2. Get out of your ego. Maybe your status in the world isn’t what it once was. Or you’re doing work you thought you’d never do again. Be who you are and do what you’re doing as if it were the grandest thing on earth. 

3. Be happy anyway. There is always something to be happy about, even if you’re feeling very real feelings of sadness about something else. 

4. Look for the wonders. There’s still a daisy blooming after a frost. I saw a pure white pigeon and pure black squirrel. I met a woman who had almost my exact childhood background: that means we’re practically soulmates and will certainly be friends. These are wonders to relish.

5. Make you life beautiful. Eat at the table instead of in front of the TV. Organize your cupboards and shelves and medicine chest. Light a candle or dig out a piece of antique jewelry. Continually, consistently, put beauty in your life.

6. Don’t compare. “Compare and despair,” they call it in the 12 Step programs. Somebody else always has a better job, a better body, a better website, a better life. Focus on your own.

7. Do what you love, even if only on the weekends. Write. Listen to music. Get out in nature or in the middle of a fabulous city. Whatever it is that pumps you up, do it. Then you can more easily accept for now those parts of your life that aren’t terribly inspiring.

8. Be grateful. I make a mental gratitude list — ten items — before I get out of bed in the

 morning. It reminds me of the Truth (I am way blessed) before I’m met with the facts (this awful thing happened, and that awful thing might happen. Yeah. Well. I’m still way blessed.)

9. See yourself right. Humility is about reality: who am I really? Well, for starters, every one of us is a magnificent creation, an expression of the Divine. And we’re just one of the folks. Earthly trappings—beauty, acclaim, wealth—often have the disheartening characteristic of being temporary. As a mystic once told me: “I am dust and I am divine. And there is a place in consciousness where that isn’t even contradictory.”

10. Inspire yourself. Prayers and old hymns. Show tunes and affirmations. Rumi and Tony Robbins.  Whatever inspirational currency is for you, keep your account in the black, because right after accepting the things you cannot change, comes changing the things you can.