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PSYCHICS 102 –
How to prepare for a successful psychic session

In my previous article Psychics 101 (which you can find in the Corbie Archives), I spent time discussing what a psychic can and cannot do, how to tell a good one from a bad one, and how you can use the information from a psychic session once you have it.

In Psychics 102, we’re going to give you some hints on how to prepare yourself for a good reading – what questions to ask, what parameters to set and where your mindset should be to have the best and most useful experience, as well as more on how to utilize the information you receive. As in Psychics 101, we have a simple mnemonic, or “word key” that will outline all the steps you need. You’re looking for answers? Use the word ANSWER to keep yourself on target:

Accept responsibility for your part in the session
No pop quizzes, no comparisons
State your intentions clearly
Widen your horizons
Evaluate your information
Respond to the Universe!

Accept responsibility for your part in the session. It’s the most important thing you can take into any psychic appointment. You are ultimately responsible for your reading, because it’s your attitude that determines whether this will be a useful meeting, or merely an opportunity for a few giggles. This is known as “fluff begets fluff”: if you come into a session expecting nothing, that’s most often what you’ll get.

Why? You have a preconceived notion that nothing the psychic says to you will matter, so you tend to dismiss information as coincidental, or think “someone must have told the psychic” or “they say that to everyone.” And if you’re not focused, we find it hard to get into what you want to know. It’s like a mother trying to direct a child who has no interest in the eventual destination, but finds every reason in the book (and a few new ones) to avoid getting there. Eventually Mom gives up and takes Junior home, destination never reached.

The best readings are the ones where you see yourself as a true co-creator in the process. The more open, interested and focused you are, the better a subject you are for your intuitive professional – and the better your results will be.

Also: STAY SOBER. I can’t stress this enough. When your bloodstream is carrying alcohol or drugs, your mental processes get fuzzy, you can’t concentrate on what is going on – and we’re likely to pick up what isn’t there on a normal, day to day basis. (Think of it as psychic pink elephants: the drunk sees them and no one else does. When we read you and you’re under the influence, we’re looking through your mental lenses, and if they’re fogged, we can’t see, either.)

No pop quizzes, no comparisons. Let’s say you’re an architect. You’re at a first meeting with your new client. You get there, expecting to have an honest and useful give and take, so you can provide good and expert service. But when you arrive, the client sits down and says “You’re an architect. Prove it. Sketch me out the house I want without my telling you anything.” Or you get there and, based on information given, you bring plans for a sustainable house in the country. When you unroll your blueprints, the client says “You’re not a real architect. Couldn’t you tell I really want a refurbished brownstone?”

Playing “test the psychic” is just as useless – and demeaning to both of you. Giving us incorrect information about your circumstances and expecting us to recognize its fabrication, or saying “tell me something you couldn’t know and I’ll have a reading with you” is like asking us to roll over and fetch! We’re proud of what we do, glad to be in service to the world, and happy to help you – but only if you treat us with the same respect you’d treat any other professional whose services you need.

Part of your pre-appointment responsibility is to check out the psychic ahead of time, either through personal referrals, reading through their testimonial books at a public event, or reviewing their website. If you don’t get a good feeling, or are not sure this is the psychic you want to trust with your important questions, don’t go to them. Wait until there is someone whose credentials say enough to you that you’re willing to sit down with them on an honest basis. Not every psychic is right for every person, and we’re aware of that; if we’re not right for you, another intuitive will be at another time.

Some clients feel a need to name drop and compare during a meeting. When you begin by saying you’ve been to (or read) Sylvia Browne, Sonia Choquette, John Edward, James Van Praagh and half the psychics at Lily Dale, and start telling the psychic everything THEY said, it highlights three issues: You’ve looked to an awful lot of psychics for answers and still feel you haven’t gotten what you need. It lets your psychic know that the information given in the session will be compared on an inequitable basis (was the information gained from these other intuitives in a private session? A gallery event? Something that was read in a book that “sounded” like your situation but wasn’t specifically channeled for you?). And finally, you’re coming into the session with preconceived notions, rather than an open mind.

