1. Make a list of what you really, truly love. A whole lot of what you find there—maybe all of it—won’t cost a thing.

2. Hang out with your very favorite humans (4-pawed humans, too).

3. Write a letter—a real letter on paper you choose with a pen that glides nicely across it—and mail it to someone who’ll keep it for a long, long time.

4. Fix some food from scratch—a salad from the farmers’ market, soup from everything you can find in the kitchen the day you plan to grocery-shop, bread from beer and Bisquick (okay, it’s not whole, organic, and super-healthy, but it’s really good and if your mom made it, you’ll get nostalgia points).

5. Look at beauty—in nature, in an art museum, in your child’s face when he’s sleeping.

6. Listen to music, the kind you’re in the mood for right this minute.

7. Make something. Plant a garden, write a poem, sew curtains for guest bathroom.

8. Discover the library (or discover it again). The wisdom of the ages is here, as well as the best stories going. You can not only find every book in print (and many that aren’t in print any longer), but you can rent DVDs, use a computer, and in some libraries even borrow paintings and prints for three months at a time.

9. Get rid of some excess. These days when most of us are looking for ways to shop less and save more, it seems like the wrong time to dispatch with what’s extra. It’s not. When you have clarity and free space and everything you lay eyes on is either beautiful or useful or both, you’ll feel rich no matter what your bank statement has to say about you.

10. Walk. I’m a city walker myself and I never tire of the changing street scenes of my adopted home town. But country walks and beach walks and back-roads walks and to-the-drugstore-and-back walks are all good. Walking changes your thinking. It primes the pump somehow. You’re more likely to come up some brilliance when you’ve gone outside and moved yourself from one place to another. And, of course, if you pray when you walk—you get benefits for body and soul, and none of the ill-effects that can come from some other kinds of multi-tasking.