How studying astrology improved my self-worth

“As soon as I started learning about astrology and discovering how to read my own birth chart, I began to feel the puzzle pieces of my personality click together again.”

I’ve always been into astrology. When I was a kid I loved reading my horoscope in the latest issue of whatever magazine I was obsessed with at the time. Although I loved it for years, I never really explored the depths of astrology until the world stopped in 2020. 

Back then, I was at a point in my life where I didn’t know who I was and didn’t know what I wanted. I’d also just moved interstate to a new city, where the only person who really knew me was my partner. Since graduating from university, I’d lost myself in the world of hustle culture and surface-level friendships. I constantly craved external validation from people I barely knew.

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I’d also just stopped taking the pill after 10 years, but that’s another story. 2019 was an incredibly rough year for me and so I went into 2020 feeling lost and defeated. After a few months of mindlessly wandering through life (and finding out that the world had basically shut down), I found myself on the website of astrologer and business coach, Natalia Benson.

I’d never really heard of her before, but after spending an entire evening reading through blogs on her website and learning about the practical ways in which astrology can be utilised, my interest in the subject was suddenly reignited. A few months later, I was enrolled in my first astrology course. As soon as I started learning about astrology and discovering how to read my own birth chart, I began to feel the puzzle pieces of my personality click together again.

A lot of astrology sceptics out there are probably rolling their eyes right now. I know there are people who blame their planetary placements for their own bad behaviour (or Mercury Retrograde) but I can honestly say that astrology is a tool that increases my self-awareness and helps me understand how to better support the people in my life. 

When I learnt how to read my own birth chart and discovered what each placement meant, I felt like it was finally okay to embrace these parts of me. My birth chart reflected aspects of my own personality back to me that I always knew were there, but I’d hidden away to try and be the person I thought other people wanted me to be. 

Here’s a quick rundown of my birth chart (for any other astrology fans out there). I’m a Capricorn Sun, Leo Moon and Gemini Rising. I have a Capricorn Mercury, a Scorpio Venus and my Mars is in Virgo. My Jupiter is in Sagittarius, my Saturn is in Pisces, and I have the same Uranus, Neptune and Pluto placements as everyone else born in the early 1990s. 

When I first saw my birth chart, I was disappointed. People always told me Capricorn was the most boring zodiac sign because they liked work and were organised. However, after learning more about the sign of Capricorn and how every planet I had in that sign was translated through the house it was in, I started to feel proud. My perception of myself started to change and I remembered all the ways in which I embodied the sign of Capricorn. I started to feel glad that I was able to embrace these Capricorn traits so effortlessly. 

The more I delved into astrology and the placements of my birth chart, the more I started to acknowledge the parts of myself I’d chosen to ignore or keep hidden from the world. When I was little, I was always told I talked too much and was too loud. Apparently, I had to learn to use my ‘inside voice’. Now, looking at my birth chart, of course I spoke too much – I’m a Gemini Rising – but I also started to realise why it always hurt so much when people told me to be quiet. 

The sign your moon is in is linked to your emotional and internal world. My Leo Moon also happens to be in my third house of communication. When I saw this, I realised that what I found hurtful was the belief that people didn’t want to hear what I had to say. They didn’t want to communicate with me and, according to my birth chart, communicating is how I’m able to share my emotions with others and nourish myself internally.

I wanted to talk to people about how I felt but because they told me to be quiet, I started to think that no one cared about how I felt. Wild, right? As I kept learning more about my birth chart and how each placement manifested in my life, more and more deep realisations came to me. It prompted me to start therapy and really go on a quest to meet myself again, understand my own values and reintroduce myself to the parts of me that I’d kept hidden. 

So far, I’ve learnt that I’ve spent too much time listening to other people’s opinions about what I should and shouldn’t do with my life, instead of doing what I thought was best for me. I’ve learnt that instead of facing difficult situations, I escaped into comedy films, reality TV and biographies, and I realised that I didn’t really have that much self-confidence. I chased external validation instead of sitting with my own thoughts, being grateful for where I was and validating myself.

Those are just a few of the things I’ve discovered while studying astrology, but the biggest learning I’ve taken away so far is that I’d let other people’s opinions skew my own perception of myself. I defined myself by what other people said about me and how they said I should dress, talk and act. I was listening to other people so much that I didn’t even know what my own values, beliefs and goals were. What did I want? Where did I want to go? What did I want to do?

It’s been an incredibly long journey, but now I feel like I know myself better than I ever have. I’m trusting my intuition for the first time and worrying less about the things I can’t control. I never used to like myself that much; I now know it was because I wasn’t living as my authentic self. I was being someone I thought other people would like. Now, thanks to the self-discovery my interest in astrology ignited, I’ve found a much more genuine sense of self. 

For more on astrology and self-development, try this.