Develop and enhance your natural gifts: festiveness, joie de vivre,

Work on your main problem area: anticipating what you are going to do next

• practice restraint and moderation;

• develop a daily meditation practice;

• find ways to live in the present moment and be happy with what is happening right now;

• when you are bored, spend some time figuring out what this is about;

• make amends with yourself and others, especially if you have hurt them through your behaviour;

• strive to be more comfortable with negative emotions;

• work on being more present in the moment;

• exercise daily;

• allow yourself to experience your feelings more deeply, especially the negative ones – they won’t kill you!

• observe the energy of frustration in you; when you notice you are frustrated, take a few deep breaths… what does frustration actually feel like? What happens when you just sense it, rather than act it out?

• be intentional about pursuing your potential;

• if you find yourself distracted, identify what tends to distract you;

• journal answers to deep questions about your life;

• when you seek to be the life of the party, ask yourself why you feel you have to do this;

• seek to be with friends in pain without trying to cheer them up

• spiritual practice:

  • Follow Jesus as “party guy”

  • SEVENs only look at the sunny side of life and overlook the darker side. They skip from peak experience to peak experience and neglect the valleys. It is a form of gluttony. The fearful glutton needs to know the dynamic of letting go, of making a commitment or an act of faith. Luke 14:33, Jesus considers this gospel so important He is willing to die for it.

  • Gospel Contemplation: the man who offers a banquet; the Kingdom of God is like a banquet

  • spend some time with the stories of Jesus’ death and resurrection;

  • learn to go God’s way, which leads through death to resurrection

  • reflect on the Buddhist expression “Your pain is your path.” What might this mean for you?

  • As Lectio divina, reflect on Jesus’ charge that we should take up our cross and follow him

  • As Lectio divina, reflect on Paul’s admonition that none of our gifts matter if we don’t have love.

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

  • you catch yourself trying to escape all forms of anxiety

  • you suffer from serious and longstanding addictions

  • you find yourself reacting impulsively and sometimes even childishly

  • you experience periods of being out of control

  • you have wild mood swings

  • you have periods of panic and paralyzing terror

Examples to emulate: Robin Williams, Mozart, Carol Burnett, Leonard Bernstein, John F Kennedy, Joan Rivers, Sarah Ferguson