It’s easy lately to be cynical or to become numb to all the pain in the world. You imagine that nothing you do will make a difference anyway, so why bother trying? But on Friday, the Scorpio new moon cuts through all of that, reminding you how to feel deeply and pushing you to live your life like it counts. Then on Saturday afternoon, Mercury enters Sagittarius, bringing a much-needed dose of optimism to your thinking. You might not believe things will work out, but you can still believe that it’s worth doing your best, that your actions matter.

Once you set your sights on a goal, it’s only a matter of time before you arrive. The trouble is that if you’re working toward something you don’t actually want, getting it will always be strangely hollow. This week, check in with yourself and make sure that you’re not chasing things just because you feel like you’re supposed to. Connect with what drives you. Others might not find your goals so impressive, but this isn’t their life — it’s yours. You’re the one whose opinion counts most.

Relationships are rarely perfectly balanced. There are ebbs and flows: One week you have a lot of energy and attention to give, the next week it’s your turn to ask for support. Over time, ideally, it mostly evens out. Occasionally, though, the imbalance only intensifies over time. One person always seems to be the one who shares more, loves more, sacrifices more. If any of your relationships feel unfair, this week offers you a chance for a reset. It isn’t too late to make a change.

Lately, you’ve been struggling to figure out how you can make yourself useful. You never feel like you’re doing enough, and the problem isn’t that you don’t care — it’s that you can’t figure out how to contribute significantly enough. This week, instead of beating yourself up for not doing more, give some serious thought to what you have to offer, what you enjoy doing, and what’s most needed in the community around you. Take some pressure off yourself and focus on tangible steps you might take right now.

It’s easy to convince yourself not to go after what you want. You tell yourself that you’re supposed to accept what you have, or that people will think your dreams are silly, or that you’re certain to fail anyway. This week, it’s time to put all those thoughts out of your head. Life is short, and there’s no point spending it trying to talk yourself out of ambition. You might not get everything you want, of course, but the worst thing you could do to yourself is give up without even trying.

As much as you’d like not to care about what other people think of you, you understand that it matters. The way they see you affects how they treat you, which affects how you think of yourself. The problem is that this makes it easy to care more about seeming like a kind or smart or interesting person than actually being one. So, for now, at least, forget about image. Focus on doing what will make you feel good about yourself in real time, even if nobody else ever sees or knows about it.

Because you work so hard, you want to see results at the end of the day — all that effort feels wasted if you can’t point to a tangible product. But the bigger your goal, the longer it can take to see any progress. So, this week, it might be better to shift your focus away from outcomes and to focus on the process instead. Are you learning? Are you staying true to yourself? Even if you never reached the end goal, would you be proud of the way you’ve carried yourself, the way you’ve spent this time?

Telling the truth can be unbearably difficult. It’s often so much easier to tell people what they want to hear — to flatter them, to soothe their ego, or to make a bad situation seem better than it really is. And there are times when brutal honesty won’t help anyway, so you might as well be kind. This week, though, you’ll be doing everyone, including yourself, a disservice if you shy away from the truth — even if that makes the people around you uncomfortable.

You’re not usually someone to throw yourself headfirst into new situations — you prefer to hang back and observe first. You wait to make your move until you’ve gotten the lay of the land. Sometimes, though, you encounter situations in which you have to act fast. You won’t always have the luxury of taking your time. This week, if you’re called on to take action before you feel ready, rise to the occasion. You can trust that your wisdom and experience will carry you through.

As much as you can, you try to stay optimistic. It isn’t that you’re naïve or that you don’t recognize the world’s problems; you simply don’t see the point in seeking out the worst in everything and everyone. This week, though, you might feel uncharacteristically cranky. Everybody you meet irritates you, and all of your own actions seem somehow wrong. Try to avoid lashing out — it won’t help matters — or being unnecessarily hard on yourself. Life is changing and you’re growing, and that’s never easy, so treat yourself gently.

You sometimes imagine that the more diligently you curate the version of yourself that others see, the more you can make people like you. If you’re careful to always come across as cool or interesting, you imagine, then people will perceive you that way, and they’ll be drawn to you for exactly these qualities. But this isn’t really how it works. This week, if you want true and intimate relationships, then stop hiding behind a façade and let others into the messy, wonderful reality.

While your ideas are important to you, you’re not always convinced anyone else wants to hear them. You’re conscious that you’re only one person, and you worry that it’s self-indulgent to imagine that your thoughts and experiences are interesting to others. But even so, you long to be deeply listened to, to share your inner world with someone who actually cares. This week, if you’re brave enough to open up, you might be surprised to find that other people are interested in what you have to say.

This week, new experiences or information could change your perspective on life. You might find that some of your assumptions about the world, your friends, or yourself no longer hold true — if they ever were. It’s scary to grow, and scarier still to admit that you were wrong, but right now that’s one of the best things you can do for yourself. Letting yourself be changed by the world and the people around you can be difficult at first, but you’ll be so glad you did.

Read the weekly horoscopes for the week of October 13th. The weekly horoscopes for the week of November 4th will be online next Sunday.

Buy Claire Comstock-Gay’s book, Madame Clairevoyant’s Guide to the Stars, here.