If you’re serious about becoming a better person, the first step is to become aware of your weaknesses- your pride and temper, your need for praise, your need to dominate, and your struggle to tolerate criticism.

Although you are friendly and outgoing and commit yourself to friendships and partnerships, you often find it difficult to balance your own needs, desires, and goals with the objective reality of others and their individual desires and needs. To understand and overcome this problem, you should accept the idea that every relationship follows more or less the same general scheme: a base of intimacy and an accomplishment or purpose apart from the relationship itself. If you succeed in defining, through discussion and communication, what sort of intimate relationship you and your partners want to maintain and what accomplishment or purpose they hope to achieve, many conflicts will be avoided.

Alex Rodriguez’s mental processes are lightning quick. As a result, he tends to jump to conclusions and make immediate decisions before he knows all the facts. This rash and impetuous behavior could cause communications problems and arouse needless opposition in others. His mind is generally too busy with the immediate future to take time for careful analysis and reflection. However, the same behavior has a positive side. It can be of great use to him in rushed or quickly changing work situations, which require last-minute, immediate decisions.

Alex Rodriguez is obedient to a drive to live and accomplish his purpose in an intense and immediate way. Whenever he encounters direct resistance, he might find himself beset by frustration. If the resistance lasts, he may eventually be overwhelmed by anxiety, nervous tension, and discouragement. In addition, he has the ability to focus his strength and leadership potential on problems which require immediate solutions. His lack of patience and persistence may spur problems.

To trust yourself better and gain self-assurance, the first thing you must do is learn to say no. Once you are capable of saying no to others, you can say yes to life. You must develop your awareness of all the good things in your life and all the changes you hope to make in order to enjoy life more. This is the foundation that will support you, the inexhaustible source and center of the transformation of your personality. Infantile anxieties which arose in childhood when you were helpless may be obstacles to your evolution. Sometimes they actually prevent you from daring to confront challenges you would be altogether capable of assuming now! One of the reasons you yield to these childhood fears so readily is that they procure a feeling so familiar to you that, although it is negative, it is a reassuring part of your identity. However, the more often you reinforce this complex by yielding to that feeling, the more unaware you become of your true emotional state. The irrational childhood fears have also reinforced your pessimistic tendencies. It is difficult for you to believe in the sunny side of life because of the pernicious little voice inside you that claims you don’t really deserve all this goodness. This side of you could undermine your vitality and force you to compensate or flee from reality. In doing so, you limit your power to bring about a positive change in yourself or your life. It’s a vicious cycle, and to free yourself, the first step is to free yourself from the fears which prevent you from taking full advantage of life. You can succeed if you arrange a relaxed, positive environment for yourself, establish sincere relations with one or two special people, and, if possible, find a setting – perhaps a yoga class – in which you can practice relaxation exercises.