Once I went to a Vedic astrologer when I first began college. Of the many things he told me, one point stood out. He said, “You’ll never be happy in any profession you choose.”

I felt devastated. Every time I attempted to decide upon a career his words haunted me. I repeated again and again in my mind, “I’ll never be happy. I’ll never be happy.”

The astrologer’s words had habituated my thinking.

Moreover, his reading of my destiny conditioned how I perceived my life’s purpose. It had colored the way I saw my place in the world.

Anyone else could have told me the same thing and it wouldn’t have affected me like that. There was something about the context of having my chart read that shifted the way I perceived my life purpose. His interpretation literally altered the way I thought, spoke and acted from that moment on.

It was that powerful.

I realized that Vedic Astrology is not just an objective “reading” of my fate. Rather, it’s a psychological technique like autosuggestion. It can completely change the way you see yourself. And what you see, you achieve.

In autosuggestion, your subconscious mind catches hold of a powerful idea that then defines your reality. Similarly, Vedic Astrology recognizes the same power of attention. Your whole life evolves out of what you give your attention to—because what you look at gives rise to everything else.

Your life, in other words, evolves out of what you give your attention to.

And physics agrees with this. It’s theorized that just by the very act of watching, the observer affects the observed reality.

Vedic Astrology applies this theory to self-observation. How you see yourself results in the reality you experience.

Mostly our culture, education, and relationships condition our vision of reality. You see yourself according to those standards of value instead of who you are most authentically.

This is called perceptual blindness. It arises when you’ve been conditioned to see reality from a certain perspective that “blinds” you from what might actually be there.

As with many people I advise, a client once approached me who was suffering from an acute case of perceptual blindness.

Nearing retirement, Pearl spent 30 years as an accountant for the state of Hawaii. “I should be happy,” she explained at the start of our meeting, “but I’m not.”

Pearl revealed that her family pressured her to choose a “safe” career rather than one she would have preferred.

“I was born in a traditional Japanese family,” she explained. “I was never allowed to express myself authentically. I was expected to follow my parents’ plan for me without debate. When it came time to attend college there was no question—I was going to become an accountant.”

Visibly shaken by the recollection of her parents’ strict control over her life, Pearl had trouble breathing. Her voice broke as she told me, “I am unfulfilled.”

According to what she was led to believe about herself, Pearl should have been happy because she enjoyed a very lucrative career. Yet while she’d earned a lot of security, she felt frustrated that she’d missed out on her true calling. She thought she’d wasted her life.

When I consulted her Vedic Astrological chart, I noticed a strong aptitude for fine art. In fact, the arrangement of stars and planets when she was born indicated that she could have a successful career as an artist.

“I always felt that,” she said clutching a tissue she’d used to dry her tears, “but my mother was adamantly against it. She refused to allow me to attend art school like I wanted. She told me I’d never amount to anything if I tried to make a living as an artist.”

Yet just by affirming that it was actually her destiny when she was born to be an artist, it was as if a light switch had been turned on.

I could visibly see the “a-ha” spread across her face. Pearl felt validated that her inner calling wasn’t wrong after all. By confirming what she always knew about herself but never expressed, she shifted her self-perception. She began to think, “I am an artist.”

A year later Pearl came for a follow-up consultation. I couldn’t believe this was the same timid and uptight woman whom I’d met earlier.

“I thought a lot about what you’d said about my life’s path,” she revealed. “It made so much sense to me. I decided to leave my job and paint. I thought everything would fall apart but I didn’t care. I just had to follow my heart.”

After her first Vedic Astrology reading, Pearl aligned her self-perception with the path she was born to fulfill. She started thinking that she was actually an artist. She told her friends she was an artist. Confidently she approached high-end galleries to show her paintings.

“And I just sold my first painting,” she announced with a beautiful glow on her face.

Pearl’s success was due to something so small and yet so powerful—a shift in her self-perception. Yet it changed her entire life.

This change in self-perception is called jyoti or life insight—and is why Vedic Astrology is more aptly described as Jyotisha, the “eye of wisdom.”

Once you open your own eye of wisdom, it's like a light switch has been turned on. It's an instant recognition. You can see your most authentic purpose.

Jyotisha as life insight helps you see beyond what you may have been misled to believe is true about your life to a more authentic possibility. Just seeing it liberates you from false beliefs to what actually may be true about you. It lays out the pattern of your success in life. Most importantly, it changes how you perceive your life’s purpose.

It can also be dangerous when its power is misused—as is the case with many astrologers who don’t recognize Jyotisha as a psychological technique. It enacts such a slight difference in perspective, yet its effects are monumental. It creates a quantum leap in your self-perception, which we misunderstand to be something huge.

Instead, it’s the one small thing that changes your life.