If you 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. These could be your excessive independence, your fear of commitment, your eccentricity, your instability, or your fear of intimacy.

Barry Hilton, you are endowed with great sensitivity and have profound aspirations, especially romantic ones. Nevertheless, your spirit is sometimes too delicate for you to have armored and structured yourself for the constraints of life out there in the real world. Moreover, you see little point in devoting yourself to fulfilling the demands of practical reality, which strike you as rather futile and empty. Your escapes into your fantasy world give you the illusion of a much greater reward. You tend to gloss over your vision of other people, and when they reveal their imperfections and incompetence, you feel guilty for them and suffer from your own vulnerability and illusions. You would do well to try to be more selective about the people you associate with; when you are moving in a dream world, you attract the kind of dishonest people who are likely to take advantage of you.

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 learn to be present in the moment and to focus on the things you love. This will help you to overcome any obstacles that may prevent you from enjoying life. 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.