Did Your Year Ahead Reading Stress You Out? These 3 Tarot Mistakes May Be To Blame

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I’ve seen it time and time again.

 Folks get so excited to pull cards for their year ahead reading, that they kinda… trip over themselves. Sometimes this is due to excitement, and other times it’s due to not really knowing how to read a card for an entire month.

After all, it makes sense to read a card differently for an entire month in a year ahead tarot spread than in a tarot reading for something else, maybe something more day-to-day or specific. I’ve had some people message me in a panic after they’ve done their own year ahead readings. “Oh my god!” I’ve heard a thousand times – “I pulled only bad cards! Am I doomed?! I’m doomed, right?! I’m just gonna go curl back in bed until this year is over.” …And all of that, during the first week of January.

What mistakes lead people to interpret their readings in this way?

And – maybe more importantly – have YOU made any of these mistakes in your tarot reading, particularly in your year ahead reading?

Mistake #1: Interpreting tarot cards with a negative, pessimistic lens.

The tarot cards that pop up in your reading are always doing so in order to help you out.

Within my worldview and philosophy on tarot, I see the cards as its own being, its own energy – and when we work with our tarot cards often, we build connections with our cards. We understand each others’ vibes, and we care for one another. Tarot tunes into your energy in order to give you a good reading, and nudges you to pull the exact right cards in the positions they need to be in, in order for you to get the messages you need. 

Your tarot cards want to help you lead the best life you can, and will show you whatever cards will make this the most likely: whether this is cards that are seen as friendlier, or those that are a little less so. If we get a tough card, it’s not a death sentence (even if it is the Death card that shows up)!

If we get a challenging card like, let’s say, the 9 of Swords – which, in the classic Rider Waite Smith tarot deck, depicts someone in bed, awake in the middle of the night and looking incredibly stressed out while there are tons of swords on the wall behind them – this could be a warning that a particular month might be a little stressful and full of worry, even to the extent that our sleep might be disrupted. It’s a card of mental worries taking root in the physical body.  

This example is a little personal, as I actually drew the reversed 9 of Swords as my card of the month for February this year! How did I interpret it for myself?

Well, I won’t lie – I did have that familiar, “ah, oh no!” reaction that most people have when they see this card come up. I am human, after all – and I also love seeing obviously happy cards!

I interpreted this as a little warning sign to anticipate and notice any worries and stress, should they come, and to be particularly careful to manage my thoughts. I’ve also seen it as a nudge to make sure that I attend to any tiredness or wonky symptoms that pop up in my physical body, and to see that as an echo of mental stress I may have become so accustomed to that I haven’t yet noticed. I know that during this month, I’ll need to be really attentive to the impact my mind has on my body.

If I’m feeling inspired, I might even give myself some tarot homework inspired by this card – I might decide to pick out nine stressful thoughts or worries that are occupying too much of my energy, and switch them out for nine more helpful, positive, optimistic and soothing thoughts. Our mind has such a powerful impact on shaping our reality, and worrying and anxiety often makes things worse than they need to be.

Notice how different an approach that is to, “Oh no, 9 of Swords, February is going to totally suck, I may as well give up now”?

Mistake #2: Forgetting that human agency is a thing.

This is probably one of the most common mistakes I see when people freak out about the readings they’re doing. It’s true, there’s a lot we absolutely can’t predict about our life and what happens in it.

At the same time, there’s a lot that we absolutely do have control over. And it’s time for all of us to acknowledge that, and move out of learned helplessness.  

When we see a bad card and think there’s nothing we can do about it, we forget that we have this fun cool thing called agency. Life exists. We all know that life is full of ups and downs – amazing points of accomplishment and celebration, as well as moments of pain, suffering, and grief. We’ll all have bad days.

What’s important is how we integrate these crappy moments: do we feel the feelings, take the tough lessons, and move onwards and upwards, or in some different direction? Or do we wallow forever, as our world and experience gets smaller and more dull? We all have this choice, always – tarot just points it out to us.

Sometimes crappy things happen in life. Or, good things happen – changes that absolutely need to happen – and we can still have a wonky reaction. It’s all part of the journey, and we all have the power to choose how we heal, and how we approach the situations in which we find ourselves – whether through our own actions, or random twists of fate.

Mistake #3: Not reading cards with patterns in mind.

Is it a year where there’s a ton of major arcana? A ton of reversals? Only swords, no cups? Mainly court cards with three queens? Are there tons of swords in the cards pulled, even in cards that aren’t even in the swords suit (like Justice, for instance)?

Paying attention to the patterns in a reading can give us a lot of information about what’s going on, what energies are flowing easily, and which are blocked. It can show us whether the year will be one full of massive lessons that will create ripples in all areas of our lives, or if it’ll be a year where the conflict and change largely occurs on a day-to-day and somewhat mundane basis.

We all have those years that are absolutely fucking mental, and some years that are a little more chill. When we know which is which is which, it’s a little easier to prepare. When we don’t read a year ahead spread with an attentiveness towards patterns, we do ourselves a massive disservice – and miss out on a ton of information.

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