Essential help for surviving the holiday season.

I saw this at the Real Simple blog and am stowing it here for myself in the "don't pray when it's raining if you don't pray when the sun shine" line of attack against holiday blues.

Four questions to help boost your feelings of gratitude.
It's worth taking a minute to reflect on life and to appreciate everything that's going RIGHT. Gratitude is an important happiness-boosting emotion. Ask yourself:

1. Do you suffer chronic or intense physical pain?
   
   
2. Have you recently received heart-breaking news?
   
   
3. Have you done anything that makes you burn with remorse?
   
   
4. Is any member of your family in danger?

If you can answer "No" to these questions, you have a lot to be grateful for. For all of us, the time will come when our answers will change – so take time now to appreciate your ordinary life when things are going well.

The woman who contributed this blogs a Happiness Project worth looking over if you tend towards the blues. Here's another of her lists:

• Be myself.
  
• Let it go.
  
• Act as I would feel.
  
• Do it now.
  
• Be polite and be fair.
  
• Enjoy the process.
  
• Spend out.
  
• Identify the problem.
  
• Lighten up.
  
• Do what ought to be done.
  
• No calculation.
  
• There is only love.