The beginning of your actual personal New Year is your own Birthday. Celebrate it with your rites, rituals, and resolutions.

Today, April 22 Earth Day, is also my Birthday and the beginning of my “Magician” Year. (You can figure out which tarot archetype is yours for the year by going to the little guidebook that comes with the Voyager Tarot Intuition Cards for the 21st Century).

You can read more here: Intuition Blog

We, humans, are supposedly the most evolved creatures on the planet. If that’s true, why, for example, do we create workplaces where there are supervisors and managers? When you look at all the life forms on earth, each individual does it’s job without a boss overlooking their work. I don’t see a micro-manager robin dictating what other robins should be doing. I don’t see a vice president of orchids telling other orchids what to do. All of nature, including humans, grow up by imitating. All fall into line doing what they are supposed without a supervisor. If a salmon decides not to swim up the river, it dies. That’s it choice, but in reality, all want to survive and so most creatures follow along and do their thing.

The most recent studies confirm that productivity and personal fulfillment were considerably enhanced by the empowerment of employees by allowing greater autonomy in the workplace. A Cornell University study of 320 small businesses in which half granted their employees the opportunity to be self-directed and the other half relied upon management and top-down directives, the companies of autonomous workers grew four-times the rate of the controlling businesses, and also had one-third the employee turnover.

In this age of choices about everything, and of independent living (we have our own cars, computers, clickers, opt-in, opt-outs, and diversity of life styles, careers, friends, places), what in the world are we doing with an un-natural system of management. Management is un-evolved. Dump it. Fire the manager!

Two former human resource execs at Best Buy began a movement called ROWE (Results-Only Work Environment) and it’s been picked up by organizational psychologists who call it SDT(Self-Determination Theory). Not a theory but in fact, the entire world is evolving towards self-determination. Maybe we humans are finally getting it. We can be trusted. We can do the job on our own whenever, however and wherever and be happy!

As we march towards the self-directed way of working as we do in all other areas of life, obviously there needs to be some training and education for this new, yet natural way. That’s where a person like myself comes in. Having been self-employed for over 30 years, I know what it’s like to be autonomous. Whether you work for a company or work alone, you essentially have to learn the skill of being “your own business.” You are the business. Go to www.youbiz.us and see what it takes to truly be effectively autonomous – You, yourself, must navigate the workplace waters and be the CEO of your professional life. You, yourself, must know what your product or service is; stay updated with your competence level; sell and market your skills; be the CFO manager of your own financial house; be the quality controller of your own work; and connect, communicate to partner and collaborate.

The often used concept of “empowerment” is truly and finally coming home to roost. It’s your time to take the power of your work life in your hands. If you have employees, it’s your now-destiny to liberate your workers. Autonomy in the workplace makes for happier and more productive workers and by extension, greater profits for the company. Power to the person! YOU.

My intuition has always told me that women would be great leaders, whether of corporations, organizations and, of course, families, and we see today many fatherless households and females in management positions for half the companies in the U.S., let alone the rising number of women in government and politics.

Why would my inner voice tell me this? For one, because women bear and birth the survival of the species, it seems naturally logical that they would be well equipped to run the show. Nature is very down-to-earth wise. Can you imagine nature entrusting a less sustainable being for the future? Nature does not work that way. It figures out the most efficient and reliable means for life’s perpetuation.

As I am about to produce a YouTube “2010 Year of The Empress” piece, which is about this year as a time of creativity, production and self-reliance, I read a USA Today article with the headline of “Progesterone to the Rescue.” Say what? This article points out how this female hormone’s effect on healing brain injuries shows extraordinary promise. Study after empirical study have shown how this hormone, which plays a key role in maintaining pregnancy, has succeeded for brain damage where for over 30 years, drug after drug by the pharmaceuticals has been tried and failed. (This success applies equally to men and women and does not alter masculine traits, so relax guys).

I’ve always felt that because women live longer on average than men they must have some natural advantages. I am sure there are all sorts of explanations for this, but the one I want to focus on is women’s intuition. Whether for cultural or natural causes, women seem to trust their intuitiveness. Taking less time to be so “men tal” and logical by thinking and thinking through something and by simply going with the feeling impulse saves energy and even adds energy. Intuitions are emotive impulses that move and charge us! Analysis, on the other hand, leads to paralysis of action, and according to the physics Law of Motion, a body at rest tends to stay at rest – and how about leading to rigor mortise (death).

We know that intuitive empathy is the absolute key to effective communication, and ultimately leadership and human survival is dependent upon the degree of cooperation and communication between people. Leadership is all about motivating and organizing people – listening to and inspiring others. Humans are highly social creatures, so my own intuition informs me that those who can relate the best are the most capable of leading. So what about women?

