Mimi E. Gotist - Enough About You: The Narcissists 7-Step, 1-Minute Survival Guide to Sacred Spirituality, A Self-Empowered Career, and Highly Effective Relationships

Are you a Novice Narcissist, an Intermediate Egotist, or a Superior Self-Lover? Rate your Me-Q with this simple seven-step quiz and find out.

1. You dont deserve this: your girlfriend got a girlfriend, your boss keeps leaving the want ads on your desk, and your pedicurist moved to an ashram in India. For solace, you turn to:

1. Perspiration (your Spinning class is much like your life: going nowhere fast)
2. Meditation
3. Club Med vacation

2. Everyone whos anyone has done the five-day silent retreat at that hot new Zen/Sufi/Vipassana Sacred Healing Center in Sedona. Youd rather go five days without a low-fat triple-shot decaf latte than five days without talkingbut your reputation is at stake. You:

1. Go. Bring a tape recorder, so someone will be listening when you talk to yourself in the privacy of your own geodesic straw-bale teepee each night.
2. Go. Bring a note from your acupuncturist explaining that youre medically required to take frequent bathroom breaks. Wave off your fellow supplicants sympathetic looks each time you return from the bathroom (where youve been talking to yourself in the mirror).
3. Dont go. Modestly mention that youve committed to a five-week silent retreat (a tour of European art museums actually, but those places are so terribly quiet, and just as boring as meditation).

3. Youve rented an erotic film for your evenings entertainment. As youre fast-forwarding past the 900# ads, you hear your ex-lovers voice on your answering machine, begging to see you tonight. You decide to:

1. Ignore the call. You have better things to do. Hit Play.
2. Pick up the phone. Inform him/her haughtily that you have better things to do. Hit Play.
3. Pick up the phone. Tell him/her that you had a last-minute cancellation and youll be over in an hour. (On your way there youll stop at the video store and insist on a full refund.)

4. Your lover offers you a very special birthday gift: a mnage trois with the third party of your choice. You:

1. Accept. Ask graciously what your lover will be doing that night.
2. Accept. Ask your lover to invite your best friend. Note response. Dispense punishment accordingly.
3. Decline. Offended by such limited imagination, you arrange for a real orgy, to which your lover can only beg to be invited.

5. Theres something square and sparkly at the bottom of your flute of Veuve Clicquot, and your lover has an expectant look on his/her face. Marriage? For you? Jamais! You:

1. Chug the champagne. Swallow the ring. Gag, choke, leave. Once youve expelled the ring at home, you can decide whether to (1) keep it; (2) sell it on eBay; or (3) have it melted down into earrings.
2. Ignore the ring. Tell your lover you have one of your headaches. Take one last medicinal sip (you would never waste good champagne!), then go somewhere quietyour other lovers apartment perhapsto think the proposal over.
3. Delightedly allow your lover to slip the ring onto your finger. Set your internal timer. In five short years, youll be living on alimony.

6. Your spouse confronts you with incontrovertible evidence of your adultery, demanding either counseling or divorce. You choose:

1. Counseling. Itll guarantee you one night a weekor more, if you play your cards rightaway from the kids.
2. Counseling. Prepared for this eventuality, youve already rehearsed your ever-since-my-father-left-home-when-l-was-30-lve-had-intimacy-issues speech.
3. Divorce. Prepared for this eventuality, youve already had your lawyer draw up the settlement.

ADD TWO BONUS POINTS for convincing your spouse to sign on the spot.

7. Despite your generous gifts to the admissions director, your three-year-old has been wait-listed at the best nursery school in town. How will you tell the world?

1. Whitneys personal Gymboree trainer tells me that bilingual home-schooling is best for gifted boys like him. Weve hired a home-schooling nanny. Shes from Paris.
2. Of course Whitney was accepted. But to best prepare him for a career in the global economy, weve decided to give him a less elite, more diverse academic experience.
3. Were moving out of state.

8. At nine years old, your daughter never stops whining, and her favorite word is still mine. You know exactly where this kind of attitude can lead, so you:

1. Fire the staff. The nanny, the pediatric Rolfer, even the cook have got to go. Where else could your daughter have picked up such unattractive behavior?
2. Move to a bigger home. If shes going to keep behaving that way, there simply isnt room for the two of you in a four-bedroom, three-bath starter home.
3. Try tough love. Take away her American Express card.

9. Thanks to your expert mentorship, your personal assistant has just become your boss. You feel:

1. Thrilled for her. (Thats your story, and youre sticking to itat least until you find another job.)
2. Stunned by your own competence. Who else could have transformed such a going-nowhere nobody into management material?
3. Suicidal. Youve long believed that theres no justice in this world, and this is final proof.

10. Citing the economic downturn, your company revokes the employee health club benefit. Your response is to:

1. Quit. They cant do without you; theyre sure to offer you a raise and promotion if youll just change your mind.
2. Secretly organize an employee revolt. Sign someone elses name to the petition. Call in sick the day of the picket line. Return to work, your relationship with management untarnished, when the gym benefit is restored.
3. Be a role model of Buddhist detachment. (It should be easy: youve finally got an excuse not to go to the gym.)

11. You are simply not a person who getsughpimples. Therefore, the eruption on your chin must be:

1. Ebola. Why must the good die young?
2. Spa malpractice. You didnt have the awful thing before you got that apricot/gravel-pit facial yesterday. Luckily, your attorney is on retainer.