True Story: I’m a professional palm reader

What’s it like making a living looking at strangers’ hands and telling them about themselves? Do you ever see things you wish you hadn’t? How do people react at cocktail parties when you tell them what you do? Today, Peggy’s telling us about her career and how she went from hotel sales > IT recruiter > professional palm reader!

Tell us a bit about yourself!
My name is Peggie and I grew up in a beautiful place called Mahwah in a state that’s often maligned but is actually quite nice – New Jersey. I grew up in the 70s – so if you do the math you’ll see that I’ve made my fifth decade around the sun.

I’m a life coach who uses palmistry to create personal, one-of-a-kind coaching plans for each of my clients.

When I’m not working I visit lots of Virginia Wineries, hang out on porches and around fire pits with my besties or walk around historic Manassas, VA (my current hometown) with my sweet husband. That sounds sort of dull, I also play with my dogs, knit and crochet like a fiend and travel to see friends and family as much as I can.

For those of us who don’t know, what is palmistry?
Palmistry is a non-predictive tool. Your fingerprints hold keys to your life purpose, your life path and your life lessons. In the palms, there are tons of markings (in addition to the lines) that depict talents and general ways of showing up in the world. I like to say that palmistry is the one and only assessment tool you can’t fudge!

What are the most common misconceptions about palmistry?
1. Readings have to be in person. I mail all my clients ink kits with details on making their own prints. It allows me to help people no matter where they live and it acts as a starting point for the record of their growth and expansion. Over the course of  a year, my clients will make and send prints to me up to 4 times so that they can see proof in their hands of the shifts they are making in the world.

2. It’s fortune-telling. I cannot predict anything about someone’s life from their hands. Clients have free will and can make choices to shift where they are at any time. EVERYTHING in the hand can change except for the fingerprints! And to be clear, I can’t tell you how long you’re going to live, whether you’ll get married or divorced or if you’re going to have kids.

What sort of education does one need to become a professional palm reader?
While there is no formal requirement, I was trained and certified through the International Institute of Hand Analysis (IIHA). I’ve also studied with colleagues and other teachers, most of whom are affiliated in some way with the IIHA, and am certified as a master teacher through the American Academy of Hand Analysis.

How long have you been doing this? And what lead you to work in palmistry? 
I’ve been reading hands professionally since 2004 when I started my certification program. In high school and college, I read hands for friends and strangers, based on information in books. I shoved all that aside when I left college.

I worked in hotel sales for various properties throughout the DC region. Before that, I bounced around as a temp, an Admin Asst, and more or less any job that a college non-graduate could get.  Hotel sales is where I really found my stride. I loved leading teams, hitting numbers and expanding what my clients and my colleagues thought was possible. That was a good, but hectic life. It was perfect for a Type-A overachiever like me.

Next I worked in IT consulting as a recruiter. It was crazy stressful but had nice perks – travel, expense accounts, and great money. After a year as the VP of our DC office, I was miserable so I quit.
I started a pet-care company which did really well out of the gate. I sold it five years later to devote myself to coaching and hand reading. All that corporate time really taught me so much about business, spreadsheets, marketing and managing people – it was priceless.

What are the most common issues that you help people with? And how do you help them?
People come to me because:

• they are tired of stressing out about money and want a different way to live than paycheck-to-paycheck; or
• they are in jobs that pay really well but are sucking the soul out of them (like I was) and they want to either find a new job or make peace with the one they have; or
• they are in a love relationship that feels crummy to them, or they are not in a relationship and are feeling lonely and want to figure out how to have a great relationship; or
• they feel like there’s more to life than what they’re living and they want more balance, or fulfillment, or laughter or fun; or
• they want to figure out how to use their intuition, spiritual sense in the world in a practical way

I help them by first making sure we’re a fit! I have an easy-going chat with everyone who may be even the teeniest bit interested in working with me. It’s really open-ended. We chat, I ask lots of questions, I assess whether or not they are ready to do some work to get where they want to go and then I recommend a plan of action. Sometimes it’s that we work together, and sometimes I recommend that they read a particular book or do a particular action and then come back to me.

Then each of my clients gets a kit with detailed instructions for making their hand and fingerprints. We spend one of their first coaching sessions digging into the fingerprints first and identifying their purpose, lesson and life path.

Together we create a program based on their goals and visions. While no two programs are exactly the same because no two people have the same set of fingerprints, there are some general things all my clients are asked to do:
1) move more or differently than they have been – whatever that looks like for them
2) keep a journal or a benchmarking system of some sort
3) stillness.  Some clients start with 30 seconds a day and that’s perfect!

You’re a little bit different than many palm readers in that you help your clients create plans to get what they want. When did you start offering this service? And why did you add it instead of just reading palms?
When I had the pet-care company I started coaching people who wanted to start their own pet-care businesses. Part of my fingerprint chart calls for me to be a teacher and I’ve always believed that adage that says “Give a person a fish and he’ll eat for the day, but teach him to fish and he’ll eat for life.”

When I was learning to read hands I offered all my coaching clients readings if they wanted them. The ones who had readings and started using the info in their hands in their coaching really made strides much faster than those who didn’t it made sense to build my coaching business this way!

I’m sure you’ve seen tons of interesting hands! Can you tell us about some of the best or most interesting ones?
You probably can guess that I think all hands are interesting- just like all people are. I like when I watch TV or awards shows and can note interesting lines or finger stuff on famous people!

Do you ever encounter naysayers who doubt what you do?
Naysayers come and go, it comes with the territory. I give them the space to be who they are. It’s not my job to make them believers. Look, if you don’t like rye bread, no amount of me waxing poetic about a great seeded rye is going to change your opinion, is it?

We’re all on this life journey together and however we get to the place of most happiness is fine with me. Palmistry is just one road to get to your purpose, not the only one.  If people are skeptical, I’m happy to talk to them — I’m a skeptic too! If they’re rude or mean I shut them off, no one needs to be rude!

What’s one thing you’ve learned from your work that any of us could apply to our daily lives?
The one thing I’ve learned is that compassion goes a long way. Before I learned to read hands I wasn’t as compassionate as I am now. I’ve learned a great deal about us humans! We all just want to be seen and heard. So I would say, the next time someone is really on your last nerve, remind yourself that they are hard-wired differently than you are and they are doing the best they can with what they have in their life.

Thanks so much for sharing your story, Peggie! Do you guys have any questions for her?

P.S. Interviews with a psychic and a medium who channels a channels an entity named Zurac!