What does Six of Wands reversed mean?

Success without recognition, or recognition without substance.

The first is demoralising and common: the work was done, the result arrived, and it was absorbed into somebody else's account of the year.

The second is ego inflating past achievement, and the tradition names it without much sympathy. Also read for a fall from a public position, which the card treats as the risk that comes with the parade.

Recognition, achievement, good news. You have won and people know it.

Confidence earned rather than performed, which is the distinction the card cares about: this is not self-belief, it is an accurate reading of a result.

In an advice position it says accept the acknowledgement, which sounds trivial and is the part people reliably fail at. Deflecting praise is a habit, and it teaches everybody around you to stop offering it.

Upright: victory, recognition, confidence, good news, progress

Reversed: lack of recognition, ego, private success, fall from grace

• What am I minimising that deserves to be called a win?
• Whose recognition am I actually after?