quick question on doing tarot readings

i find that when i do readings for myself i have a hard time picking up on what the cards mean. but when i do readings for friends and others im able to key into the aspects of the cards and give a good reading to the person.

like the other day, i was using my cards and a friend asked for a general reading. so i gave him a nice three card reading. i cant remember what the cards were now, but, i told him they meant the following: that there was a girl in his life he was thinking of getting with but he was hessatant because she was very dominaring.

at that point he stopped me and started to laugh and told me i was right on with the reading. that there was a girl who was dominaring who he was thinking of seeing.

so why is it when i look at the cards for myself i cant see anything and have to refer to the manuals, but when i do cards for others im able to read like the best of them.

thanks for any help,
samiam010203

A lot of it is about objectivity, in personal readings, our feelings and desires can cloud the truth of the reading.

Perhaps you could try doing a reading for yourself, but pretending it's for another person, to help get some objectivity there?

I get this and well gave up trying to read for myself.... I really just cant read for myself OR I see fantastic outcomes for even the worst situations... so I just ask someone else to read for me so I am getting a less biased view

You have a bunch of choices here.

• Do different kinds of readings for yourself then you do for others. I talk about this in depth in _Tarot for Your Self_, with additional techniques in _21 Ways_.

• Stick absolutely to the most basic meanings (you can even take them from books). Write these down for each card and then a summary of the whole reading - sticking very closely to the meanings you wrote down. Don't try to make sense of what these words mean—just write it down. I find that when I look back a year or more later at what I wrote it makes perfect sense and was very accurate - but that I just couldn't see it at the time, or it seemed too trite and obvious to be significant. Later I find out exactly how significant it was! Do enough of these and you start becoming a little more objective about your own readings.

I have a reading from when I moved to California that I came across 20 years later. And a reading from the beginning of a job i had for 11 years. I also have a reading from when i first met my now-ex-husband. All of these depicted accurately the whole story. Yet I hadn't gotten the significance then at all.

Mary

thanks all for your help in this matter.