Develop and enhance your natural gifts: ambition, energy, vision

Work on your main problem area: trying to be other than you authentically are.

• develop the practice of silence and contemplation;

• get a spiritual director; there’s nothing like opening ourselves honestly to one we trust to help us see how we deceive ourselves!

• develop a personal definition of success; what does success mean to you? To your parents? To your peers? Any connections?

• name areas in your life where you do not feel the need to be the best; how do they differ from areas where you feel you need to be the best;

• put your hand over your heart, and imagine yourself experiencing the world around you with your feelings, not your brain; do this until you can tell the difference between your analytical mind and your feelings;

• be aware of what is sacrificed to accomplish a goal;

• when you find yourself being competitive, or being dragged into competition, stop and ask yourself what motivates you;

• take vacations regularly; they can help you focus on yourself and not your accomplishments; they can also be a reminder that you are not indispensable in your career;

• practice Sabbath as a way to resist the temptation of always working

• work as a team member instead of a leader;

• share something vulnerable about you with someone you trust; what did that feel like? What are you afraid to let others see?

• pursue an authentic friendship.

• Spiritual practice:

  • Follow Jesus as achiever

  • As Gospel contemplation, consider Matt 20:1-16. This is an attack on the THREE trance of being first, being successful, looking good etc. God’s love is extended to anyone who will accept it, even late comers.

  • Gospel contemplation: hear Jesus say “well done my good and trusty servant”

  • Read as Lectio divina, Proverbs “Vanity, all is vanity…”

  • Imagine your obiturary: what would you want people to say about you; what would you not want them to say?

  • Lectio divina: Jesus says “when you pray, close the door…”

  • Study Brother Lawrence’s approach to his spiritual life

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

  • you suffer from physical burnout and exhaustion from workaholism

  • you project an increasingly false self-image and deceptiveness

  • you discover you lack feelings and experience an inner emptiness

  • you find yourself concealing the degree of your emotional distress

  • you find yourself exploiting others to preserve an image

Examples to emulate: Barbra Streisand, Christopher Reeve, F. Scott Fitzgerald,