I took off for a few days of spring skiing in the Sierras, and after a wobbly first day, I settled into a groove and performed very well.

But back at the cabin, my athlete's ego took a bit of a bruising.

The mirror, unlike what I have at home, displayed more than a head and shoulders shot.

It was the full Monty, as they say, and I had more than the expected number of slopes slaloming down my front side.

"This can't be!” I told myself. "I couldn't have put on this weight between home and here!”

Calming down with a killer chocolate chip cookie I acquired the day before at an oasis on Interstate 5, I said, clearly, it's the mirror's fault. If my mirror at home tells me one story, and this two-bit, broken down, rent-a-mirror says something else, who am I to believe?

Heck, everything about cabin life is a little rough around the edges; I consoled myself. How can you expect any comfort, physical or psychological, from a place that groans more at night than Jacob Marley's ghost?

Nah, don't fall for this trick, I said.

I'll just focus on my skiing and have a good time and then return to the funhouse I call home.

Where I have the good sense to have nothing but skinny mirrors!

Dr. Gary S. Goodman, President of Customersatisfaction.com, is a popular keynote speaker, management consultant, and seminar leader and the best-selling author of 12 books, including Reach Out & Sell Someone® and Monitoring, Measuring & Managing Customer Service, and the audio program, "The Law of Large Numbers: How To Make Success Inevitable,” published by Nightingale-Conant. A Ph.D. from USC's Annenberg School, a Loyola lawyer, and an MBA from the Peter F. Drucker School at Claremont Graduate University, Gary offers programs through UCLA Extension and numerous universities, trade associations, and other organizations in the United States and abroad. Headquartered in Glendale, California, he can be reached at (818) 243-7338 or at: gary@customersatisfaction.com.

For more information about coaching, consulting, training, books, videos and audios, please go to: http://www.customersatisfaction.com