Episode 12. Tarot, Quantum Leaps, Money, Microsoft & The Corporate Psychic: Getting Out of the Story and Into the Work with the 8 of Pentacles

The Inner Briefing Podcast

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Marie Groover (00:04.547)

Welcome to the Spiritual 9to5 podcast hosted by myself, Marie Groover of The Corporate Psychic. This week, I'm talking about Tarot, my journey to Microsoft and way beyond, and what it really takes to master a craft and quantum leap into your dreams. I hope that today's episode and that my story inspires you into movement, into self, and into a future that is beyond your wildest expectations. The story after all,

especially when it's a good one, never makes sense until it's over.

There are no shortcuts to the life of your dreams, but there are quantum leaps, collapse timelines, possibilities that you've never imagined available to you whenever you show up in your work. It feels really exciting and expansive and also scary for me to talk tarot on my podcast, but here I am. And February was the page of swords. So if you subscribe to my newsletter, you get a monthly reading.

February's reading was the page of swords and the ace of pentacles. In short, it said that even if you are green at something, AKA new or seemingly new, what you have to bring to the table matters. So show up. The ace of pentacles was a green light for bringing forward whatever work we wanted to bring into the world, knowing that with hard work and effort, our dreams would and will come to fruition. I read that February was

a really, really good time to put pen to paper and bring to life whatever has been circulating in your mind. Moving into March, the 8 of Pentacles comes forth with the High Priestess by its side, which is a beautiful combination. And it makes perfect sense in that March is the only month of 2022 where we have zero major planets in retrograde.

Marie Groover (02:05.387)

What? Which astrologically, and I'm not an astrologer mind you, it brings a potent time for bold, rapid, easy, forward moving energy to take advantage of. So if you didn't start your thing in February now, like today now, is a great time to start your thing. It's a great time to get into motion, specifically to dive into the thing that your intuition or your soul

calls for you to bring into the planet. Hello, High Priestess. If you don't know what that thing is, now is a really great time to do the deep inner work to get to know what it is that your soul wants you to bring to the planet. Because the Eight of Pentacles is very much a card of true productivity, real productivity, AKA moving the needle where it matters, even if it doesn't make sense. And

This signifies a time where you're invited to get deep into the work without it feeling very much like work at all. So it's a great time to take advantage of. This could be career work. If your career is meaningful, this could be homework, farm work, creative work. It could be your business. If it's an alignment with you, it could be your parenting, whatever it is, it's an opportunity to tap into your intuition and capitalize on your long term goals.

to make real progress towards them. The Eight of Pentacles in general is very much a soul mastery card. It's representative of the fruits of our labor when we show up in integrity over and over and over again. Specifically, the mastery of our craft that comes from showing up in integrity over and over and over again. It represents the nitty gritty moments, the moments that we flow through in life but then look back on with such pride and honor.

at the dedication that we once had or showed. The High Priestess is a major arcana card and it represents tapping into intuition. It represents a change in frequency traditionally where the veil is thin for us. It's a massive soul expansion card and it can even be an invitation card to explore your intuition or to come into your soul and your soul work. Now, when I first saw these two cards together, my thought was,

Marie Groover (04:32.749)

this is a time of flow, a time where you are so in flow that your being and your work represents almost a stream of consciousness from your intuition. The funny thing about this though, is that sometimes we can be so in flow that we don't realize how connected we actually are. It's a funny thing to be so connected that we don't recognize it and it's also a beautiful thing because

It means that we are truly in the work, heads down, focused, eyes on our own paper. I say this because oftentimes when we see the high priestess, we either are in the process of trying to connect with intuition, spirit, God, universe, our own knowing, highest self, et cetera, et cetera, that we don't feel like it's working or we really do feel like it's working and it makes sense that we see the high priestess. But in the pairing with the eight of pentacles in particular,

I want to emphasize that you are, that you are always connected to your intuition, that it hasn't gone anywhere and that it isn't going anywhere. And that being in your work is very much connecting with the divine and the divine energy. So if you find yourself in moments of worry this month, moments of headiness, moments of deciphering or forcing the how of your what, the how of your goals, then just come back to the work itself. That is your invitation.

Let go of trying to understand how everything fits together. Let go of worrying about where you're going. And just take note of what it feels, what feels really easy for you, what feels really natural for you this month, especially in your work. And then come back to that later in the year when things don't feel so smooth moving. When you forget why you're here, when you forget again where you're going, the work will take you there.

