If you really want to improve and transform yourself, the first step is to become aware of the weaknesses which may be holding you back and preventing your evolution. Amanda Steele

You sometimes sense a conflict between your desire for social and professional success and your need for a stable, secure domestic life. You are deeply committed to both ideas and do not always succeed in reconciling their schedules and demands on you. Sometimes it feels as though you will never be able to find a balance. However, no job promotion will really satisfy you if you have neglected your most intimate needs and desires. Although it sometimes seems easier to you to climb the rungs of the career ladder out there in the real world, if you merely sacrifice your domestic life, you are only trying to fool yourself. You should accept the fact that your domestic life is the true basis and foundation of your development. All your career endeavors and success will be even more rewarding if they are supported by a safe, warm personal life.

Although you are friendly and outgoing, 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.

Amanda Steele is rather obstinate, stubborn, and impervious to outside influences. Although her determination is an asset in bringing plans and projects to completion, it may also arouse bitter hostility against her. To fit in best, Amanda Steele should work on her flexibility and diplomacy.

Amanda Steele’s energy is vast and very productive. She knows how to persevere and meet challenges, delays, and obstacles with determination and obstinacy, without altering her goals. She is fairly reluctant to change course as a result of outside intervention, preferring to bulldoze her way past any obstacles, slowly but steadily, rather than go around them. Sometimes her will is so powerful that she refuses to make any compromises or concessions, which may be a source of conflict with others. She might want to work on sharing her power or authority, which would allow her to accomplish more.

Amanda Steele identifies strongly with her own individual habits and work routines, and isn’t as keen to learn from others. Although she trusts her own talent for business, finance, and investments thoroughly, she is liable to make some errors in judgment.

Amanda Steele hates contradiction. Although she has a lot of mental and intellectual concentration, she sometimes tends to be dogmatic or absolutist. Her rigid mindset denotes a certain adaptive difficulty.

As we suggested earlier, Amanda Steele is endowed with great sensitivity and has profound aspirations, especially romantic ones. Nevertheless, her spirit is sometimes too delicate for her to have armored and structured herself for the constraints of life out there in the real world. Moreover, she sees little point in devoting herself to fulfilling the demands of practical reality, which strike her as rather futile and empty. Her escapes into her fantasy world give her the illusion of a much greater reward. She tends to gloss over her vision of other people, and when they reveal their imperfections and incompetence, she feels guilty for them and suffers from her own vulnerability and illusions. She would do well to try to be more selective about the people she associates with; when she is moving in a dream world, she attracts the kind of dishonest people who are likely to take advantage of her.

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 things you love and feel positive about, as well as 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, finds a setting – perhaps a yoga class – in which you can practice relaxation exercises.