Can Working With Astrology & Myth Make You Happier?
One of my best friends recently recommended Trevor Noah’s podcast episode with Arthur C. Brooks, an expert in the study of happiness. The episode is called Why Are Humans So Bad At Being Happy? In their conversation, they explored the core ingredients that shape what a person experiences as happiness in life.
These core ingredients include enjoyment, satisfaction, and meaning.
Towards the end of the episode, they discussed the role of technology in modern life. Arthur C. Brooks emphasised that it’s not technology itself that leads to depression and unhappiness, but rather its overuse and misuse.
This feels like an incredibly important (and astrologically timely) conversation as we collectively move through Uranus in Gemini from 2025 to 2033.
I like to think of Uranus as “caffeine energy.” It’s like a lightning bolt: sparky, stimulating, and insightful. But it’s not healthy to run on stimulation all the time. We need periods of boredom, stillness, and silence to support healthy cognition. With Uranus in Gemini, it’s as if someone who has already had five shots of coffee is being dropped into a rollercoaster theme park. It’s exciting. It’s fast-paced. But we can’t sustain that heightened state without eventually paying a price.
During this time, it’s imperative to be proactive about caring for our mental health, our communication habits, how we handle information, and what we consume cognitively.
In the podcast, Arthur speaks about the importance of balancing two different modes of being. We can (and should) enjoy the technology available to us. This isn’t about returning to the days of horse-drawn carriages or losing touch with people who live far away. But we do need to be conscious participants.
At one point, he says:
“I want my brain to work the way it’s supposed to work. But the truth is that we’ve hemispherically lateralised our brain. We’ve moved activity to the left hemisphere of the brain, which is all about what and how and efficiency and grinding and achievement and reels and apps and tech. And the right side of the brain, when you’re bored and in love and when you’re suffering and when you see beauty — that right side of the brain gives you mystery and meaning — and all the stuff that you can’t quite articulate.
“This is the big difference I see: the unhappiest people today are all living on the left; and the people who are happiest are doing a bunch of old, weird things — things that seem strange now, but would have been ordinary life before — that help them access the right side of their brains.”
When he references this “bunch of old, weird things,” he’s talking about simple, grounding activities: having a conversation with your phone on silent, crocheting, handwriting a letter, or even Taylor Swift spending hours fine-tuning her sourdough bread.
So, if someone were to ask me what’s beneficial about working with astrology and myth — this is it.
Astrology alone can lean quite left-brained in its technical structure. But mythology is entirely right-brained. It’s strange, fluid, and sometimes inconsistent. It asks you to soften your analytical mind and allow something deeper to emerge — to tap on the door of your subconscious.
From Arthur C. Brooks’ perspective, engaging with myth and astrology could be seen as a kind of wellness practice for the modern world.
Personally, when I work with myth and astrology — whether offering a reading or on my own — it touches all three “happiness ingredients”: enjoyment, satisfaction, and meaning. It’s a tool I feel genuinely grateful for as we navigate this particular moment in time.