The work will also bring you back to yourself. Remember, the story doesn't always make sense until the end, especially when it's a good one. And while the work might feel normal and everyday to you, the outcomes can be epically beyond your wildest dreams if you don't constrain yourself with the results and if you allow yourself to flow through the work where it feels good and easy. When you show up in your work consistently with dedication and an open mind,

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you will always surpass the limits you set for yourself. But if you're only focused on the outcome, if you're only focused on the end goal or the results, you might just meet them. And so with that, I want to share my story with you. It's a story where over and over again, being in my work led to unforeseen and massive opportunities for expansion, where growth and success sprouted. I studied philosophy in college.

I fell into it and I fell in love. For the first time in my life, I was learning to think for myself on my own terms, learning to trust what I was finding. And I was interested in the intersection of ethics and neuroscience specifically. So like what the brain told us about how we behave and then how justified it was to behave a certain way. Now that we know why we behave the way we do. I really wanted to get my PhD in philosophy.

but it was a rather pretentious field. And after presenting at my first conference, I knew that it wasn't a place for me. I didn't wanna argue for argument's sake. I didn't care about being right or wrong or how well together my argument was or anyone else's for that matter. I cared about how I ought to be living and how I ought to be spending my life. How I could be the best possible human.

So I really didn't have a plan for myself after graduation, though I did apply for the Peace Corps in my senior year and I was swiftly denied for lacking any skills, because remember, philosophy major. And I was a nanny in college. And my senior year, I got a text from my boss asking me if I wanted to travel with her and her family to the Grand Canyon for one week in the spring. And they would pay me $1,000. First of all, I would have gone for free.

I was not a well-traveled human by the age of 20, but I wanted to be, and the Grand Canyon was definitely at the top of my list, so I said yes. Fast forward to the spring and to the trip itself when we were driving down the road. I was reading a book called Brain Trust, again, intersection of neuroscience and philosophy, and I had all sorts of questions about the biology behind what I was reading. Barbara, my boss, and her husband, they were both scientists by training.

Marie Groover (09:21.951)

Barbara had studied physics and her husband biology. And so I started asking all sorts of questions as I read to make sure that I was understanding the science behind the book and the theories. I didn't ask questions because they were science backgrounds and I was trying to impress them. God, no. And I probably asked the least impressive questions. I asked because I was truly curious and fascinated. And it was through these interactions that I made an impression. And coming back from the trip,

Barbara offered me a full-time position at her company, EMEC. She saw it as a stepping stone for me into something else, and I'm so glad that she had a vision for me that was bigger than what I could have seen for myself, because her vision is a huge piece of what got me to today. She was an incredible mentor to me, especially considering it was my very first job, and I had no skills, as previously mentioned. And it must have been extremely frustrating to train someone on like,

the very basics of what it means to work in an office. Previous to this, I nannied, I bartended, I waited tables, I taught surfing, I baristaed, I generally worked outside or not in front of a computer. My computer skills consisted of writing lengthy papers and arguments and occasionally making a calculation. I had never used Excel. I did not know what a VLOOKUP was. And I definitely was not familiar with statistical analysis, which we did a lot of at EMEC.

And to be honest, I had no fucking idea what we actually did as a company until I was no longer working there, if this says anything at all. But I did get to assist on measuring the success of one project in particular that changed the course of my life and my career. At the time it was called iPLANT and it was a $50 million National Science Foundation funded project. It was a collaboration between biologists, computer scientists and educators.

And my job was to interview these people called bioinformaticians, which were biologists, computer scientists, hybrids. And I asked them all sorts of questions, mostly work related, but also a lot of questions about myself. I was looking for insight and guidance on my life and my career. I told them that I was interested in neuroscience, but that getting a PhD as in getting into a program was nearly impossible considering I have an undergrad in philosophy and

Marie Groover (11:43.217)

terrible GPA by the way and anything that wasn't philosophy so every single one of them looked at me and said no problem they told me to learn a programming language they said if I learned technology I could work in any field that I wanted to and they were smart people they all had PhDs and in fact there were computer scientists working on genetics and I was like this makes total sense okay yes

And I have to add that up until this point in my life, I had never, and I mean never, taken a computer class. I mentioned that. I didn't even know Excel, right? I didn't see a reason for it. I didn't see a reason for taking a computer class until I did. And then when I did, when I understood why technology was important and how I could use it to solve problems for myself and others, I went all in. So I started coding. How?

good old Google. I started with Python because that's what the bioinformaticians used, because I wanted to stay close to the sciences. Barbara wrote a letter of recommendation for me and after some work, I tested into a master's program for computer science. Now I mentioned that I wasn't great at my first job. So I have to say that when there was a government sequester and funds got tight, I was the one to let go at the office. There were six of us.

