I've found that when I start coaching people, either in business or personally, many of them focus on what still needs to be done. They seem to forget or discard all that they have achieved. When you get to end of your day are you still thinking about what you haven't done? Perhaps there are some days when you accomplish a lot and you feel as if you've achieved something - that's a great feeling isn't it?

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.