Minerva Rules Your Futureis a goddess-given guide to career rejuvenation and exploration that's unlike any method out there. With an inspired process that encourages change and achievement, Minerva, the goddess of wisdom and strategy and the patroness of professions, teaches us to call on all of our resourcespractical, psychic, and spiritualin order to catapult ourselves to new levels of creativity, power, and opportunity. Minerva shows you how to work with your sun and moon signs to understand talents you may have ignored or forgotten. She also eases you through difficult situations while putting you in touch with the essential elements that make up realityearth, fire, air, and water. Offering exercises that will open you to receiving power from each of these elements, Minerva accompanies you on guided meditations, helping you create a strong and resilient state of mind. Redirecting your energies to meet life's highest purpose requires tremendous courage, perseverance, and clarity. For great and lasting change, it's as important to open your heart and mind as it is to open your Rolodex. But you don't have to blaze the trail alone. You're about to embark on the adventure of your life with a powerful and expert guidethe goddess of wisdom herself, Minerva. If you are ready to seek out the path to creative fulfillment, there's no better guide to launch your journey. Based on years of helping clients make major career decisions that affect all aspects of their lives, Barrie Dolnick teaches you to uncover and heal "creative bruises"those negative beliefs that get in the way of advancement and change be aware of and learn how to use your poweryour real ability to influence yourself and the world around you identify and maximize your assets take concrete steps to do the work you were meant to do accept obstacles and setbacks without giving up on your dreams acknowledge and share your successes And this is just the beginning of all you will learn.

Barrie Dolnick has a consulting company, Executive Mystic

ONE

INTRODUCTION TO MINERVA

Welcome to the realm of Minerva. You're about to step into a new dimension, one where you can find ultimate satisfaction in your life and work. If you think this isn't for real, you're half right. Minerva's world integrates your reality with your possible future, where you use a little magic from the gods to get what you want. Minerva greets you, eager with the anticipation of making your life what you want it to be.

If you're not familiar with Minerva, she'll excuse you. She knows that her presence has been rather low-key since the fall of the Roman Empire, but her powers are no less potent. Minerva is a goddess celebrated in many ancient cultures, from Greece, where her name was Athena, to Ireland, where she was called Brigid. Minerva is her name from the Etruscan civilization, the people who preceded the Romans and modern-day Italians.

Minerva's powers were widely respected. She held a place among the "big three" gods--sitting beside Jupiter (Zeus), king of the gods, and his wife, Juno (Hera). Minerva is the goddess of handicrafts, the professions, the arts, and strategic warfare. Her likeness is still found in ruins around Pompeii, Rome, and throughout Europe and Britain.

You won't have to erect a shrine to Minerva in order to enlist her help (although I'm sure she'd be flattered); in fact, you don't need to recognize her as a "goddess" in the old-fashioned, seriously pagan way. For purposes of this book, Minerva is your cosmic guide, your help in the heavens in getting what you want. You won't find her very intrusive, but you'll soon rely on her constant support.

"Soon, I wearied and called out to men and the gods for help . . . I pleaded, desperate . . .

As I stretched out my arms to heaven, I felt them change and darken, sprouting pennate projections--feathers? Indeed! And my arms and hands were turning to wings. My feet on the sand no longer slipped but now flew along lightly, on top of the ground, and then up in to the air, soaring, floating, wheeling. . . . Thus, I became Minerva's companion."

--OVID, METAMORPHOSES

MINERVA AND THE ANCIENT ART OF SHAPE-SHIFTING

Shape-shifting is a term borrowed from ancient cultures that essentially means "magical powers to change form, power, and purpose." Shape-shifting, in its historic sense, was the ability to take on different physical forms in order to enact a deed or purpose that would be otherwise impossible. For instance, in myth, a mortal could be transformed into an animal or plant, usually at the whim of the gods; in other legends, a magician or shaman would shape-shift into a deer in order to pass undetected onto someone else's land, or a bird, to get an aerial view of the landscape. Medicine men and healers today employ more energetic, nonliteral shape-shifting through meditation, to access the powers of healing or vision associated with animals.

