8 LIFE PATH: The Powerhouse Personal Mission: To Develop Abundance, Power, and the Satisfaction That Comes From Success In The Material World. The lesson of the 8 Life Path is how to manage your personal relationship with power and money. This path is about establishing and building financial security. You seek the freedom that comes from being financially stable. From early on, your drive will center on money in one way or another. The 8 Life Path isn’t particularly easy sailing, since you’re meant to use power, influence, authority, and control to make a positive difference in the world. You're guaranteed to have big "Authority Issues" early in your life - and possibly all your life. You’ll tend to be either a huge success or a major "failure"—or both at different times. Yours is the journey of money, power, and authority, and, while that may sound fabulous, this path demands a great deal of discipline, wisdom, and fortitude. Your first testing ground will be in the arena of your personal power.  You'll often experience difficult childhood experiences that test your will, stamina, resolve, and fortitude to stand up for yourself in a healthy way and move into bigger realms of achievement. Once you accept that yours is a life meant for success and achievement, the real work begins. You’ve got excellent executive and entrepreneurial skills. A key for you is to think big and find the right processes and people to support you in your enterprises. Focusing intently on your higher purpose will keep you out of trouble—or at least might deter you from getting in a whole heap of trouble. The 8 Life Path is fairly unforgiving: You don’t get away with much. If you’re driving five miles over the speed limit surrounded by ten other cars doing the same thing, you’re the one who’ll get a ticket. It may not seem fair, but that’s the way it is. Martha Stewart (born August 3, 1941) is on an 8 Life Path and her story provides a perfect example. How many other people engaged in the same type of insider trading as Martha Stewart? Yet she’s the one who was arrested, tried, convicted, and went to prison. Right or wrong, the 8 Life Path person must act with uncompromising ethics at all times. Martha Stewart bounced right back—resilience is another 8 Life Path trait, so take note of it—yet the message is clear: Your ethics will be tested. You’re easily misinterpreted by others, so must learn to be tactful in your communication. You feel compelled to tell “the truth” without padding and that doesn’t go well with most people. You see things in a black-and-white manner with little room for gray. You may be the classic workaholic, which partly comes from wanting to be a great provider. Like the 4 Life Path, the 8 Life Path is rife with family issues. Understand that you’ve endured some profound experiences in your life, and either you can be ground up and spit out by them or you can choose to see them as your favorite teachers—that they were hard on you gave you the opportunity to learn about yourself. Strife and struggle can be used to your advantage because through them you’ll develop a thick skin for discomfort and also some great skills and tools to help you obtain your goals. One thing you have trouble getting past in your personal life is infidelity. You simply can’t get over it and won’t be able to forgive, so it’s best to release that person from your life. This also goes for betrayal in business. As an 8 Life Path, be aware that you won’t be able to revive the trust you need to make the relationship whole and optimally functional again. You don’t have a lot of tolerance for people who feel sorry for themselves, which is ironic because oftentimes 8 Life Paths view themselves as victims. If you choose to dwell on the negative—and the 8 Life Path typically sees more than its share of what can certainly be considered “negative” —this leads you to deep depression. A caution: 8 Life Paths often have reoccurring health issues because of stress and addiction, even though your constitution is the most hearty and resilient of all the numbers.  You can also be accident prone because sometimes you don’t live in the moment and aren’t paying attention. Interestingly, being on the 8 Life Path, with its emphasis on money and power, is no guarantee that you’ll live a charmed financial life. Understand this:  The 8 is all about mastering the art of success in the material world - money, power, control, authority. It doesn't give you a particularly charmed and easy time with money.  You will need to give concerted effort, organization, management, and resolve to making things happen and to define and meet your goals. While everyone in the world has to deal with money, for you, money is a central theme and a central focus of your life.  