Develop and enhance your natural gifts: creativity, sensitivity, naturalness

Work on your main problem area: making negative comparisons

• be aware of self-absorption;

• stay away from melodrama; what role does it play in your relationships?

• pay attention to your fantasies and daydreams: what are they reinforcing? What purpose do they serve?

• when you dwell on how different you are, pay attention to what it costs you in terms of your connection with others

• focus on what is here – not what is missing;

• what is it about the qualities you don’t have but wish you did that attracts you?

• Can you recognize the qualities you do have?

• befriend yourself;

• be proactive in suffering;

• be reluctant to compare;

• stop fantasizing about the ideal;

• don’t hold on to feelings.

• Spiritual practice:

  • Follow Jesus as dramatic and unique

  • To gain love we must become unique and deeply authentic. Matt 6:25-30 breaks the envy of the FOUR because here with God loving us, we have all we need right now.

  • Gospel contemplation: the woman with the vial of nard

  • watch Jesus be just who he is and not wish he were someone else

  • Meditate on the Commandment “Thou shalt not covet.” What does that suggest to you?

  • Practise finding God’s Presence in the beauty of your surroundings

  • Look at your life as a work of art, expressing some aspect of God; how would God invite you to complete that work of art?

  • Rehearse the breath mantra “Present moment, perfect moment.”

• watch out for warning signs that you are too stressed as a FOUR:

  • you experience yourself as extremely volatile and touchy

  • you find that you depend on very few people and have unstable relations with them

  • you have outbursts of rage, hostility and hatred

  • you have long bouts of depression and hopelessness

  • you find yourself self-sabotaging and rejecting positive influences

Examples to emulate: Martha Graham, Jeremy Irons, Sarah McLaughlan, Bob Dylan, Ingmar Bergman,