now down to five. So I moved to Atlanta to follow a boy and in search of opportunity. I needed to pay my way through my master's as much as possible because I already had student debt. And so I turned to an online approach to my master's program. I got a job as a bartender. I cycled through some office jobs. And then I found myself in a health technology firm working customer support. Within two months, I was promoted to a data analyst role because there was a need and the data analysis team sat

between our users and our developers. And I was working on a master's in computer science, so I was the perfect translator between the two. I ended up automating the data that I was responsible for, basically cleaning and coding a bunch of data. And I got to help manage the backlog of development. It wasn't glamorous, but it felt like I was making progress on my goals. I knew that in a year, I would apply for my PhD or for PhD candidacy in neuroscience.

Marie Groover (14:06.463)

hoping to be the computational one, hoping to be accepted in a non-traditional route. Now I want to mention my time in Atlanta for two full years. This is what it looked like. I woke up at 5 a.m. I drove to the gym. I worked out. I showered. I dressed. I walked to the office. I was logged in by 7 45 or eight at the latest, worked until five or five thirty, commuted home, called my parents on my drive home, got home, went.

walking or running with my dog, cooked dinner, then I would eat while studying and I would work on my master's degree from 7 p.m. to roughly midnight every single day for two full years. I took the weekends mostly off except for school deadlines or when I struggled solving a developer problem, which was a lot because I was not made for coding. But this two years of grinding, this is the perfect representation of the Eight of Pentacles. I was heads down

working hard, holding a higher level dream and vision in my heart. And I knew that I was making progress day in and day out. And that's what kept me going. I moved from the health technology firm to a tech startup. So I was making $32,000 a year to $38,000 a year. This is important because I remember calling my dad. was so excited about my raise. And I said, in five years, I'm going to be making $100,000 a year. I don't know where I got this notion because

I totally was planning on being in a PhD program at this point, but something in me just felt it. It felt it enough that I claimed it out loud. Fast forward a little bit, October of 2014, like two months after I started at the tech startup, I get an email. It was a recruiter at Microsoft. The email read, we think you would be a great fit for one of our roles. Change in frequency. It was a high priestess moment. It was an invitation. And I said, yes.

Totally thought it was a scam. But I replied and I kept replying. And then suddenly I'm being flown out to Fargo, North Dakota, seemingly very random, but actually not for interviews. And then I have a job offer for the following July. I was literally mid application process for my PhD, but I took the job at Microsoft. I never in my life expected to work for Microsoft, let alone be recruited by Microsoft, never. And yet there I was, by the way.

Marie Groover (16:32.139)

I don't think I'm legally allowed to mention my exact starting salary, but it was a little under $20,000 less than my $100,000 goal. Less than one year after that phone call to my dad, by the way. So fast forward to the end of my very first year at Microsoft. It was a difficult year of long days, some tears, stretching myself beyond where I thought I could go, believing in myself beyond what I thought was possible, fighting myself, pushing myself, hating it, loving it.

failing a thousand times and recovering over and over and over again. I ended my first year with a promotion, with a raise and an annual bonus that at the age of 26 allowed me to call my dad and say, I made my first hundred thousand dollars. A little bit more than that actually. I relaxed into my life a little bit. I got a little lost and a little confused and was really unhappy for a while for no reason.

I found myself over and over again and I had everything that I wanted or everything that I thought I had worked for and wanted. Everything that people work their entire lives for. A quantum leap of sorts happened and I unraveled. I was still working but I wasn't working toward anything anymore. I had no purpose. Existential crisis after existential crisis ensued. I hired a coach hoping that she would give me permission to quit my job. Instead she told me that

And this is Yana Robinson, by the way, if anyone's looking for an epic truth dropping queen to work with, her name is Yana Robinson. But she told me that building a business is like starting a fire in the cold, wet forest. It takes effort to get it started. And once it started, it takes constant attention before the fire can become self-sustaining. Don't quit your job, she said. Let's focus on you. And so we did.

And for the first time in my life, I was able to articulate my purpose, why I was here and who the fuck I was, what I was here to do and why it was important and all of the infinite ways that I could work and make money while fueling myself and my movement, while fueling my mission. I could move and work from within instead of seeking myself from outside of me, like the money I made or the job I worked or the house I lived in or the number of trips I took a year or

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the yoga that I taught. And then I unraveled again. I found out that I had cancerous cells in my uterus and I went on a hiatus of sorts. I made a silent vow to myself because life is short, to stop making plans, to stop reaching for the thing, to stop saying yes when I didn't know what yes felt like, to let go of all of my goals and all of my expectations and all of the ways that

I distracted myself through accomplishments, through travel, through new experiences. You see.

we can become distracted even in the pursuit of self, even in the pursuit of growth. That's what I learned by the way. So I let it all go and I showed up only in what I wanted to on a day-to-day basis as I felt like it. What that looked like was surfing every single morning and every single time there was a wave because surfing was always a full body yes for me.

