Hello, and welcome back to Wreaking More Joy.

I’m Janette Dalgliesh, and in this season, Rekindle, we’re exploring how women can rebuild a joyful, sustainable relationship with our purpose and the ways we express it through our working lives.

In the last episode, we spent time with Saturn, the planet of structure, focus, and chosen limits, and we talked about how self-authored constraint, when it’s self-directed, can be a potent foundation piece for liberation and joy.

Today, we’re meeting Saturn’s cosmic counterpart, Jupiter

If Saturn helps us build the launchpad, Jupiter is the force that helps us break free of gravity.

Let’s look at a little neuroscience for how this works.

The brain is a prediction machine.

Its primary job is to anticipate what comes next based on what has come before, in order to keep us alive.

Your brain is constantly asking “What usually happens here, what’s the pattern, what should I expect next?”

This is incredibly useful for survival if the answers are ‘lions attack in this locality’ or ‘at this season, berries are ripe’.

But it does mean your brain, and mine, have a strong bias toward the familiar.

From a neurological perspective, what has happened before feels safer even when we consciously know that’s not necessarily true.

Novelty carries more risk, known pathways are easier to tread.

Left to their own devices, our brains naturally tend to plan futures that look like slightly modified versions of the past.

This is Saturn territory.

Saturn represents structure, continuity, responsibility, and sequence.

Saturn says:

* Let’s build on what already exists

* Let’s not miss a step

* Let’s honour precedent

* Let’s proceed carefully

Saturn aligns beautifully with the left brain, and is a great ally for handling:

* logic and logistics

* linear thinking

* superb attention to detail

* evaluation and accountability

* strong sense of cause and effect

In a culture that prizes productivity, efficiency, and risk management, Saturn thinking is rewarded early and often.

We are taught, both explicitly and implicitly, that good planning means:

* extrapolating from past data

* proving our ideas will work before we begin

* minimising uncertainty

* staying legible and sensible and respectable

But as we explored in episode 1 of this season, losing the joyful spark in the relationship with your own purpose doesn’t mean something is broken.

It usually means that something wants to evolve, but can’t.

This is where Jupiter comes in.

Jupiter represents the part of the brain that knows how to ask:

“What if the future doesn’t look like the past at all?”

Neurologically, Jupiter maps onto right-brain function, so it’s a splendid helper for things like:

* creativity and inspiration

* visionary perspectives

* playfulness and imagination

* big sky dreaming

* intuition and insight

* lateral problem solving

* connection to fields of infinite possibility

Jupiter has no interest in predictive loops, and much prefers to leapfrog over the details to get to whatever lies beyond the known horizon.

Jupiter doesn’t plot things out.

Jupiter envisions the done deal.

That distinction matters deeply for women whose working lives have been shaped inside systems that limited what was possible for us, whether directly or indirectly.

Our culture trains us to plan like the accountants of our own lives, measuring everything according to a set of known parameters.

We’re encouraged to ask:

* What’s realistic?

* What am I already good at / known for?

* Where have I already invested my time, energy and money?

* What’s sensible?

* What’s proven?

* What can I justify?

These are all Saturn questions.

They can be useful in many contexts, of course.

But they’re incomplete, and they’re definitely not the place to start our own evolution into whatever is next for us, because the answers to each of these questions lives in the past.

These questions set us up for a future that is almost indistinguishable from the past. No wonder our evolution can get sticky!

Jupiter asks questions that feel riskier, because they don’t rely on precedent; but they also feel juicier:

* What could things look like if I skipped the how and just imagined the end result?

* What future feels meaningful, not just manageable?

* What would I most want here, even if I didn’t believe it could happen?

For women in particular, Jupiter energy is often suppressed early.

“You’re too imaginative. Be more sensible, more realistic, and don’t take risks because you can’t be trusted. Don’t do magical thinking.”

There’s a well-known and probably entirely apocryphal quote, attributed to Henry Ford: “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse.”

Whether or not anyone actually said that, the insight holds.

Saturn says ‘build a faster horse’ because that’s all he knows.

Jupiter says ‘create something new that hasn’t existed before’ because he has no attachment to the idea of horses; he doesn’t know if they are the right framework at all, so he can have fun thinking about what could take their place.

