3 Myths About Mercury Retrograde and Your Business
Without fail, my best friend always sends me an emoji-filled text message with the news of each upcoming Mercury Retrograde.
“Mercury Retrograde” used to be words uttered mostly by astrologists, and as it made its made into the mainstream consciousness, it is largely met with eye rolls and sighs, synonymous with a heavy feeling of dread, blockage, or just feeling stuck.
Even if you are not the type to believe that you can view the planets’ movements as an energetic guide to your life, the pervasive feeling that Mercury in Retrograde is a time full of “shouldn’ts” can keep you from forward movement even after Mercury goes direct.
I personally believe that all parts of life’s cycles have a purpose–even and especially the ones we resist. For that reason, I have chosen to see Mercury Retrograde as an opportunity to circle back through parts of my business (and life) that need attention.
Let’s first establish that forward movement (as we believe it to be) is an illusion. All movement–from the celestial bodies to your own lessons in life–is a combination of spiral, elliptical, or recursive motion. So your desire to go, go, go forward all the time is actually not harmonious with natural movement. So give yourself a break. It’s OK to pause, circle back around and make sure you are truly ready for your next forward push.
Now that we have given ourselves permission to rest, let’s look at three myths about Mercury Retrograde and your business:
1. Mercury Retrograde makes all your technology go haywire.
While I do tend to see some weird technological stuff going on during Mercury Retrograde, it’s not magically being caused by a planet appearing to move backwards. It’s happening because “conditions are favorable” for it to happen. The collective consciousness expects our tech to go crazy, and the tech responds accordingly. My worst tech snafu ever came during Mercury Retrograde several years ago, when I first started managing my own server. Because I was not yet savvy about server security and the importance of making external backups, I ended up having to rebuild almost two dozen websites. I could have taken this as a “sign from the stars” that I needed to close up shop.
But as I contacted clients to let them know what had happened (they were all SO nice about it, thank goodness), several of them hired me for some new projects and I ended up making enough money to sustain my family through the unpaid task of rebuilding those websites, which brings me to…
2. You can’t make any money during Mercury Retrograde.
This will all depend on where you are in your business journey. Years ago, I was depending on one-off projects and referrals to get them in the first place, so my revenue flow was pretty much out of my control. Since then, I have established a stream of baseline income that is dependable from month to month. While this in itself does not sustain my whole business, it’s a foundation on which I can build. A lack of forward motion during Mercury Retrograde might slow me down a bit, but I am still generating revenue.
In your business, the way to generate revenue during MR might not be to reach out to new leads, but rather to reconnect with old ones. Just as in my example above, where I had to contact each of my clients whose website had been affected by the MR “event,” you might want to proactively reach out to your existing clients to check in with them or tell them about a new offering you have coming up. You may be surprised at the positive response you get! And this leads me to…
3. You can’t/shouldn’t sign on new clients during Mercury Retrograde.
I am not going to tell you not to sign a contract during Mercury Retrograde. What I will say is that you should be extra diligent in reading it over before you sign it or ask someone else to sign it. I have signed on several new clients during MR with no problems. I would rather carefully sign an agreement during Mercury Retrograde than hastily sign one right before or after out of a sense of astrological superstition.
If after all this, you still insist on personifying Mercury Retrograde as an evil villain out to get you and break your website/email/smartphone, etc. then you will experience exactly the expectation that you are projecting.
I encourage you to make friends with this astrological influence, if not release worry around it completely. Keep a sense of humor about it. Stay lighthearted. And when it’s over, you can still celebrate.
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