This issue is made up of the following sections:

1. Personal Effectiveness Tips
2. Questions for Growth
3. Reality Check - The Me Virus

1. Personal Effectiveness Tips
1. Life is short, so don't put up with repeated stupidity and irresponsibility in others. Doing so wastes your time and energy, and reinforces bad choices and behaviors in others. Move on without the guilt. I had a client call the other night a couple hours prior to her session and request to reschedule (I have a 24 hr notice requirement for reschedules) so that she could watch a softball game on ESPN that night. I told her to have fun watching the game, but that I would charge her the full hour fee. She got mad, and told me that she was rethinking her decision to come in for sessions. I told her I'd save her the time, as this was her second short-notice cancellation, and send her a bill and termination notice. She was stunned, and I am relieved of the duty of working with a lazy individual.

2. We can all benefit greatly from improved discipline in our lives. This means that we stay focused on completion of priorities and the execution of our overall gameplan. It takes a little more effort to reduce distractions and to follow through despite those distractions that inevitably remain, but the results of applied discipline in our lives can be extraordinary. Improve your discipline in one area this month-prioritize, follow through, and execute.

3. If you care about the message that you unconsciously send to others, then:
   1. Never wear those cell phone ear pieces in public (aside from driving). This sends a message of, "Hey, check me out. This little thing in my ear is really cool. Aren't I important?"
   2. Turn your cell phone ring to silent or vibrate. There is really never a need for others to hear your latest ring tone, nor do most people care. However, you can really draw unwanted attention to yourself by neglecting this advice in your next business meeting or lunch.
   3. While you're at it, never answer your cell phone when in a meeting or conversation with someone. Unless you are an on-call physician, that call can wait a minute or two, when you can kindly excuse yourself and return the call if need be. Let people know that you respect their time and company.

4. Move quickly past moments of "rejection" in your life, and stop and stand in place during moments of triumph. This simple formula is the perfect tonic to reduce self-pity and increase self-esteem.

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2. Questions for Growth
1. When was the last time you engaged in an activity solely for the sake of helping others?

2. Which of your 2007 resolutions have you achieved? Not yet achieved?

3. What is one risk, no matter how uncomfortable, that you can take this week to immediately improve the quality of your social life?

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3. Reality Check - The Me Virus

There's an epidemic going around, and doctors have yet to fully diagnose it accordingly and warn the public. It's called the Me Virus. Symptoms include:

• A sudden, unexplainable loss of the ability to listen empathically
• An uncontrollable urge to one-up others
• An odd tendency to interpret others' actions as malevolent
• Sudden loss of sense of humor
• Narrow-mindedness
• Stubborn insistence on getting their point across, no matter the topic at hand

This virus has an insidious onset, and the only known vaccination involves prolonged exposure to humor and perspective. Short-term treatments that have proven effective include:

• Kicks in the posterior
• Indifference
• Complete avoidance of the infected individual

In the past month, I came across probably a dozen individuals with early or advanced signs of complications associated with the Me Virus. Each time, I left the interaction feeling either uneasy or sad for the individual. Left untreated, symptoms of this virus lead to social blindness, interpersonal isolation, and emotional impotence.

The lesson here, metaphors aside: Life is seldom, if ever, about our own selfish personal wishes and desires. If you cannot fathom this truth, you increase the odds that you will experience excessive anxiety, sadness, and loneliness in your daily life. An important belief that has sustained me in my own life is the notion that we are neither as important nor as unremarkable as we usually think we are. The reality is usually somewhere in the middle, and unlike toddlers and teenagers, we as adults can understand this and use it, along with a couple of deep breaths, to keep proper perspective.

Stop making everything about you. Most of us are bit players in the significant dramas of each others' lives. Understand this, and know that there are so many other factors that can come into play as explanations for human behavior that to consistently interpret others' actions as ill-intentioned is both wrong and entirely unhelpful.

Ironically, this seemingly sobering existential truth allows us healthy perspective. We need to be unremarkable on occasion. We require time out of the spotlight to recharge our batteries and gain our balance. We occasionally deserve a healthy kick in the pants. Sometimes, people forget our names. Or mispronounce them. Or forget our birthdays. Or whatever. Get over it, stop being susceptible to the Me Virus, and move forward to live a healthy, productive life.

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