This is time of year when winter seems to stretch on and on. It's time of year when we're all feeling a little isolated, a little stir crazy, and--if your emails are any indication--a little desperate.

This is time of year when those of us who feel relatively fulfilled during rest of year, suddenly come up empty. We find a bare place inside, like an open door that allows a whisper to come sneaking through. "Is this all there is?" it wants to know.

The question is haunting. But answer is simple. The biggest trick is to remember it when we need it.

TURN IT OUT I should put a sticky note on my forehead just for times when I start asking myself those tired questions: Am I happy? How happy am I? Am I miserable? How miserable am I? Am I tired? Am I sad?

That sticky note would have one simple directive: To think about someone other than myself.

The instant I start feeling tired and sad, it's my cue to do something completely new. To take all that energy that I've been turning in on myself and turn it out into world.

IT CAN MAKE YOU SICK "My needs. My wants. My suffering. It's enough to make you sick. In fact, it does make you sick," Gregg Krech writes in his online article "When it comes to Attention: 'I' Am Enemy." Krech cites scientific studies that attribute depression, anxiety, and alcohol abuse on self-focused attention.

"We find our calling, our bliss, our purposes, by giving up on ourselves," Krech writes. "Our surrender becomes our salvation."

And he certainly wasn't first to say it. Some of us base our religious faith on that very concept.

I must admit that I am a 'driven' person. I drive myself to succeed and have to force myself to take a break.

I have, however, learnt importance of adding balance to one's life.

The toll that is taken on not only your physical but emotional and spiritual well-being, is not good. It is one thing that 'forced' me to re-consider. The fact that my business was suffering because I wasn't holding it together, was catalyst for change.

I took a class in Primordial Sound Meditation and learnt to consciously relax for 20 minutes twice a day. I took time to read books and rediscovered absolute wealth of information a book holds. I took weekends off and just chilled, took time to walk every morning and marvel at wonders of Nature and learnt to 'belly-laugh' again.

Being with Nature has always been a wonderful way to fix your woes. Taking a walk in fresh morning air, or just as sun is getting ready to go to sleep. Wondering at beauty of a newly spun spiders web, closing your eyes and listening to chorus of birdsong as community prepares for another day. Watching clouds as they scamper across sky. The multitude of shapes they form and array of beautiful colors portrayed as sun sets behind them.