A byproduct of bringing up other psychics’ information in session is that you may derail the intuitive you’re with. In my case, when I am channeling someone’s past lives, I am completely focused on the vision – it runs like a movie in my head. If a client is constantly interrupting with “Madam Hoohah never told me that” or “Swami Swellanda said I’d been with my husband for my past fifty-seven lives” or even “No, I don’t think so” – I lose the reception, lose the movie, and am pulled abruptly out of the Akashic Records and back to the Here and Now. It’s often difficult to get back to the same book in the Library for you after such a break in communication. The best advice is simply to hear out the psychic, and reserve your questions for a more appropriate point in the reading. Questions are good things – but get all the information on the table first.

State your intentions clearly. How many times have you gone to a psychic, and an hour after the session realized there were a lot of questions you forgot to ask? Saying to us, “just tell me what you see about my future” means that we scan everything ahead. And there’s only so much ground we can cover in a session.

Therefore, as part of your prep-work, you really need to “know what you want to know.” This is not quite like coming in with preconceived notions; instead, it sets up a structure for the session that is most useful to both you and your intuitive. How do you do that?

First, understand why you are asking for a session. If it’s confusion about direction, that’s one kind of reading. If it’s how to handle the dynamics of a situation and the people involved, that’s a second. If it’s choosing among several options, that’s a third…and so on. When you pinpoint the underlying “kink in the pipeline,” then we know what to pull out of our Psychic Toolbox for you.

Your next job is to outline and prioritize your questions. As my clients know, I joke about being a “Noo Yawker” and therefore talking very fast – it means our sessions are packed (and it’s why you get a tape, so you can review things later on). Still, if you have a lot of questions about a lot of areas of your life, we might not get to it all in the time allotted. Therefore, decide which subjects are most important (family, work), and then decide the question within the category (will my mother-in-law have to live with us? Is our company going to be merged, and what will that do to my job?).

Finally, specific questions are better than general questions. It’s part of that sub-grouping idea. To use the relocation scenario – if you ask about relocation in general, I may see opportunities in Denver or San Jose. That doesn’t help if your company has positions open in Altoona, Savannah or Houston! If there are definite parameters within which we have to work, tell us. The less time backtracking because we’re guessing about the immutable factors, the more information we can pack into our time with you.

Widen your horizons. You wouldn’t be human if you didn’t come into a session with answers you hope to get. (“Please say that Bruce is Mr. Right…tell me that my boss will promote me…you’ve got to predict that my finances are going to get better this year.”). If you want certain answers, and you think they absolutely have to be structured in a certain way, then it makes it impossible to help you get past your challenges.

Resist the urge to “yes, but….” By that I mean if I see that your mother-in-law will be instrumental in helping you get your down payment for the house you want, don’t say, “But she always gives money to everyone else in the family except us” or “But she’ll make us pay for it with all her carping; she always does when she lends us anything.” This defeats the purpose two ways: you are dismissing the idea that circumstances or people can change. And you’re focusing on the negative. (What we focus on is what we get – a basic Law of Attraction rule!)

If a psychic sees something happening, they won’t necessarily give you all the details, because the situation remains fluid. Leave room for circumstances to unfold in the best way possible (and visualize it that way!). And if a situation looks like it’s going to differ from your expectations, leave room for a changed mind.

When you formulate questions before your session, or you ask questions based on information during the reading, it’s more useful to ask “how” rather than “yes/no.” If you ask “will I get a new job?” and the psychic says “no,” then you have no place to go – and you’ve turned your free will over to the psychic. Neither option does you any good.

A far better question would be “what do I need to do to get a new job?” THEN we have the ability to give you tools with regard to where to look, pitfalls and possibilities, what kind of job you are truly suited for, and who in your circle might help you up the corporate ladder. You get a full toolbox, and you can go out and create your own life. Free will, as I always will remind you, is everything!

