It’s the middle of winter. The economy is acting as if it ought to be committed. People aren’t as happy as they were a year ago, and they’re more afraid. But it is not our responsibility to join the gloom parade. These are my top 10 ways for putting on a happy face and having some genuine happy feelings to back it up:

1. Get up, get dressed, get going. I first wrote about this one in my book Fit from Within. When filmmaker Michael Moore selected it among the books that had changed his life when he was celebrity book reviewer for O Magazine, he wrote that the chapter by this name “Get Up, Get Dressed, Get Going,” was his favorite. The idea is that motion, a change of scene, and the willingness to interact with life bring with them a decided upswing in mood. What did Liza sing in Cabaret? — “There’s no use in sitting alone in your room…”

2. “Come hear the music play….” Music helps — a lot. If you can sing, sing. If you can play, play. If you can upload, upload. Just get some music into your life — the kind that really speaks to your soul. In his book The Healing Energies of Music, Hal Lingerman wrote that Haydn’s flute quartets, Debussy’s La Mer, Saint-Saens’s Symphony no. 3 for organ, and Sousa marches are naturals for relieving depression, fear, or grief, but go with what makes you glow.

3. Take a shower. I love baths, but a shower seems to cleanse the aura along with the body. Take a hot, soapy shower, wash your hair, wash behind your ears, and come out with the grit and grime of daily living removed (and the psychic grit of grime of everybody feeling so crummy removed too).

4. Laugh it up. Go to the funniest movie that’s playing or put in a video of one that always makes you laugh. (I could watch The Birdcage or Elf a hundred times and still be in stitches. Maybe I have watched them a hundred times.) Or go to a comedy club or tune into the Comedy Channel. Or hang out with 13-year-olds and learn how to giggle again.

5. Connect with real people. Your online friends are fine but to lift your spirits in a big way, you need people visible, touchable people.

6. Create something. Knit a pot-holder. Make a collage. Bake apple crisp. Just bring something into being that didn’t exist this morning.

7. Get inspired. Read a spiritual book or listen to a motivational CD. Watch an uplifting movie, or go outside, find some plant that’s pushed its way up through the concrete, and let yourself get all teary and amazed by  the wonder of it all.

8. Clear out the clutter. Pick a room, a closet, a drawer — the particulars don’t matter. Just bring order into that space and watch your spirits get in order, too.

9. Talk to God/Spirit/Source, or write God/Spirit/Source a letter. You weren’t put here to slog through your days wondering if this is all there is. No, it isn’t! Talk to your Higher Power and lay it all out — the icky feelings, the guilt, the rotten breaks, the resentment, doubt, and fear, and then hand it over — lock, stock, and cruddy-ness. Once you do, remember that it’s gone: God will never hand it back. You’re free to reclaim it, of course, but do yourself a favor and refrain from that kind of self-sabotage.

10. Help somebody else. All helping is good, but to get you out of the dumps, you may want to consider some advanced-class helping: reaching out to someone who isn’t nice, or grateful, or attractive, or good-smelling, or who, without some serious divine intervention, can probably never return the favor.