Your fine mind, sharp eye and thorough ways are well-known sun sign strengths for Virgo. You are modest, but you are also honest, so you best admit to your own excellence in performance of most of the tasks that you attempt. "Relatively speaking" means that you admit you do most tasks better than anyone else you know, but on the other hand, you see many flaws in your own work and many areas in which you could do better. This is because your great strength or curse is that, above all, you are a perfectionist.

To make a strength of your perfectionism, you must master the nervous energy of your Mercury ruler. The inability to quit fussing with something and call it "done" is actually a nervous habit. Though you are a mental being, your sun-sign source energy is rooted in the element Earth, and healthy Virgos have an awareness that nature herself has provided for the creative influence of accidents and flaws. Once you've toured your super-senses (a real secret strength is that you have sharper eyes, ears, sense of shell, touch and taste than the rest of us) to the subtle natural rhythms that are your special realm, you operate like a well-oiled machine, happily devising ever-more efficient systems of organization and administration for life's goods and services.

Your characteristic tendency to worry too much is exacerbated by fretting about in your work and health sector, but level-headed knowledge of your secret strengths will enable you to use density to create more-efficient work routines and a fitter body than ever before.

Virgo sets the standard for fine craftsmanship and the ability to repair devices that others have abandoned in frustration. Your talents as a healer are equally famous. Whether it's a human body or a machine that's on the fritz, you just know how to make things work. Here are some fabulous examples of your skilled sign: Elizabeth I of England, one of the most effective monarchs in history; T. Galter Reed, co-developer of the first techniques for controlling yellow fever; and Sister Elizabeth Kenny, developer of the first viable therapy for infantile paralysis. What these extraordinary Virgos had in common was mastery of their task beyond what anyone had thought possible before.

Your willingness to serve is a key secret strength. No other sign is credited with your purity of motive, except possibly Pisces, who nevertheless is often thought to be too romantic to be of much use. Virgos work for work's sake - it's their form of self-development. Practical and unselfish, you are a treasure!

If your adversary is a Virgo, it is useless to try to out produce them. If you'd like to have that Virgo's job, forget it - the boss knows very well that Virgo is the one irreplaceable employee in a wholly replaceable world. But you may take advantage of their lack of public relations skill with peers and subordinates. Virgo may not exactly have enemies (although hypercritical, blunt outspoken Lynda Johnson was typical of an efficient Virgo who had many enemies, indeed), but they are so critical and analytical that they are bound to have made someone in the workplace uncomfortable. You may be able to hire their best talent away from them. If attacked, Virgo will let the facts speak for themselves, preferring not to get personal about things. And the facts are very likely to speak better for them than for you.

If competing with Virgo in love, you may certainly bring a greater romantic spirit to the relationship. But if the object of your mutual affections is an earth sign (Taurus or Capricorn), chances are they'll prefer Virgo's dependable no-games approach to love, even if it is somewhat understated.

In the marketplace, you cannot compete with the quality of their product or efficiency of their service, but you may out-advertise or outperform with imaginative promotional gimmicks.

All in all, it might be a better idea to engage your Virgo adversary as an advisor or hire them away from their present spot rather than going up against this mild-mannered model of efficiency and decorum.