You’re hoping for a successful outcome. And you’re having trouble seeing yourself as an employee for the rest of your working life. You want to be your own boss. You want to transform your career from being an employee to one where you’re a successful business owner. You’ve heard about archetypes, but you don’t know how to use them to your advantage…

When you harness the symbolic power of archetypal energies, you can influence a situation or goal (in a good way).

The alchemist archetype is the archetype you need to call on if you want to start and operate your own business. How do I know that? If you’d said that you want to start a business because you have an innovative business idea, then this tells me that the Entrepreneur archetype is trying to make itself heard. My clue was in the keyword innovative. It’s what business entrepreneurs do best. However, in first case, the key word is transform because you want to transform your career. Transformation is what the Alchemist archetype does best. And the Alchemist accepts that part of transmuting lead into gold is a process of experimentation. Trial and error is their path to success.

To use an archetype to your advantage, you need to plug into it. (One archetype at a time, or you’ll blow your circuits.)

To connect with the Alchemist archetype you need to locate it within yourself. Hold the idea of the Alchemist in your mind then do a body scan to locate the energy of this archetype. How does the energy feel? Do you feel it as heat? Maybe it’s a fluttering, a buzz, or a tingle. Where do you feel it? In your heart? Behind your third eye? In your hands and feet? In your solar plexus? Maybe you can feel the energy flowing in, around and through you? It doesn’t matter where you feel it as long as you get a feel for it. And how does it make you feel once you connect to, and experience, this energy?

Name the emotions. Maybe you feel charged, creative and empowered.

Now, name the shadow of these emotions. Identify the opposite of charged, creative and empowered. The shadow is the opposite of what’s in your awareness. Flat, blocked and disempowered.

By naming your shadow emotions, you expose them to the light of your consciousness. They’re less likely to trip you up later, and if they do (because you know you can’t control everything) then you won’t be shocked, hoodwinked or completely blindsided by them. It also reduces the need for others to carry your shadow emotions for you. Eventually, your shadow comes back to haunt you through them. What does that look like? They might try to flatten your enthusiasm about becoming your own boss. Some might try to block your path to success, leaving you to feel disempowered about the whole idea.

So, when you recognise that you’re stuck in the shadow of an archetype, take a quiet moment to acknowledge the shadow emotion.

Your shadow is not strictly negative. Your shadow can be either positive or negative. The shadow can be your lead and your gold. Your shadow is what you don’t know about yourself, good or bad. Furthermore, and in our example, feeling flat, blocked and disempowered drove you to seek change, but at the time you were not conscious of it. If you were to identify only the positive emotions in your body and name them, then your shadow emotions will remain in the dark, and like a pressure cooker bound to let off steam, boom, out of the nowhere, shadow emotions explode all over your goals and plans. Avoiding or ignoring your shadow for too long is a path to self sabotage.

Shine a light on your way ahead by locating the emotional shadow in your body. Where do you feel it? What do you feel? Is it tension, pressure, tightness, heaviness, pain? Give your full attention to one shadow emotion at a time.

Then name it. Which one is it? Flat. Blocked? Disempowered?

Acknowledge the emotion with loving kindness, and without judgment. Treat your shadow emotions as you would a distressed child. Ask what the emotion wants from you. Stay with it, without judgment. Continue to send loving kindness to your shadow. You may get a clear message or perhaps a sense of knowing or an insight about what to do next. Sometimes, all your shadow needs is your acknowledgment. Or for you to own it as an element of your consciousness. Eventually, it will dissipate. (Sometimes it returns later, if you’re not done exploring it.) Then you will have a sense of what you need to do next.

Set the intention of your transformation by defining a positive outcome. You want to transform your career from being an employee to one where you are your own boss, as a business owner. Visualise this goal as the lead that you want to transmute into gold. Let your mind be open to new possibilities. Use your imagination. Take time to reflect on what you want before you act.

Next, write a business plan that represents the transformation you want. Incorporate your goals into it. Do your research. Apply critical thinking. Don’t ignore the facts and figures. Make a firm decision about what you want to achieve. Decide that you will do what you need to do to achieve it (so long as it’s ethical). Set specific milestones. Refine and improvise as you go. Look out for, and initiate, opportunities to collaborate with others.

In quiet moments, at regular intervals, visualise your self as the Alchemist turning lead into gold. Be prepared to experiment. Monitor your progress. Maintain the mindset of an alchemist and trust your ability to transform your situation.

As you achieve your milestones, make sure that you acknowledge and celebrate your progress.

Using the energy of an archetype can help you to focus your intentions and actions toward a desired outcome. By drawing on the symbolic power of archetypes, you can create a sense of purposeful alignment with your goals and increase your potential for success. Call on archetypes first, not last.

Brach, T 2003, Radical acceptance: embracing your life with the heart of a Buddha, Random House, New York.

Peterson, K & Kolb, D 2017, How you learn is how you live: using nine ways of learning to transform your life. Berret-Koehler Publishers, San Francisco.