Of course, you don’t have to be a Henry Ford to experience some Jupiter inspiration. You don’t have to invent the machinery for an accessible automobile, or create the next big thing in Silicon Valley, or cure cancer overnight.

You just have to make space for YOUR next evolution, knowing and trusting that when you explore your own inspiration, you will inevitably come up with something unique to you. That alone makes it original and glorious.

When women lose touch with Jupiter, our work can become:

* dutiful

* worthy

* responsible

* meaningful

But it’s not joyful. In fact, it can quickly become boring, dry, effortful and frustrating.

Jupiter reconnects us to:

* big dreams

* adventure

* possibility

* play

* meaning that stretches us

It asks:

“What kind of future would feel expansive to my nervous system?”

Not impressive, not respectable.

Expansive.

And before you throw a shoe at my head for implying you might have to do more, that is NOT what I mean by expansive.

Expansive doesn’t automatically mean bigger. It means ‘more authentically you’.

This is that evolution I mentioned in the very first episode of Rekindle: the evolution deep within that’s yearning to be expressed but has somehow gotten stuck.

The evolution might look like scaling up and getting bigger, like hair care product mogul Madam C. J. Walker.

Or it might look like pivoting to a whole new direction, like skater turned fashionista Vera Wang.

Or it might look like quietly going ever deeper and deeper into your chosen field, like genius choreographer Martha Graham.

This is why Jupiter energy often feels inspiring, alive, and even exhilarating - when we can separate it out from any sense of ‘well, now I have to do more’.

Jupiter reminds us that our purpose is not meant to be static, but nor is it meant to be a sentence. It’s meant to be a seductive and beautiful horizon, calling us forward.

And here’s how these two seeming opposites work best as a partnership - because we do need them both.

Imagine you’re in the foothills of a mountain range, and you’re looking up at the mountains, deciding which one to climb.

If you lead with Saturn, the way we’re all used to doing, you’d go to the one that has the easiest looking path, the trail that’s already made, the convenient signs for hikers.

If you lead with Jupiter, you look at the mountains and pick the one with the summit you most want to stand upon. And then you ask Saturn to help you figure out how to make the climb.

Jupiter must be invited in first, so we begin with the vision unimpeded by all those old limits around what is sensible or practical or realistic.

And then Saturn helps to build a structure that supports something genuinely new.

I use this metaphor to reflect Joseph Campbell’s famous quote. He said “If you can see your path laid out in front of you step by step, you know it’s not your path. Your own path you make with every step you take. That’s why it’s your path.”

Jupiter helps us decide where we want the path to take us, because Jupiter is eager for that place beyond the known.

Saturn helps us build the path, step by step, because he wants to squeeze every drop out of the experience along the way.

Here’s a gentle practice for this week.

Ask yourself:

“If I didn’t assume the future had to look like the past, what possibility would open up?”

Notice what your brain does when you contemplate that question. There is no right or wrong here, and whatever you notice happening is not a problem or a sign of something broken; it is simply useful data.

Notice any urge to shut the idea down.

That’s your brain leaning into the familiar Saturn energy because that’s how it’s been trained to operate. It’s not bad, but it’s not going to lead you anywhere new.

Notice any sparkles of glee at the concept itself.

That’s your Jupiter-oriented internal inspiration.

Thank it.

Then let Jupiter have a little more airtime.

You don’t need to act.

You don’t need a plan.

You don’t need proof.

Just let the horizon widen.

You might find yourself deciding that this is a good time to open up to possibility.

Not to run amok and burn everything down in a firestorm of excitement, but to quietly sit and let the vision emerge.

After the vision, that’s when Saturn is invited back into the room to contribute his part.

Last time, we talked about the idea of liberation through your own self-authored constraint.

When you invite Jupiter to help you decide on the direction and intention of that constraint, so Saturn knows what he’s building, that’s the truly sweet spot.

Jupiter helps us imagine what could be.

Saturn helps us honour what’s gone before, and build what’s next.

Together, they become a power team to support you creating the next phase of your working life to be not only stable, but also spacious, joyful, and sovereign.

Thank you for spending this time with me.

Until next time, let yourself imagine beyond precedent, begin to trust your visions, even if you have no idea how they’ll emerge, and remember: the future is not obliged to resemble the past.

See you soon.

Get full access to Wreaking More Joy at janettedalgliesh.substack.com/subscribe