A 9 Essence during an 8 Personal Year has the potential to be materially rewarding. It can also be a period of breakthroughs, promotions, and earning the respect of others. However, it is important to understand the crucial difference in the way each number attracts progress and good fortune.

While reading the chapters on your Essence and Personal Year, you may have noted the numbers are each other's opposite in many ways. This is never more obvious than when money is involved.

Although financial gain is often associated with both the 8 and the 9, there is a clear difference in the way it is awarded. The 8 seeks reward the old-fashioned way through smart decisions, focus, ambition, and effort.  The 9 is motivated by ideals not money, but it tends to attract it just the same. Although it is focused on creative, humanitarian, or philosophical matters, it somehow catches the attention of a generous universe.

This radical difference creates a dilemma. How will you know whether you are motivated by the idealism of your 9 Essence or the ambitious drive of your 8 Personal Year cycle? The answer is in the way each cycle influences you.

Your Essence is an internal influence - it reflects your feelings, state of mind, and the approach you will take during this period. Your yearly cycle affects your surroundings, circumstances, and the events you will encounter this year.

One way to balance the cycles is to use their respective traits in the area they are naturally drawn to. Your 9 Essence will lend an idealistic, caring, and creative state of mind (it is known as the humanitarian). These traits are well aligned for political, environmental, artistic, and idealistic interests, and there is a considerable likelihood you will be drawn to one or more during this Essence.

The characteristics and focus of your 8 Personal Year are almost opposite in nature. The 8 is focused on material gain and progress. It will deliver opportunities that require ambition, effort, and determination. If you identify a promising opportunity, by all means give it your utmost effort and strive to meet your goal.

Although each cycle carries great promise, this is one of the most trying combinations you will encounter. To achieve material success, you will need to be results-oriented and highly focused on your objectives during a period when your mindset is particularly concerned with and willing to sacrifice for others.

The 8 is sometimes impatient, bullish, and domineering - characteristics that are antithetical to the compassionate 9. The opposing traits may cause you to become indecisive or to doubt yourself, even lead you to question your principals. Your best approach is to question your motivation and do the right thing, perhaps even if it means forgoing a financial opportunity.