Career shape-shifting is not so mysterious; it is a method of deriving buried creativity, power, and opportunity that will allow you to pursue your real ambitions. Career shape-shifting is both practical and actionable--through somewhat unconventional (but safe and nontoxic) means.

Successful career shape-shifters are all around us. They're the people who go back to school, who quit their jobs to start their own businesses or change careers, who even "drop out" of mainstream business life to pursue their heart's desires. Career shape-shifters have courage to pursue their happiness and fulfillment, and have somehow found a way to break the ties that bind them to only limited satisfaction. Minerva knows the way, and with her as your companion, you can shape-shift, too.

WHAT TO EXPECT FROM MINERVA

Minerva Rules Your Future will take you through a process of creative rejuvenation, as well as career exploration, that is unlike any method you've heard about to help you shape-shift into a new career persona. While you may think these exercises are strange, I assure you they work.

Minerva uses some ancient tricks and methods to put the push behind career changes and advances. To go with Minerva, though, you have to have an open mind. If you're accustomed to rational procedures, you may find that Minerva's way doesn't make sense. She doesn't care about phones, faxes, resumes, and meetings the way you would. She actually helps the psychic and mental energy around your goal become healthy, actionable, and magnetic.

Each step with Minerva complements any real-world actions you'll be taking on your career-shifting journey. For instance, when you know that you want to make a change, she'll help you consider your options. Like vocational testing for career aptitude, Minerva will offer you her insight into your gifts--through your stars.

When you're ready to put some energy out there--like making phone calls, sending resumes, making new contacts--Minerva will polish up your power to give you the best chance of gaining what you want. Her nontraditional exercises create considerable results in your psychic energy. You and your efforts can appear smarter, sharper, faster, or just plain better than others. And this won't be smoke and mirrors, either; you can actually be better than others when you get your psychic energy aligned with your real-world affairs.

Minerva is also extremely understanding and helpful when the inevitable disappointments are encountered. Not even Minerva can make it happen for you right away; you're bound to encounter obstacles, including your own fears, when you forge this new path. Particularly when it comes to career changes, "rerouting" is common. This occurs when your original goal becomes the wrong answer and you decide to change your mind . . . again.

My client Edie is a good example of this. She was working with some of these exercises in her effort to change professions, from lab technician to a profession more involved with helping people. Her first solution was to obtain an advanced degree--an M.B.A.--to add to her undergraduate degree in biochemistry. This, she thought, would enable her to become a sales representative for a drug company and hence work more with people. Yet Edie didn't really like her M.B.A. classes. She found her energy going down every time she left work to go to night school. She became more tired as her schedule became more demanding. She also heard from fellow scientists that the drug companies were only interested in hiring graduates with a Ph.D. in biochemistry, a far cry from undergraduate work. It seemed to Edie that every time she turned around the universe was trying to tell her that her goal wasn't right. Eventually we talked and I suggested a clearing--Minerva's way of allowing things to settle out and letting go of the negativity. Maybe the universe was only telling her to slow down, or maybe there really was a suggestion that she look into a different field for fulfillment. After the clearing, Edie realized that she wasn't being honest with herself. She went the M.B.A. route only because she thought it made the most sense. In fact, she just didn't want to learn about business; she found herself yearning for something more human.

Edie decided to take a break from the stress of night school, but her anxiety level seemed to increase. Seeking help to reduce her headaches, sleeplessness, and nervousness, she looked into herbal remedies. Edie said it was like a light suddenly turned on: Her glance into natural medicine opened her eyes to a new career path. While this was a far cry from biochemistry and drug sales, she found her energy went up at the thought of taking classes on this subject. Edie eventually found her way out of traditional biological sciences and today is a successful practitioner of natural healing and nutrition--a very nice shape-shift.

You, too, may be a candidate for rerouting, and if you are, Minerva will help you through it and you'll be that much closer to your goal.

Frankly, there are a lot of obstacles to encounter when you decide to change careers. I don't know if it's always the case, but I haven't seen anyone yet who has been able to make a smooth, swift shift without some dips here and there.

Let's go to the end of the process, though, when you've come to the point where you can say "Okay, I did it." This is sweet victory because it's been earned through your heart's efforts. What now? Does Minerva bail out?

