The Lord of Strength relates to our own inner strength and power. When he comes up, we need to allow ourselves to be reminded of our personal wealth of experience, knowledge and talents. This is something that we rarely take time out to assess and consider. Yet since we are constantly adding to it, it is something we should sum up as often as our bank accounts.

When we get a clear view of our own strengths, we gather to us a new sense of self-confidence, holding ourselves in high esteem, and treating ourselves as good and trusted friends. This fundamental acceptance of ourselves is essential to allow us a long-term feeling of well-being and optimism.

So on a day ruled by the Lord of Strength, we must count our personal strengths. This obviously raises a simple question... how do you know what is strong?

The quickest way to identify strengths is to look at the hardest experiences of your life, and assess how you feel you handled them. If you maintain a non-judgemental and objective perspective upon your actions, then you'll see that, over the years, you have learned to deal with trials and tribulations increasingly efficiently. Every single time you pass through a trying experience, you will have gathered more understanding about how to approach difficulties and resolve them.

Your mistakes have special messages for you. To be able to admit you could have dealt with a situation better is, if you allow it to be, one of the most useful revelations of your life. Rather than feeling bad about your actions, allow yourself to consider what would have improved the outcome. Once you have done this, you'll store that away as new knowledge... and next time a similar situation occurs you'll remember, and act accordingly. Never be afraid of assessing your mistakes... there's one very big thing to be said for them - they are all yours!!! And they can be teachers if you let them be.

Having worked through the obvious strengths and frailties, go looking for the more subtle aspects of strength... empathy, compassion, patience, morality, humour, respect, honesty, understanding, sensitivity... there are many many things that we might not at first count among our strengths that make us stronger people.