Man, let me tell you, I hit a wall about six months ago. Not a gentle nudge, but a full-on, skull-cracking wall regarding my career. I was stuck. The money coming in was okay, stable, boring as hell, but I couldn’t figure out how to jump to that next level—the level where I actually felt excited about checking my bank account, you know?
I’ve been reading the cards for years, but usually, it’s all airy-fairy guidance. I needed a mechanic’s manual, not poetry. So I decided to strip the whole damn deck down and focus on just one number, specifically in relation to action and material life. I picked the Eights. Why the Eights? They scream bottleneck, movement, and critical choices. They are where the rubber meets the road before the stability of the Nines and the completion of the Tens.
The Practice: Isolating the Action Steps
My goal wasn’t just to memorize the textbook meaning; it was to find out which “Eight” was actually holding my wallet hostage. For thirty days, I pulled only the four Eight cards (plus a significator for context, but I ignored the rest of the deck). I journaled every single morning with the prompt: “What 8 is most active in my cash flow today?”
This process of isolating them really forced me to stop skimming and start seeing the practical implications of each suit.
The 8 of Pentacles: Where I was Slacking
Everyone talks about this card meaning hard work. Boring, right? But I started seeing it differently. I realized I was working hard, sure, but I was spreading my effort across three different income streams—none of them thriving. When I pulled this card, it didn’t mean “work harder,” it meant “drill down.” I tracked where I was spending my time and found I was only dedicating about 20% of my skill-building efforts to the one project that actually had scalable potential. The realization hit me like a ton of bricks: it wasn’t a lack of effort, it was a lack of focused mastery. I had to ditch the two small side gigs that were just sucking time and redirect every minute to the main goal.
The 8 of Swords: The Mind Game That Cost Me
Ah, the classic victim card. But financially, this one was brutal. My biggest barrier to making that next move (asking for a raise, pitching a higher-priced contract, investing in better equipment) was the paralyzing fear that I wasn’t good enough. I kept feeling trapped, like my hands were tied. When I pulled this card, I forced myself to list the actual, tangible evidence that was keeping me trapped. Spoiler: There wasn’t any. It was all internal garbage. This card wasn’t about the job or the market; it was about me letting irrational anxiety veto every smart business decision I came up with. I wrote down three specific, high-stakes moves I wanted to make, and committed to executing them before the month ended, just to prove the “Swords” wrong.
The Movement: Wands and Cups Showed Me the Door
The other two Eights provided the necessary push and pull for execution.
- The 8 of Wands: Stop Dithering, Start Sending. This card kept showing up when I was in analysis paralysis—endlessly tweaking a proposal instead of submitting it. It’s pure momentum. I realized the Wands weren’t asking for perfection; they were demanding speed. My immediate next move here was instituting a “good enough is good enough” rule for pitching clients. If it was 80% ready, it got sent. That alone boosted my response rate because I was hitting the market faster than my competitors.
- The 8 of Cups: The Courage to Cut Losses. This was the hardest pill to swallow. I had this one project I had sunk almost a year into, just because I didn’t want the time investment to be “for nothing.” But it was a toxic sinkhole. The moment I started seeing the 8 of Cups clearly—as the necessary act of walking away from something emotionally draining to find something better—I realized I needed to apply that to my balance sheet. I reviewed the P&L on that project and finally pulled the plug. It hurt, but the resulting mental space and time saved were immediate capital gains.
The Realization: My Best Next Move
So what did the Eights teach me about my best next move? It wasn’t one big breakthrough; it was a sequence.
My best next move wasn’t about manifesting a million dollars. It was about cleaning up the mess I was already in. I had to use the focus of the Pentacles to identify the one high-value skill I needed to master, shatter the illusions of the Swords by making those scary high-stakes pitches, use the Wands to move fast on implementation, and most importantly, I had to have the courage of the Cups to ditch the financially dead project I was clinging to.
I logged all this and ended up restructuring my work week entirely. Within two months of this focused Eights practice, I secured a consulting contract that paid 40% more than my old salary, simply because I was no longer afraid to ask for it (Swords), and I had the focused experience (Pentacles) to back it up. If you feel stuck, forget the big spreads. Just pull the Eights and see which damn card is blocking your flow. It’s practical, brutal, and it works.