Same thing with “will I get into college?” it’s better to ask “how” – and perhaps list the places to which you’ve applied. Ohio State, Yale and William and Mary may all admit you – but one may signal that you’d change your major while there, one may be a place you leave after two years, and one may be the doorway to jumping into your chosen career a year early. Make sure you know all your options.

And finally – an answer to a specific question may show you just how absurd your question was in the first place. Laugh, don’t be upset with yourself (or the psychic). We’re on your side.

Evaluate your information. Even if you’ve been going to the same intuitive for years, and you think you know how they read, delayed understanding is common. And if it’s a first time, then you definitely need time to digest what you’ve been told. It’s why I tell you to always get a tape.

Let’s say you and your daughter are always at loggerheads, and you never get to know what’s going on in her head. What may not make sense to you today (“your daughter will ask you to help her through a personal crisis, and you have to be gentle with her”) becomes crystal clear to you in four months, when a friend of hers dies in a car accident, she’s picked for a semester in Barcelona and she’s never been away from home, or a sports injury means she loses a basketball scholarship to college.

Sometimes you will get what I term a “verification reading.” If I, a stranger (or at least someone who doesn’t interact with you on a day to day basis) tell you in our session precisely what you were thinking about doing but hadn’t discussed with anyone else – those are your guides and angels giving you the thumbs-up about the accuracy of your thoughts and decisions. If a psychic doesn’t give you a whole bunch of information you don’t already know, it’s because what you know is what you should act upon, plain and simple.

And accept that you may come to your session with all kinds of plans about where you are going to move, and yet the cards or your guides insist on telling you that your fiancé will not be in the picture in another few months’ time. You may want to hear about your children, but the cards discuss your health options. Know that your guides and angels in this case are following the old Rolling Stones’ axiom: “You can’t always get what you want…but you get what you need.”

Respond to the Universe. Now that you’ve had your session and you have all these new facts and factors to consider – what do you do?

It’s vital that you view the information as neutral. What you do with it determines its usefulness. If you find out that your husband has been keeping some work problems from you, rather than panicking (“why won’t he talk to me? Does he want a divorce? Is he going to lose his job?”) see if you can get some feedback from him. If you ask about finances, and the Tower, which generally foresees a crisis or breakdown of some kind, shows up in your reading, don't sit up nights worrying! Make a point of investigating where you stand financially, start your priority list about what’s important to you and what isn’t. See the information as a heads-up that a particular aspect in your life needs attention. And if it turns out that yes, you do lose your house, or your wife leaves you, or you don’t get the job you wanted – remember that none of these have to be disasters forever – or even immediately. Always look at a problem and say “next? Now where do I go?” rather than dwelling on what happened.

It’s also not uncommon to find out that losing your house means you move to a neighborhood better suited to you and your children… your wife leaving you makes room for your soulmate to walk into your life …and not getting the job you wanted propels you into opening the small business you’ve been dreaming about but could never make happen as long as you were comfy in your job security!

If the information is not what you wanted, resist the impetus to go to another psychic to try and get the answer you want. That doesn’t work, on a couple of levels. If you want to hear something that badly, you will eventually find a psychic who knows that, is less than scrupulous, and tells you what you want to hear, with a “hook” to get you to keep coming to them. You are wasting a whole lot of money looking for what doesn’t exist. And the truthful information you may have gotten eventually gets muddied and forgotten in the process.

Along that train of thought, don’t keep coming back to your psychic month after month hoping the answer will change if you haven’t worked with the information from your last session with them. We’re not gurus – we’re mentors at best. An honest intuitive will, if you keep coming back for session after session with the same questions, be like a good bartender and cut you off!

And lastly: remember that a psychic and his/her information is a tool for you to use to make your life what you want it to be. We, in and of ourselves, are not the repairman. No matter what we tell you, it’s up to you to make the best life you can with the building blocks that God, your Higher Self and your Guides have lined up for you.