Yes, we are smack dab in the middle of a Mercury Retrograde

I had often referred to my Ipod as “my child”.  It was this tiny, fragile creature that I had been entrusted to take care of, and I loved it with all of my heart.  It practically went everywhere that I went.  I had even named it.  Dove.  So you can imagine my heartache when last week, Dove wouldn’t sync up with my computer and then just wiped clean of all its contents.  Multiple attempts to resuscitate Dove failed.  And as I rushed Dove to the Genius Bar at my nearby Apple Store, I already felt that its spirit had left me.  Dove had become a victim of Mercury’s retrograde, squeezing electronic devices of their proper, happy lives.  And thus, frustrating their owners when their beloved possessions crapped out.  Thankfully, I had purchased an extended warranty, so I was handed a brand new Ipod that I immediately began to love as strongly as the old one.  But still, I had to bow to the Mercury influence.  Perhaps why I have chosen to name this new Ipod just that – Mercury – with the hopes that the two will be friends moving forward.

Yes, we are smack dab in the middle of a Mercury Retrograde.  So that means we have to be patient when communication breaks down.  We have to forgive people when they don’t hear us correctly and do the exact opposite of what we wanted them to do.  We cannot go to the rage place when travel gets delayed or our reservations are incorrect.  And we must chill when our computers, TV’s, or other electronic BFF’s, who usually make our lives easier, decide to turn the tables and make life hell.  It’s all just a response to the planetary energy at play.  And we want to get emotional about it.  We want to take it all to heart and place blame on our choices or ourselves for things not working out.  I mean, I wanted to throw that damn Ipod against a wall or out the window.  But we all must take a step back and a long deep breath before we can really take in what’s going on and discover the best proper solution for it.

Now is the time to go back over some of the pieces of the past and communicate with them

Mercury is the messenger.  So when he stalls in retrograde, the messages are no longer clear.  So how do we make the most of this?  Well, we still have a ton of information that we took in before the retrograde began on June 26^th.  We have projects that we started and never finished.  Messes we created but didn’t fully get around to cleaning.  Conversations we told ourselves we wanted to have but didn’t have the courage to initiate.  Well, now is the time to go back over some of the pieces of the past and communicate with them.

Instead of finding your life on a constant repeat, you’ll see that you’ve liberated yourself enough to live in trust and on shuffle

Consider your family as the perfect example for this.  Think of retrograde as being locked in a room with all of them.  At first, you’d be like a caged rat, desperate to jump through any crack you could possibly squeeze through.  But eventually, you would calm down and look around to see that these people are representations of you.  Perhaps there are pieces of you in these people that you don’t want to come to terms with and have tried to avoid.  Or you may reconnect with one of them and remember a time when you were happier or felt a freedom you’ve since lost.  Whatever the case, you would eventually become inspired to shift your thinking based on what you see.  You would see that your parent just refuses to change, and you would thus be compelled to see where you’re being stubborn in life and need to evolve.  Or you’d be shocked to see that your cousin has done a complete 180 and isn’t the person you always remembered her being, which would push you to want to burst further out of your own comfort zone.  You would be forced to grow, without needing to meet new people or take on new challenges.  Like Dorothy in Oz, you would come to recognize that you always had the power to change your circumstances.  You just needed to know that for yourself.

So use the next couple of weeks to reassess where you’re at and make any shifts to yourself that may help you to achieve your next set of goals.  Be kind to yourself.  Pay attention to the way you talk to yourself or think – if it’s more negative than positive, use this time to adjust it and create better habits of self-love.  Go over old creative projects you may have started but never finished.  Approach them with new eyes.  Make a date with someone you’ve needed to talk to and rehash some old issues until their bygones.  And just know that if you have to start something completely new, to pay close attention to every detail and take it slow.  Whether it’s a new project for work or you’ve just signed the dotted line on a home, know that some more bumps than are usual will pop up.  But if you have taken the time to be more patient with yourself and have come to understand that flexibility is a major asset in life, than you’ll be able to take it on with ease instead of sheer frustration.  And instead of finding your life on a constant repeat, you’ll see that you’ve liberated yourself enough to live in trust and on shuffle.  And it’s much more exciting to be in the flow than on a constant loop.