What does a career coaching session with tarot look like?
Are you curious about how I use tarot as a career coach? Here’s a brief overview of what coaching sessions can look like when we throw tarot cards in the mix.
Tarot as a coaching tool
I believe tarot is fundamentally a story-telling tool. When we draw cards, we’re making a story about ourselves, our current situation, and what’s possible.
Stories aren’t just part of tarot; they’re also how we as humans process the world around us. When you have a difficult conversation with your boss, and you leave work thinking, “She hates me and I’m probably going to get fired,” that’s a story. Is it true? Not necessarily. Is it helpful? Almost certainly not. But it’s how your mind is currently making sense of your emotional response to a challenging situation. When we can see our stories, we can see ourselves more clearly. And when we see ourselves, we open the possibility for change.
So, when we pull tarot cards, we’re doing what humans do: we’re making sense of our lives through stories. Tarot can help us see which stories we choose, and it can challenge us to tell us different stories. You’ve got 78 cards and an infinite number of combinations of those cards. That means there’s an infinite number of stories to tell, an infinite number of possibilities to explore. Isn’t that so much more expansive than continually returning to the same thoughts, running on a loop in your head?
That’s why tarot is such a great coaching tool. Coaching is fundamentally about helping you self-generate–essentially, you learn how to see your patterns, step outside of them, and create new possibilities for yourself. (I like to tell clients: If I’m doing my job right, I eventually work myself out of a job because you learn how to better support yourself.) As your coach, I believe more is possible for you than you can currently see. Tarot is a great tool for sparking inspiration.
Using tarot for common coaching challenges
Every client is unique, but I’ve found that there are often common challenges that bring people to coaching. Here are a few and how tarot can be helpful:
Client challenge: I’m stuck
A lot of people seek out coaching when they’ve hit a wall. For instance: You hate your job, but you need health insurance, and the job market sucks, and you can’t get out of this shitty situation. Sound familiar? Yep, you’re stuck. It happens to the best of us, and it sucks.
How does tarot help?
We might start by pulling cards to examine what kinds of stories you’re telling yourself right now. How you read the cards can provide insight into self-limiting thoughts that could be keeping you stuck. We could also pull cards to explore possible next steps. Are there small moves you could take right now that would give you new information to work with?
Client challenge: I can’t decide
I get a lot of overthinkers as clients. They’ve analyzed their situation from every possible angle, and they still have no idea what to do. Do I stay or do I quit? Do I want to change careers or stay on my current path? Do I go back to school? Do I go out for the leadership role? Their thoughts go round and round, never landing on a decision they feel good about.
How does tarot help?
When you’re overthinking, you often need to give your brain a break and tap into your intuition. Tarot’s great for getting in touch with your intuition. One of my favorite activities involves laying out your possible paths forward, and pulling a card for each option. Before we flip over each card, you notice what signals your body is sending you. Are you noticing that you’re hoping for a particular answer? Has your body tensed up? Are you feeling any resistance? You can learn a lot about what you want before you even pull a tarot card. Then we can combine those insights with your reading of the card to get a richer understanding of what matters to you.
Client challenge: My inner critic keeps getting in the way
When you’re trying to make changes in your life, you’re always going to encounter the part of you that is resistant to change. That might be your imposter syndrome or your inner critic, telling you that you’ll never be good enough. That might be your inner perfectionist, wanting to make sure everything has been accounted for before you take the leap. That might be your people-pleasing side, worried about how your change might impact others. Whatever you call it, we all have a part that wants us to stay small.
How does tarot help?
Through the power of tarot’s rich visual metaphors, you can begin to explore more deeply what this part of you is protecting you from and what it needs to feel safe. We can pull cards to consider how you might relate differently to your inner critic and how you can take the action you want even when you feel internal conflict.
A typical coaching session with tarot
We can use tarot at any point during our sessions, but it’s often a good place to start. We’ll begin the session by clarifying what you want to work on today. What is the question or challenge you want to explore in our time together? Then we’ll turn to our tarot deck to begin that initial exploration. I can suggest ways we can use tarot, but I’m also open to your ideas and requests. If you’re new to tarot, you might prefer that I take the lead in suggesting how we work with the deck, and I’m happy to do so. I have a lot of ideas of engaging with the deck, both from my own personal experience, and from the tarot community of coaches I belong to.
We can also use tarot at any point in the session if you’re feeling stuck again or we’ve reached a conversational dead end. And I love using tarot at the end of the session, as an opportunity to reflect on what’s shifted for you during our time together and to consider next steps you might want to take.
Let’s explore career options together with tarot
If the idea of getting some career clarity through tarot cards sounds intriguing, let’s talk. I’d love to have a free intro call with you. You can tell me what’s going on in your career, and I’ll share more about my coaching process.
