A few days ago, I woke up in the middle of the night and had a hard time falling back asleep. It wasn’t something specific that worried me, but rather a general feeling of discomfort, restlessness, and the inability to drift back into my dream world.

Then came anxiousness. I was starting to get worried that if I didn’t get back to sleep soon, my next day was going to be a disaster. I had my Tracy Anderson class scheduled for the early morning, followed by a first meeting with the writer who’d write my book proposal. The stress was building up, making it even harder to fall asleep. 

I don’t know how much time passed, because I purposely don’t keep a watch beside my bed, but at one point I woke up, realizing I had fallen asleep. The whole night felt like I was going in and out of sleep until morning, when I told my husband in my most miserable voice that I hadn’t slept all night. 

After my morning meditation, gratitude, and self-care, I nervously opened my health tracker app to check my low sleep and recovery scores. To my utter surprise, my sleep score was 94%, one of the best ones I’ve ever had! 

‘What a stupid tracker,’ I told myself, but I couldn’t ignore the fact that over the past 76 days, during which I had been using it, it had always been spot on. I decided to ask my tracker’s AI for an explanation.  

And there it was! A profound revelation. “It is very common for people to have a period of anxious wakefulness at night,” the AI said the obvious, but then added, “While they might get adequate sleep, they feel like they haven’t slept all night because they only remember the time when they struggled to fall asleep.” 

In other words, my tendency to let my hardships color my experience and ignore everything else that’s great was staring me in the face. 

It’s not only my tendency, by the way. Throughout our evolution as a species, we have learned to pay more attention to negative information because it was more crucial for our survival. This is called the negativity bias, and it’s very real. 

If I didn’t have the tracker, I would have spent my day feeling sorry for myself for my sleepless night. Now I knew the facts, and my whole day was much brighter. But I gained much more from this experience, and I hope you will too. 

We are now transitioning from Scorpio, or Pluto energy, to Sagittarius, or Jupiter energy. 

Pluto is the planet that rules our struggles and the psychology we develop in their wake. 

Jupiter is the planet that rules our lucky opportunities and the optimism we develop thanks to them. 

When our Pluto and Jupiter energies aren’t balanced, we tend to focus on the hardship and let it color our reality. We are so caught up in what does not work that we completely ignore what does. It’s an empty cup full cup situation – when Pluto and Jupiter are balanced, we see the whole cup. We recognize our struggles and work with them while also celebrating our blessings.

It’s also important to note that we can’t access Jupiter’s optimism without facing our struggles courageously. We need to go through Pluto’s challenges in order to enjoy Jupiter’s joy. 

For example, improving my sleep has been a struggle and a goal – it is the reason why I have the health tracker in the first place. But I must expand my outlook and see the big picture, which tells me that all in all, I sleep better than most people do. 

How to Balance Pluto & Jupiter Energies This Week:

• Is there a hardship or a struggle that colors your reality? Something that you are so focused on that you feel like it is your entire experience? 
• Can you expand your outlook and see that the hardship is not you, nor your reality? It is an important part of it that you shouldn’t ignore, but there are other aspects to your life that are wonderful, and you should recognize them too. 

I’d love to hear if that helped you change your perspective about something. Feel free to comment on the blog post page below. 

With love,

Yael