Smart career-shifters never lose touch with Minerva, often just by relaying anecdotes to others about how they got where they are. Minerva doesn't demand that you honor her for her help, but she does make one request: You should share your magic by remembering it and, in some way, become a mentor to others. Minerva likes to see the positive vibes being passed around, so when you're done, when you've accomplished your goal, tell someone how you did it and encourage them to do the same.

LIVING UP TO MINERVA RULES YOUR FUTURE

Before you begin to transform your life and work, you'll need to consider a few peculiarities of this process.

Do You Believe in Magic?

First and foremost, you must believe in magic. I'm not asking you to join a coven, perform weird rites, or pull rabbits from hats. You must, however, take stock in what magic really is: the indefinable, irreducible acts of harmony, synchronicity, and miracle that happen to all of us one time or another. Magic happens when you don't expect it, dictate it, or pull at it. Magic happens in what I would call a graceful moment--when some divine force can intervene in a tiny space of possibility and effect change. Magic is most often found when something mundane becomes amazing or something "coincidental" answers your prayers. Magic can be found in personal ways, like meeting your spouse, or it can happen in more worldly circumstances, like finding that an old friend is now running the company you want to work for. There are infinite ways magic can happen, but you need to believe in it to experience it.

Do You Know How to Ask for Help?

Once you accept that magic isn't so silly or elusive, you're ready for the next step: asking for it. You may not have realized that magic doesn't have to be so random; you can actually attract more of it consciously into your life. You just have to know where to go. God can make magic, but many of us don't want to burden the divine being with what we think of as worldly or nonspiritual matters. Minerva can be the liaison, as it were, between you and heavenly intervention. Minerva doesn't work outside of God's world; she's actually one of its angels. That's why so many people believed in her and worshiped her for so long: She can make things happen.

Can You Let It Happen?

This leads me to my next requirement: relinquishing control--and this is a tough one, especially when you're trying to change something that seems so practical, like getting into a new profession or changing the focus of your work. These goals sound very reasonable--learn about what you want to do, explore it, generate opportunities, et cetera--and there is nothing wrong with going about things matter-of-factly and rationally. It only makes sense. But when you seek Minerva, each step you take will carry with it something more than you alone could do. You'll have some spiritual energy on your team, too. This makes each part of the process less predictable and much more difficult to control. After all, you're not the only one working on it.

Control issues are pretty tough to overcome. I don't believe any of us ever really relinquish control while we're going through this process--we secretly hold out, as if we know what will happen. It's human nature. But usually, in this process, your desire to control will create a crisis before your results are achieved. I've seen it happen many times; surrender prior to victory, giving up just in time to win. Control over the outcome is often unconscious--you think you're very hands-off until something you haven't counted on happens and, oops!, you feel out of control.

My client Linda had been working on her career change for a long time. She was a public relations executive and wanted to work in a more socially conscious environment. Her investigations into cause-related institutions depressed her--the salary structure was much lower than her current job and there were few positions available in general. After almost a year, Linda heard about a great position at a wealthy foundation that sponsored sporting events to raise money for health-related issues. With her public relations background she was perfect for the job, and contacted the executive director right away. She had reason to expect to be called for an interview. Not hearing from them, Linda called to follow up and was told the position had been filled. That did it. Linda threw her hands to the heavens in despair.

I saw Linda not long after this happened and it didn't take long to see her fear--of failure, of being stuck in her current job forever, of not being "heard" by the universe. She couldn't comprehend why such an "obvious" opportunity didn't work out. As for my counsel, I simply reinforced that there was something more suitable coming. I held the faith for her, while she claimed she'd given up.

Only a few weeks later Linda was in a meeting with one of her clients who announced that his company was setting up a new corporate philanthropy division and was in the midst of recruiting for it. Privately, Linda communicated to her client her interest in the new division. He set her up with the right people and it wasn't hard to convince them that she was right for the job. Linda got what she wanted after all.

Magic is easy. Control is hard.

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Excerpted from Minerva Rules Your Future: Goddess-Given Advice for Smart Moves at Work by Barrie Dolnick
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