Monthly Archives: April 2017

I climb into bed at 12:30 am and lie there awake, tossing and turning, unable to sleep.  I look at the clock, it is 1:30 am, 2:15 am, 3:00 am, 4:30 am….I get up at 6:00, this is not good!  That is how I spent several nights in a row a couple weeks ago.  Every night, tossing and turning, the mind churning away.  Then I realized the problem, I am a Libra.

I can hear many of you going huh?  You are wondering how an astrological sign can create sleep deprivation.  I am a Libra, the sign is the scales of justice.  We like peace, fairness, everything in balance.  When the scales tip out of balance, or when a Libra personality thinks they may tip out of balance it is disturbing.

The part of the Libra personality that others often find very frustrating is that we are indecisive.  We want to weight all the options, keep everything in balance, and certainly don’t want to upset anyone else in the process.  When in a relationship the decision making process is easier because we can use the deferral method.

Anyone who has associated for long with a Libra will here “whatever you want,” “either one is okay,”  “What do you like?” “It’s up to you,” “I don’t care,” and so on.  Making a decision is so difficult we defer it to someone else.  This method works great as long as you have someone to defer to, but if you don’t the decision making process can be agonizing.

That is what happened to me.  For the first time in my life I had to make decisions and in the process spend money…two things I am not good at.   Part of the problem is that I was making several decisions all in the same time frame and my mind went into a panic mode.   In the overall picture these were not major life-altering decisions, but in my Libra mind they had to be carefully weighed, checked, and then weighed again.  Heaven forbid something should go wrong.  And of course it did.

My cell phone was 2-1/2 years old and the battery wasn’t lasting.  I needed to replace the phone.  The question is which one to get?  For two weeks or more I analyzed them online, made lists, double checked features, and compared price.  I asked friends what they carried, I agonized over the decision, but finally I made a selection.  I go online to my cell phone carrier, make the selection, attempt to place the order, and the phone is not available and they don’t know when it will be available.     Back to the drawing board to make another selection, which I did and now have my new phone, but the decision making process was not easy.  To top it off I was also in the process of deciding to shut off my land-line phone and go to using only a cell phone.

So I had two decisions regarding phones causing my scales to wobble and tilt, and if that wasn’t enough I threw in another decision.  I had spent 1-2 months contemplating a trade-in of the car that had been my husband’s for a new car, something bigger.   The thought of trading his car that he had customized was hard, trying to decide whether I wanted to buy or lease, pick a color, pick the vehicle itself, and more were upsetting the harmonious flow through my brain.

Car buying was something I didn’t do.  My husband was a Ford retiree, there is no negotiating, tell them what you want, get a value for your trade-in, and close the deal.  The process was not difficult, very simple actually.  But the mind rolls, should I have traded his car, did I get a fair trade-in value, did I make a good decision on my new vehicle, did I make the right choice in upgrading to 12,000 miles per year, or should I have left it at 10,000.   It was four days from when I stopped and looked at vehicles to when I picked mine up; four days of agonizing over and justifying my decision.

After several nights with no sleep I finally realized what the problem was.  I wasn’t used to making these decisions.  I had always left them to my husband, but now with him gone I had to handle these things myself.  Once I realized that my mind was playing tricks on me and keeping me awake needlessly over decisions that were reasonable to make I was able to once again resume normal sleep.

Why did the realization of the problem allow me to sleep?  Because they were good, well-thought out decisions.  They are choices that are good for me, no one else.  When I realized I was lying awake trying to analyze my own decisions I was able to re-balance the scale, stop it from tipping and upsetting my sleep patterns, and resume a normal routine.

Will I ever get out of balance again?  Of course.  I am a Libra.  We are notoriously indecisive and while I may have balanced a couple small decisions in the large scale of things it is logical to realize that things will come up in which the scale is tilted.   Just keep in mind that if you ask me to make a decision you may hear “I don’t care” or “whatever you want” rather than a true answer.  That is how I keep my scale in balance.

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