributing to others. If you work on a self-employed basis, try to make contact with others in your field, and join any ongoing discussion groups which could help you to feel there is support out there when you need it. The support of others can be enormously helpful. If you work in an isolated profession such as writing, where many hours are spent in your own company, it is particularly important that you have some contact with those who can share your ideas. Although you are realistic about human nature, there is strong idealism in you, perhaps buffeted a bit by life experience but nevertheless alive and well. Don't dismiss these ideals even if the world has shown itself to be less than beautiful at times. It is here where you could benefit the most from friendships and discussion with like-minded people. Believe it or not, there are people out there who understand and appreciate you.

Accepting criticism without hurt

Your pride can be very intense, and any work situation where you are held up for mockery or ridicule, or even where your mistakes are made public, can seem tantamount to annihilation. Any hint that you are not being taken seriously, or that you are unappreciated or unimportant, can bring enormous anger to the surface. Criticism, even when it is well-meant and valid, may be rejected out of hand because you feel so personally hurt and demeaned. Try to learn more detachment. Often people will point something out which is not meant to attack or injure you, but is intended merely to help you to do something better. You need to learn that not all the world is full of enemies, and that others may have valid perceptions which could help you to improve on your own considerable talents and abilities. Because you are a deep and serious person, you do not do things sloppily or superficially. But not everyone possesses your depth or sensitivity. Words can sometimes injure you too much, because you yourself tend to think before you speak and do not say things lightly. But that does not apply to everyone. Hypersensitivity to criticism is the dark side of your intensity and capacity for deep commitment to whatever work you do. Every gift is double-edged, and your seriousness and depth are no exception. They are one of the richest gifts of your personality, but they can prove a handicap at work if you take everything with such desperate seriousness. Your excellent capacity to intuit others' motives is sometimes occluded by your fear of humiliation, and you can easily lose your objectivity and misinterpret others' motives if your own early hurts, long forgotten, are invoked by a situation at work. Learn to cultivate the simple art of forgiveness. It will not do for you to sit simmering for years over an injury which a colleague or employer has inflicted on you - especially if it was never intended to hurt you in the first place. You have a long memory for insults and injuries. Equally, on the "up" side, you do not forget those who have offered you help, and this can be a great asset because of your enormous capacity for loyalty. It could help if you were able to lighten up a bit, and learn to laugh - not only at yourself, but at the ineptitude of others. Most of the time, the injuries you perceive are merely that - human ineptitude.

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Chapter V

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Working with Others

One of the most important factors to consider in terms of your direction in life is how you work with others. Everyone has his or her own style of relating in the working environment; everyone has different needs and requirements; everyone needs a different degree of privacy or teamwork; and everyone interacts differently with peers and with authority figures. There is no "normal" way of being with others, but it is important that you understand just what you do need, so that you can maximise your abilities in the best possible way. Many specific issues concerned with your interaction with others at work have been covered in earlier sections; the following paragraph is more a summary of fundamental needs which might be helpful to keep in mind.

Two is a crowd

You aren't a particularly gregarious person, and you would probably be happiest working on your own, or in an environment where there is a minimal amount of socialising and camaraderie amongst co-workers. Your self-sufficiency is one of your great strengths, for you do not depend on the support of others to accomplish your tasks and achieve your goals. But sometimes you may underestimate the degree to which loneliness or a sense of isolation can undermine your self-confidence, and it might be helpful to distinguish between real self-sufficiency and a deep-rooted mistrust of others which makes you fear exploitation or hurt. The former is an asset, but the latter could spoil potentially helpful working relationships which otherwise might play a positive role in helping you to achieve professional goals. However introverted or self-contained you are, you are still a human being, and need some degree of connection with your fellows, however small the degree in comparison with more extroverted temperaments.

One of the difficulties in having a nature which is so self-contained is that others may fail to understand what really motivates you, and may assume that you are shutting them out because of arrogance or a belief in your own superiority. While this may be far from the truth, you may sometimes find it very difficult to share feelings and foibles with others, and therefore you may not do anything to alter such unjust opinions once they have been formed. Your chief difficulty in working with others is that pride, a need for privacy, and a dislike of invasive behaviour may conspire to convey an image of aloofness which feels threatening or vaguely demeaning to others. While this is really their problem and not yours, it is important that you understand it, so that you are not taken off guard if you find that difficulties arise between you and co-workers. A little more flexibility in allowing others closer may help this situation; and such increased openness need not be hypocritical or forced, since there are always going to be times when you could do with a bit of encouragement or wish to express ordinary human indecision or seek advice. A generalised mistrust does not do justice to the enormous differences in people, and you may need to learn to judge others not from early experiences which might have jaundiced you against human nature, but on what each individual is really like. Try to come out of your ivory tower on occasion, and let your common humanity show itself. Even if you work independently, you still need some input and encouragement from those who work in your field or could assist you in formulating and pursuing your goals.

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Chapter VI

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What Success Really Means to You

When people speak of "success", they generally mean a position of importance in the world's eyes, or a job that yields lots of money and all the material pleasures and comforts that implies. But success, in terms of the deeper issue of vocation, is a highly individual thing that means different things to different people. Success in this more profound sense is linked with an individual's capacity to express in the outer world the values and ideals which matter most in the inner world. Seen in this way, success may not involve money or position at all; for it depends on a quality of inner loyalty and integrity, and reflects the real essence of individuality rather than a common consensus based on superficial social or material concerns.

For you, success lies in your ability to express your real self, your deepest values and dreams, and your imaginative gifts in some creative form. You feel most alive, and know that your life has a sense of meaning and purpose, only if you are connected to some inner source of magic and vision which allows you to feel your human personality is the vehicle for a unique individual destiny. This is essentially an introverted process, and it is necessary even if you also have a need to be involved in working with others. Your need to find your own very special form of expression means that you may have sometimes felt let down by loved ones whom you hoped would provide the magic and meaning for you. But you will only experience a sense of fulfilment if you can give shape to that magic from within. Creative work of some kind is essential to you. This does not mean you "must" be an artist in the literal sense, although you may have specific talents in some field of the arts, such as writing, painting, or music. But individual creation can take subtler forms. Creating a business, a school, a group, a garden, a home - all these pursuits become genuinely self-expressive when you seek your inspiration from within rather than from the outside world.

A certain diffidence and lack of self-confidence could make you hang back from expressing all that you know to be in you, and worries about whether you deserve the acknowledgement you seek could interfere with the authenticity of your inner vision. This could stand in the way of real creative effort, even if you know you have talent. But your anxiety could also serve a valuable positive purpose, provided you do not allow self-consciousness or fear of criticism to turn you away from what you most love doing. Your worries about whether your abilities are "special" enough can help you to work hard to develop your skills to their maximum potential, and your fear of being thought ordinary or insignificant could act as a goad and impel you to make a powerful creative statement despite your discomfort and uncertainty.

You need to know that what you create is uniquely yours, and that no one else could possibly do it in precisely the same way. It is that experience of uniqueness, of absolute "self-ness", that holds the key to your fulfilment, and your true vocation must support your quest for authenticity and self-discovery through creative effort.