Follow Your Plan, Not Your Mood

Or, how the Emperor taught me that discipline can also be self-love

I never pull the Emperor card. In the words of Taylor Swift, “Like, ever.”

And honestly, it’s no wonder.

The Emperor tarot card has long represented - to me - what not to do. At worst, it reeks of finance bros shilling their hustle culture and millionaire mindsets while listening to Joe Rogan on the way to the office and buying yet another pound of chicken breast on the way home for meal prepping their tragically carb-free cuisine. At best, it represents the inflexible, ultra-competitive, over-achieving, you’ll-sleep-when-you’re-dead-and-who-cares-if-you-don’t-want-to-be-a-lawyer-since-when-does-that-matter-now-keep-working approach to life that inevitably led me to an emotional meltdown and splashy career change.

According to Meg Jones Wall, whose description of the Emperor in Finding the Fool is way more eloquent and much more fair,

This is a patient, focused, detail-oriented figure who understands control, who knows how to develop systems of organization, who uses discipline and order to accomplish big goals—not because they’re power hungry or desperate to micromanage, but rather because they recognize the many gifts that procedures can provide.

Control, discipline, and laser-focus are all well and good. Essential to success, I’d argue. It’s just that I for one never need to be reminded of channeling these qualities. I have focus, detail-orientation, and organization up the wazoo. It’s playfulness and rest and flexibility and compassion and self-love and surrender that have been the major lessons of my last decade or so.

(Cue the eponymous Broadway musical number, “Anyone Can Whistle,” also known as the theme song for my life.)

And as such, no Emperor tarot card in sight.

Until about a month ago, that is.

You see, I’ve been having motivation issues. I’ve been feeling uninspired, uncreative, and unenergetic.

Back in December, I figured it was simply end-of-semester burnout and that I’d feel differently after some rest and Christmas frivolity. But there I was, pulling into our driveway at precisely 10:30 pm on December 31st saying to my husband, “Quick, I have exactly 90 minutes to get my shit together before the new year!”

Midnight came and went, dear reader, and my shit lay quite strewn about. And there it would remain well into February despite the lofty visions and dreams I had outlined in my journal.

“What is my fucking problem!?” I inquired of my tarot cards. “I honor every last one of my goddamn emotions. I listen to my body incessantly. Unless I have an early class, my alarm clock is a mere formality at this point. I have made nary a to-do list in as long as I can remember, and I didn’t even purchase 2025 calendar inserts for my planner! I try to do as close to the bare minimum as I can at work to offset my inherent tendency to over-achieve, and I have turned my weekly tarot newsletter into a biweekly-ish one in an attempt to further destress. I operate almost entirely on mood and intuition, as any meditating, inner child loving, tarot card pulling, recovering over-achiever should, should they not!? So why does it feel like I’m too uninspired and unmotivated to take any real steps forward?”

And there the Emperor card went, shooting out of my tarot deck, somersaulting into the air and landing squarely before me on the bedspread.

I noticed his steel armor and rigid posture. The rocky, inhospitable crags behind him. His staunch authority, his no-nonsense discipline.

So many of us equate self-care with soft, lovely practices like staying in bed, taking things slow, cancelling plans, pampering ourselves, tossing out the to-do lists and the New Year’s Resolutions. And for good reason! If you’re reading this tarot newsletter, chances are you, like me, struggle with people-pleasing, perfectionism, over-achieving, and all the other potential side effects of being a smart, creative, ambitious, and goal-oriented woman. I’d bet you are probably well overdue for a loosening of the reins and a generous helping of nurturing and compassionate self-love for a change.

But you know what else is self-love?

Discipline.

And accountability.

Especially when it comes to working on our big, juicy dreams and bringing our soul-centered vision for our future to life.

I thought about the Emperor and journaled about it for days - weeks actually! Why had all my lofty ambitions from the year or two before petered out? Didn’t I still want to be a best-selling author with a creatively inspired career of freedom and flexibility? And when exactly was I planning on starting that diligent yoga practice? And my morning walks? And losing those ten pounds? And getting started on the journaling exercises in all those creative writing books I purchased over the winter that would be sure to shake loose the cobwebs in my brain and jumpstart the book proposal extravaganza I had envisioned for this year?

I still meant to start all those things, I told myself. But I simply wasn’t in the mood just now, and I didn’t want to dishonor my feelings and start hustling and muscling my way to achievement like I had done in my most disconnected and unaligned years.

The thing about the Emperor though is that he’s not a finance bro telling you to ignore your feelings and just man up and burn the midnight oil or you’ll never make partner.

The Emperor is a stern but kind mentor who reminds us that once we’ve listened to our intuition’s call and recognized a beautiful goal, value, or dream we have for our lives, it is then up to the opposite archetype within us - the more structured, organized, disciplined, and industrious side of us - to step up to the plate.

What I’ve just referred to as opposing archetypes, or forces, inside of us, life coach and author Martha Beck calls our “two selves” in Finding Your Own North Star: Claiming the Life You Were Meant to Live. As she explains it,

The essential self contains several sophisticated compasses that continuously point toward your North Star [your joy-filled, intuitively aligned, destiny or purpose in life]. The social self is the set of skills that actually carry you toward this goal. Your essential self wants passionately to become a doctor; the social self struggles through organic chemistry and applies to medical school.”

The essential self - the one I had absolutely no contact with for at least half my life - screams Empress tarot energy to me. And the social self - my structured, determined, analytical, strategic, hard-working self - is classic Emperor energy, trying so desperately now to get back into my good graces.

[Read more about the intuitive, embodied energy of the Empress here.]

As Meg Jones Wall contends in Finding the Fool, “[t]here is pleasure in good work done well. When we embrace our natural authority [and] claim ownership of our ambitions and our happiness, it empowers us to take our dreams seriously,” and we can start “acting with purpose.”

I had pinpointed my destination using my inner Empress, a much needed initial step. But I’ve been refusing to embrace my inner Emperor in this new, equally essential leg of the relay.

What this looks like day to day for me is putting way too much stock in my mood, mistaking it for an accurate intuitive compass that will point me in the right direction.

But moods are not only fickle but often formed by habit, and not necessarily our best ones! Like a tire finding a worn rut in the road, our minds look for the most familiar moods. And if your most familiar mood has been one of burnout, resistance, perhaps even some resentment or pessimism, you’re probably not always going to do what’s best for you and your beautiful vision for your life in the long run.

The Emperor reminds us to follow our plan, not our mood.

Because if it were up to my mood, I wouldn’t necessarily be sitting here at my desk typing to you now.

Because if it were up to my mood, I would plop on the couch for an episode of Gilmore Girls after this rather than drive my ass to the yoga studio.

And if it were up to mood, I would never - and I mean never, ever, ever so help me God - bring myself to read another English 101 essay ever again in my entire life.

I’m realizing now that the reason I recoil from the Emperor is because for much of my life, I applied my structure and discipline and determination to goals that didn’t matter to me. I was so busy building a life I didn’t care for and that didn’t actually speak to my values and soul’s dreams at all!

And my poor little traumatized heart didn’t realize that my ability to get organized and strategic and pursue THE SHIT out of my dreams is actually my superpower when applied to THE RIGHT DREAMS.

I don’t need to shy away from or reject Emperor energy anymore.

Maybe you don’t need to either.

If you, like me, are wary of Emperor energy these days and want some guidance on how to channel it in a way that feels productive but also inspiring and aligned, I have a tarot spread for you!

Here’s my four-card Emperor Energy tarot spread, exclusively for my paid supporters.