You think in business-like ways and money is important to you, one way or the other! An 8 Path person is just as likely to be drawn toward scarcity. You could end up destitute at worst and just “making ends meet” at best. If you can, however, embrace the idea that making money is all right— for you, not only all right, but imperative to your life purpose—you’ll discover it doesn’t take  much to launch into huge success. The 8 vibration provides the energy with which to achieve financial abundance through concerted effort, ethical conduct, and attention to your higher purpose. I know many 8 Life Paths who have struggled with a load of issues from childhood who have either succumbed to addiction and victimization or blazed through their fear and anger over their circumstances to rise from the ashes like the Phoenix. That’s how dramatic the 8 Life Path can be. I know many 8 Life Paths who’ve been like the poster child for “The Rise and Fall and Rise of [insert your name here].” They're destitute, addicted, lazy, and then, through some strange turn of events, clean and sober, passionate about something, and a millionaire within a year. No kidding. As an 8 Life Path, take heart. It’s not willy-nilly or random chance that you find yourself in the trenches over and over again. The tough stuff is the core of this vibration, making the ultimate rewards you get for your efforts even sweeter. I already mentioned Martha Stewart. I bring her up again with the intent to illustrate the resilient qualities of the 8 Life Path. You’re positioned to bounce back from adversity when you stay positive and keep your ethics clean. How many people could go from being America’s cooking and homemaking expert to convict and back again without much tarnish? Lesser folks would have slunk away from the spotlight with their tails between their legs. Not Martha. She’s focused on her strengths and goes with it. Common threads when an 8 Life Path is “on fire” and working with optimal energies are being at ease with financial abundance, using power and authority wisely and for the good of others, not dwelling in the negative or becoming a victim to circumstances, and being abundantly giving of time, money, and influence to make the world a better place. Your life purpose is to use your abundance and power to make the world a better place. 8 LIFE PATH: Potential Challenges Your potential challenges are: To work through issues related to money, power, authority, control, and recognition. To reflect and ask: “Do I either strive for control and power or do I give it away?” You may aim to control others around you or give your power away to others who abuse it and you. You might have an authoritarian mate or an abusive parent. You often allow employers, parents, or others treat you with a lack of respect or with contempt until you learn to stand up for yourself and claim your power. To work against your impulse to avoid material success. If you don’t learn to avoid these impulses, you may end up destitute at worst or just punching the time clock at best. The drive toward material abundance comes with equally strong fears of abundance. Meaning, many times an 8 Life Path will want money and yet because of a belief that money is “evil” or because of negative messages received during childhood, you’re challenged by your tendencies to go the opposite direction toward scarcity. To understand that issues with money will be likely to recur throughout your life. You may also confront issues of power, control, authority, or recognition. You may have no issues with money; your major issues may be with power and recognition. To embrace the fact that money and spirituality can co-exist. To make the leap from self-centered entitlement into giving, generosity, and feelings of abundance, if you were born with a “silver spoon” in your mouth. Those born into wealth have the tendency to distance themselves from other people. If you were born into poverty you may have a tendency to use your history as a rationale for never taking reasonable steps to become financially abundant. To make a concerted effort to avoid greed. If you misuse or repress your power, it’ll turn around and destroy you. Clarity of focus teamed with a higher purpose is imperative to your healthy success. The central work for you involves contacting your sense of inner abundance, not just striving for material wealth in the outer world. 8 LIFE PATH: Strengths to Develop You’re a powerful person. You need to experience inner abundance, power, and respect before you can effectively manifest these qualities in the world. Your destiny involves money one way or another. Yet you aren’t here just for money; you’re here to manifest abundance in terms of attitude and feeling. Find ways to give to others throughout your life. You can be successful with anything you focus on accomplishing. When exploring the energy of the 8 Life Path, you find that you have both an attraction and an aversion to success. It’s a struggle. Sometimes you can become lazy and bored with life. Though you may face difficulties, you must learn how to focus on your goal, start it, and follow through with the necessary work to manifest your vision. Others may find you intimidating. Even if you aren’t vocal or aggressive, your internal sense of power is undeniable. Even when you can’t see it, others can. You have concerns about not allowing others to control you. When you’re engaged in using your power constructively, you’re working with your optimal energy. You’re a doer and an achiever. Once you realize that you’re meant to have financial success in your life, you can start working with your expansive energy. When you banish the feelings that keep you from achievement, you can think big and play big. When you focus on what you want with drive and intensity you can achieve anything. Whatever you want is worth working for.