[What does it mean to live true to yourself?] The story of how I, who was pushing myself by thinking "I have to earn more," returned to a 3-day-a-week part-time job and regained my own axis

Hello! This is Asha Yoshimura.

What do I want to do through tarot?
I have been thinking about this again since yesterday.
(I think about things like this sometimes.
I like essential things.)

Since I have started to see it,
I will write about it while including my own experiences.
It is long, but I would be happy if you could read it to the end!

Wishing to live true to yourself

I am the type of person who wishes to "live true to myself."

At the root of that, there is probably the desire to "live comfortably."
When I am doing something that doesn't suit me,
I feel uncomfortable, painful, or exhausted.
Therefore, I want to choose and create an environment where I can be comfortable.

I started thinking that way probably about 20 years ago, and
through trial and error and twists and turns,
in the past year, through tarot,
I feel like I have acquired the mindset to live true to myself.

Mindset is a word I hear often, but I wondered what it specifically meant, so I looked it up a little.
Mindset refers to the heart, spirit, or consciousness,
and specifically,it is one's attitude or way of thinking toward things, and the thinking habits or stance that a person possesses.

I would like to talk later about what specifically I have acquired through tarot.

When I couldn't live true to myself

Living true to yourself, in other words,
is "living with your own axis."It means not being swayed by the opinions or emotions of others,building good human relationships,

and thinking and deciding for yourself.
It means holding the decision-making power of your own life yourself.
To put it in slightly more professional terms,

it is "living while being mentally independent."

Looking back at myself now,
I feel that I am more mentally independent than before.
However, there was a time when I wanted to live true to myself,
but couldn't do so.

For example, when I changed from a part-time job to a full-time position three years ago.
We were going to buy a condo,
my eldest son's high school entrance was coming up,
and my husband said to me,"I want you to become a regular employee and increase the amount you contribute to the household budget."

After I quit my job when I got married, my life was mainly focused on raising children,
and I started working part-time about 7 years ago.
Around the time I was told to become a regular employee,
I was working 5 hours a day, 3 days a week,
and actually, that wasthe perfect working hours for me.

But, it was a timing when we made a big purchase like a condo
(of course we took out a loan, my husband did),
and I could see that educational expenses would increase in the future, such as for high school entrance.

The fact that I was working part-time meant that
the pillar of the household budget was my husband's salary.
I saw him working as a company employee from early morning until late at night,
sometimes working on his days off,
so I also felt sorry for him.

That's why I basically did the housework.
Since he was granting my selfishness...
With that kind of guilt,
I agreed to aim for a regular employee position.

However, looking back,
I now understand thatthis was a state of not being mentally independent.I was not living with my own axis.

What it means to live with your own axis

Living with your own axis means
not being swayed by the opinions or emotions of others.
When I accepted the idea of aiming to be a regular employee,
Iaccepted my husband's opinion just as it was.

Even though 5 hours a day, 3 days a week was perfect for me,
as a regular employee, it would be 8 hours a day, 5 days a week.
Moreover, at first it was a trial period,
and it was 8 hours a day, 3 days a week,
but even so, I broke down physically in a month and a half (lol).

Or rather than breaking down, one day,
"Oh, I might have a really high fever..."
I thought, and took the day off work.
The reason why I said "might" is because
we had just moved into a new house,
and I couldn't find the thermometer right away.
(Thinking about it now, overlapping moving and full-time work was reckless, lol)

I contacted my boss,
and after that, I found the thermometer and measured it...
36.8 degrees Celsius. A slight fever. Just a slight fever (lol).
But at this time, I realized,
"My body is rejecting this way of working."

Just around that time,
it was when COVID-19 measures were being taken,
so my boss told me, "It's okay to take a break for a while."
I took about a week off,
but once I was told I didn't have to go to work,
my body and mind became suddenly energetic (lol).
Illness comes from the mind. Reactions appear in the body before the head, don't they.

When I was aiming to become a full-time employee to meet my husband's expectations,
I wasn't living with my own center,
and I wasn't mentally independent.

If I had been mentally independent,
・I would have tried talking about staggering the timing of our move and my full-time work so it wouldn't be a burden.
・Instead of just increasing my salary, I would have tried reviewing our overall household budget for unnecessary expenses.
・I would have tried thinking about our household finances over a long-term span of 10 or 20 years.
・I would have tried thinking of ways to increase my income through a work style that I could manage without strain.
and so on,

while staying true to myself,
I think I could have
exchanged opinions with my husband
and made adjustments to manage our household finances.

In this way,
being able to choose how you live while staying in harmony with those around you
is what mental independence is all about.

However, it was precisely because of this experience
that I became able to prioritize a work style where I can feel comfortable.

Even now, I work part-time for 5 hours a day, 3 days a week,
treating it strictly as 'for the household budget,'
and I express my true self
during the time outside of my part-time job.

I learn about and share things related to my struggles
(doing tarot readings, posting on Note and social media)
and enjoy self-expression (like painting with watercolors).
It is precisely because I have these activities, not just my part-time job,
that I can be myself.
That is how I feel.

Before, I couldn't give myself permission to be that way.
BecauseI was worried about what my husband would thinkand I was worried about
what society would think of me.

The reason I became able to give myself permission is largely due to the mindset I gained through tarot.

The one not giving me permissionis, believe it or not, myself.
I realized that.
That is why

I want to share how to use tarot to become mentally independent,
and how to live authentically
while having your own center and staying in harmony with those around you.

So then,how do you use tarot to build your own center?
As for the concrete methods, it has become quite long, so
I plan to write about it properly another time!

I still haven't finished the follow-up to my previous article,
and things I want to write keep popping into my head,
so I can't keep up with organizing them (lol),

but if there is anything you'd like to read more about,
or anything you'd like me to explain in detail,
please let me know in the comments!
I hope to respond to as much as I can.

With that said, I'll end it here for today...
Thank you so much for reading until the end!