Avoid sitting around in your underwear judging people who inevitably disappoint.  You can do this easily by putting on pants and a shirt when you get out of bed.

Busy people with good intentions, when confronted by a good cause they have ignored, or a friend in a pickle who asked for help and who they have not helped, react with guilt.  Guilt is the single most abundant and predictable characteristic of the well-intentioned person.  It can also be corrosive to the recipient, so beware.   Its first cousin is anger.  Guilt can become anger in a second, maybe they’re more like twins.

Look down from time to time to be sure you have pants and a shirt on.

One of the easiest ways to bludgeon someone in an intellectual joust is by reframing the issue.  Doing this can quickly paint them into a corner, force concessions over things they have not even raised, disorientingly shift the battle to a more comfortable and familiar field where your victory is assured and the point they are trying to make will never see the light of day.  

Reframing an issue to beat somebody up is an asshole move.  Try not to do it yourself.  If you are having your thoughts reframed to make you look like a fool, protesting the reframing itself will only make things worse for you and leave you further from the original discussion.  Change the frame by immediately conceding the point they are using to reframe things, even if just “for the sake of argument” (for the sake of avoiding an attempted bludgeoning, actually)  and refocus the conversation.  And check to make sure you have pants on.  

Reframing, of course, is also extremely useful to the person tormented by guilt.  By doing so the actual source of guilt, an acutely painful thing, can be avoided, while actively giving unsought advice or help in a way that can relieve the guilt.  Also an asshole move, but one is better off not judging it, since it is entirely rational behavior, if not helpful or desirable for the recipient.  Wear pants while dispassionately noticing this.  Changing the frame is rarely useful in these situations as it will often cause inflamed guilt to flare into anger.  Smile as much as possible and keep the following in mind:  remain mild and forgiving even when reason is on your side.

Lowering the expectation bar is often a good thing.  As a general principle one is well-served by being happy with less, rather than unhappy because so much more was reasonably expected.  

Feeling depressed that you seem to lack the mental energy to continue up the steep and demanding path you’ve chosen?  Be happy when you see an ad for a clinical trial on treating depression, which even includes treatment for the low-grade chronic form called dysthymia that has been used to describe your seeming psychological accommodation to a childhood spent in the company of monsters.   “Made my day!” you can chirp to yourself, jotting down the number, “help is just around the corner!”  If prone to procrastination, make sure you wait a few days to follow up by calling the information line.  Idly check pants pocket.

Take joy in small things.  Related to lowering the expectation bar, be happy when you are moving forward, even in almost imperceptible snail-like oozes.  Finally getting out of bed excited by a thought you had, even if that thought is a very small one– a small joy that must be embraced as the great motivation it is.  A small joy on a dour day is worth as much as a large joy on a happy day, maybe more.

I have more advice for myself, and anyone else who might take a useful example from any of it, but I have to change a small, but idiotic, mistake in a previous post, pointed out to me just now, if you will excuse me.  (He said, making a notably lame exit excuse.)