Virgo (Aug. 23–Sept. 22)

What you’re up to now is like turning up the air-conditioning so high you need to wear a sweater indoors. You’re overcompensating, and it’ll probably backfire on you. Keep the air-conditioning at 50 degrees and you’ll likely catch a chill. Why are you trying so hard, anyway? Is whatever you’re trying to prevent really so disastrous that it merits this much time, energy, and effort? I don’t think so. You have more important things to worry about. Save yourself the stress and the energy bills (both actual and spiritual). Just open the windows, and let whatever wants to happen, happen.

Libra (Sept. 23–Oct. 22)

Don’t prejudge. What you think are deal-breakers (and usually are) in this case might still be workable. The key here is to keep an open mind about the person in front of you. Could s/he be the exception to the rule? The guidelines you’ve made for yourself haven’t actually gotten you very far in the past, so an exception is precisely what you need: someone who’s able to get away with breaking most of the rules. Letting someone with this much power into your life might be scary, I know, but you already play it way too safe. Scare yourself by giving it a go. You know what fear is called when you embrace it? A thrill.

Scorpio (Oct. 23–Nov. 21)

Stop making things so hard for yourself. Don’t get a job in a pastry shop when your plan is to give up sugar. Give yourself more mental breathing room than that. Subjecting yourself to constant, compelling temptation is just about the dumbest thing you could do. Prove that you’re smarter (and less self-destructive) than that. Your goals are admirable. Please set yourself up so that they’re likely to succeed, not crash and burn horribly. Still confused? I don’t know how to spell it out any more simply, but I’ll try: Self-sabotage is bad. Please make sure you’re not engaging in it, consciously or unconsciously.

Sagittarius (Nov. 22–Dec. 21)

Imagine you accidentally left the baby sitting in his car seat on the sidewalk next to the car at the last rest stop. The second you realized it, you’d tear over to the other side of the highway and race back as fast as you could, kicking yourself the whole time and freaking out until you knew the poor infant was safe. You wouldn’t give a crap about speed limits or traffic rules or anything like that, would you? This is similar, even if it’s less obvious. Don’t worry about looking stupid or desperate. Do what you have to do to make this happen, and most likely that will mean you need to run, don’t walk, and break whatever rules get in your way.

Capricorn (Dec. 22–Jan. 19)

Stop ignoring the facts. What you’re doing right now is examining the scenario and deliberately blinding yourself, saying, “I won’t see anything that’s the color red.” That excludes a lot of potentially important information, and isn’t going to lead to you making wise or insightful choices. Whether or not you find these particular facts and details distasteful is irrelevant. Your job here is to be sure you’re making sound, clear decisions, and those are impossible unless you open your eyes to everything, including the stuff you’d rather wasn’t part of the picture.

Aquarius (Jan. 20–Feb. 18)

What’s the point of buying a fancy phone that can surf the Internet, act as tour guide, take pictures, and mow your lawn, when you’re only ever going to use it as a phone? Keep things as simple as you can this week. You don’t necessarily need all the bells and whistles, so why pay for them (actually or metaphorically)? Strip everything down to the bare minimum, and only add in ripples, complications, and extras when you’re sure you need them. Be brutal. You won’t feel as though you’re missing anything. In fact what you’re most likely to feel is a tremendous weight lifted from your shoulders.

Pisces (Feb. 19–March 20)

You could half-ass it and choose the easy but purely temporary solution, or you could really dig in and fix things for the long term. That would definitely involve a ton more work and thought on your part, but obviously that’s preferable to the alternative, which is essentially the equivalent of wrapping duct tape around the thing. Bad idea. It’s time to either commit to it, repairing it from the ground up, or walk away and let it fall apart. Patching it up for the moment might have worked before, but that’s not the answer anymore. Throw the duct tape away. It’s of no real use to you now.

Aries (March 21–April 19)

Abstract you’re not. In fact your motto is very much “What you see is what you get.” However, spelling it all out and baldly exposing every detail of your psyche isn’t especially romantic or mysterious. There’s no need to be deliberately obtuse or to lie at all, but consider the possibility of fuzzing the details. An abstract or impressionist painting has a beauty all its own, beauty it wouldn’t possess if it didn’t leave a certain amount of detail to the imagination. How much imagination must people employ when trying to figure you out? Up that total by 10–20% and you’ll be in good shape.

Taurus (April 20–May 20)

Don’t deprive yourself of the things you need out of principle. This is not the equivalent of forcing yourself to go without chocolate for a week or two or cutting down on your TV habit. This is like trying to quit breathing air or sleeping. You’ll only be able to go without for so long, and you’ll end up having to make up for lost time. Stop telling yourself you shouldn’t need what you know you do. That’s just a waste of time. Wishing you didn’t need to eat or love just can’t make it so. Instead, focus on getting your needs—whatever they are—fulfilled in the least impactful way you can, then you can get around to the stuff that really interests you.

Gemini (May 21–June 20)

If your heart were a kitchen, you’d have the refrigerator door gaping and turned all the way up, and the oven wide open, set to broil. You’re not only burning the candle at both ends, you’re working at cross purposes to yourself. Stop tripping yourself up. Decide what temperature this room ought to be and turn off the oven or close the fridge. I know it’s hard for you to make up your mind and commit to one direction, but it’s about time. Until you do, you’ll just keep using up a ton of energy to go nowhere and accomplish nothing.

Cancer (June 21–July 22)

If you own a business with employees, you’ll go nuts if you don’t trust them. Micromanaging everything will set you on a path to a nervous breakdown. Eventually, your best bet is simply to let go and believe they’ll do correctly what you ask of them. The same holds true in every aspect of your life. Trying to control the minutiae of what happens when you’re not looking will really screw you up in the long run, even if you can get away with it for a little while. Don’t delude yourself, though. For every second detail you attend to personally, you’ll piss off the person who would’ve taken care of it for you. Then when you need them to come through for you, they won’t. Trust them sooner rather than later, before they decide not to bother being worthy of that trust.

Leo (July 23–Aug. 22)

Insanity is sometimes defined as doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. And yet I see people do this all the time. They repeat identical patterns and act surprised when something similar happens every time. Leos are notoriously bad about this, and yet I know you are also capable of change once you’re convinced it’s necessary. The problem clearly isn’t your flexibility, it’s your reluctance to exercise it. This time around, don’t take so long to figure out and accept that what you’re doing isn’t cutting it, so you can change things in enough time to get the results you want before they no longer matter.