It meant renting out the house that I had just bought and moving into a shoebox apartment with mold and inches of sand on the floor to live with my boyfriend on the beach. It meant buying a van and traveling across the country to surf and snowboard during a pandemic. It meant going to Nicaragua on the off season to dip my toes in warm water and longboard over reef. It meant writing only when I felt like writing and sharing only what moved me.

but mostly it was a lot of surfing and zero explaining to anyone what I was up to. It felt spacious and open and free. And then after creating all this space in my once busy and over-consumed life, I had an astrology reading. Merida, the astrologer, she asked me, Marie, you have psychic medium all over your chart. What are you doing with this? And I said,

Marie Groover (21:00.113)

Well, nothing. But I could feel the fire in my solar plexus ignite. I knew that I saw fairies and ghosts and unexplainable things as a kid. I knew that when I wrote poems, I was actually channeling. It was never coming from me. She said, do you have a deck, a tarot deck? I said, no, I've been waiting my entire life for someone to gift one to me. Because when it comes to the occult, don't you have to be invited?

Don't you have to be a little weird and dark and different? She said, Marie, consider this your gift. Go buy yourself a deck. So I did. And I started reading the Akashic records too. And I realized that I had been reading them my entire life. And I was so enthralled that I started reading for other people and working with a coach and following the yes in my gut when the idea for the corporate psychic dropped into my being. This was a year ago, by the way.

One year, I told myself that this was just a fun side project and the reality of building a business while working in nine to five became my existence. And suddenly all of the things in my life that I had been doing that I had been drawn to, that I spent days or months or years devoted to at some point in my life, they all fused together and it made sense. I said this to my current coach the other day. I know I am really in my power, not

when I'm in a category like tarot reader or business manager or surfer or writer, but when I'm in all of it, when I am all of me, when I'm working with people and I can guide them through business and beyond, because there's so much beyond. But I've been working in all of it for so long and it's a beautiful thing to step fully into yourself when you step into your work. And this is the result of the Eight of Pentacles plus the High Priestess over a decade of time.

This is what happens when you hear the whisper of your intuition and you follow it without expectation, without outcome, without results in your mind. And sometimes you'll know them in advance. You'll catch glimpses of what's possible or what's attainable, but seemingly impossible in the moment. And you'll see things out loud like in five years, I'm going to be making a hundred thousand dollars, but then you'll actually be making it in less than two. And maybe you'll even say things like, this is going to be a seven figure business. This work will change the world.

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And if you're not me, you might think it's crazy or improbable. But when your actions are aligned with your intuition, with what you feel deeply in your gut, your heart, your soul, nothing is impossible. I can promise you that. And there are hundreds of stories far exceeding the brilliance of this one. Go find them. Listen to them. Allow yourself to be inspired.

See yourself in your power and your greatness and your brilliance in each one of the stories you hear. And then get to work. Hold your highest level vision in your heart and then take whatever steps you know in your gut you need to take. There are no shortcuts to the life of your dreams, but there are quantum leaps, collapse timelines, possibilities that you have never imagined available to you when you show up in your work. The story never makes sense when you're in it.

So get out of it and get into your work. And that's what the eight of Pentacles and the high priestess call for this month or whatever time you're listening, because I don't believe that you're coincidentally listening. I believe that you're listening right here, right now for a reason. And I hope that this is the seed that moves you in your mission. This is the seed that enables you to trust that everything will come together for you and that it will be way bigger and better than you could have ever imagined.

if you just let it.

Marie Groover (25:00.017)

Thank you for listening to the Spiritual 9to5 podcast with myself, Marie from The Corporate Psychic. Save and follow for more wisdom, rate the show, reach out with questions or topic requests. You can find me at hello at thecorppsychic.com. I also invite you to follow me on Instagram at thecorppsychic and I would love for you to join our community for courses, containers, discounts, and live events. It's called TCP Community and Courses and you can find it at

community.thecorppsychic.com. And if you want to go big on you, reach out. I would love to work with you. Wherever you are, whatever is on your mind, I hope to meet again, maybe in the next episode right here. I'm honoring you and with gratitude. Good day.