16/08/2026
I had two tarot books open on the floor in front of me, and they disagreed with each other about the same card.
Not a small disagreement either. Two different meanings, both written with total confidence, both supposedly correct.
I remember sitting back on my heels and thinking, okay, which one of you is lying to me.
At that point I already had five years behind me as a certified health and life coach. I knew how to hold a session. I knew how to help someone move through something hard. Tarot felt like it should have been the easy part, just one more skill to add to what I already had.
So I did what made sense to me. I decided to memorize the cards. All seventy eight of them, every meaning, every possible variation. I bought the books. I made the lists. I quizzed myself in spare minutes the way you'd study for an exam.
And I got worse at reading. Not better. Worse.
The more meanings I crammed in, the more frozen I felt in front of an actual spread. I'd pull a card and instead of feeling anything about it, I'd start running through the mental list of everything it could mean, trying to find the "right" one before I said a word out loud. Readings that should have taken ten minutes stretched into me flipping through pages while a real person sat across from me waiting.
Two different books. Twelve different meanings for the same card, easily. That was the moment I actually stopped and asked myself the question I should have asked from the start.
What if the meanings were never the point.
I sat with that for a long time. Because if I couldn't memorize my way there, and no amount of studying seemed to be getting me closer, something about my whole approach had to be wrong, not just my effort.
Here's what I finally understood, and it came slow, not in one lightning bolt moment. There is no way to memorize every meaning of every card, and even if you somehow could, that isn't how tarot actually works. What it takes instead is building an actual relationship with each card, the same way you build a relationship with a person. And the fastest way to build that relationship is by doing real readings while you're still learning, not waiting until you feel ready.
So I stopped trying to get it right before I started. I started reading while I was still building the relationship, messy and uncertain, and let the two things grow together.
Something changed almost immediately. Cards stopped feeling like flashcards I had to get correct. They started feeling like they had something to actually say to me, because I'd sat with them enough times to recognize their patterns the way you recognize a friend's mood before they say a word.
I've done thousands of readings since that afternoon on the floor with two contradicting books. I feel confident delivering a message now in a way I never did trying to recite the "correct" meaning from memory. And the formula that got me there wasn't more memorization. It was relationship, built through doing the thing, not before doing the thing.
This isn't just a tarot lesson, even though that's where it happened for me. It's the same trap I watch people fall into with plenty of things they're trying to learn. Waiting to feel like an expert before they start, when the expertise was always going to come from starting.
If you've been circling something the same way I circled those two books, memorizing, studying, waiting to feel ready before you actually do the thing, I'd love to hear where. Comment READY below and tell me what it is. I read every single one.
Sunny