Every study I have seen about how well women communicate – by understanding how another feels (intuitive empathy) – show that women are far more skilled than men. This is not to say the women are angels without fault, but I love working for or with a woman because of this high level of emotional and social intelligence.

However, this ability to communicate can go out the window when it comes to governance and “group think” (partisan politics) because it’s been shown time and time again how all humans, male and female, lose any semblance of empathy, sympathy, compassion when it’s a group relating to another group, party to party, nation to nation. I fear that the innate and instinctive intuitive women’s gift of inclusive communing and nurturing vanishes under the pressures of the collective which is so different from person to person.

In any event, I prefer women’s intuition and their people-centric way of living, rather than an idealistic, mentalized ideology that inevitably brings conflict – an opposite and equal reaction (the Third Law of Motion).

Most of you who want a FREE Reading online will in most cases get you a mechanical reply. As a Reader for over 30 years, I know that canned Readings may not directly apply to you, though you can find value in them. As I say, “synchronicity rules,” so whatever the machine regurgitates to you is meaningful; however, reading the cards for another is an art – an intuitive, empathic, communication skill that can only come from a real person. But who is the Reader? Readers often project their own ego, agenda and what they want to see, so not all are of great value. Regardless, it’s all insightful and should be inspiring!

If I were getting an online Reading, I would go with an open mind, not necessarily accepting it all. Readings are information, and not all information is relevant. Trust your own inner authority because you know yourself better than anyone or anything else. I believe in “be your own oracle.” So, as a Reader, my way is to let the cards speak while I guide you the readee to your own most wise conclusions.

For an online reading based upon some kind of tarot “layout” or “spread” of preset positions, be aware – are those the questions you would like to ask? Questions bring the answers you seek, but not all questions are worthy and meaningful to you.

On my www.voyagertarot.com site, we have a free “CARD A DAY.” The cool thing about this feature is that you can have any question formed in your mind and then hit the button when the time is “right,” and get an answer to your particular question. (In all these mechanical readings, there’s a “random generator” at work in the software so the cards will probably be continuously different).

Know that the question is everything. Questions lead the way and to the truth. With the Voyager site, you can get more answers to the same question by hitting the card button again, or you can ask more questions and get more answers by clicking away. Remember this, too many cards and answers can get you confused and be of little value. “Less is more” in the tarot world.

Also, be cognizant that you may not get THE answer or the answer that you WANT. Good. Cards awaken your subconscious and get your intuition sparked and more sensitized. Sometimes, what the cards are trying to tell you become clear over time. And as the writer Gloria Steinem once wrote, “The truth shall set you free, but first it might piss you off.”

In any event, the automated answers have to be personalized by you for meaningfulness. Ask yourself, how does the card answers pertain to you? The Voyager “Card A Day” answers are general writeups of the cards and so require your own “read” of their definitions. As in the oracles of old, the seeker is expected to make the reading apply. When you, the querent, is involved in this kind of understanding, then the oracle has real value, for you are engaged and enlisted and that is how oracles work – through the almighty “self-fulfilling prophecy.”

Go ahead and get your Reading, in-person or automated, by me or another, and with the above mentioned principles, you will benefit. We are all, to an extent, victims of our own habitual and egoistic thinking. Readings break us free of old and counter-productive ways of seeing ourselves. It’s all about getting insight and one way or another, Readings provide that.

Just today, I picked a Voyager card from the Voyager site about how I was doing. It was “Stagnation.” How true. This was a day of just hanging out after a weekend of work teaching a group how to read the cards as a coaching tool. Because we do have choice and don’t let the cards abuse us, I always pick another card even if the previous card is true but sort of negative. I wanted to know how to get out of this stagnant swamp and so picked another card. This time it was the Hermit. True, true, true. It’s a time today for regenerating and healing myself with some alone and down time, which is a major dimension of the Hermit archetype.

How can the cards through a computer be so correct? It must be the “ghost in the machine.” Indeed.

One of my fave thinkers, Thomas Friedman (The World is Flat), wrote that “We are the ‘Grasshopper Generation,’ eating through the prosperity that was bequeathed us like hungry locusts. Now, we and our kids together need to be ‘The Regeneration’ – the generation that renews, refreshes, re-energizes and rebuilds America for the 21st century.”

Yes, yes, yes.  Recently, I led a Voyager workshop on the “Renewal of America.”  It’s a five-card reading of how America can regenerate!  This event was edited down to an hour and is on a DVD.  It’s got some surprising cards and insights.  Order it now if you want some inspiration for “re-ing” yourself and your country. Go to www.voyagertarot.com (Store – Multi-Media) and get it for half price ($10).