Each day is a little life: every waking and rising a little birth, every fresh morning a little youth, every going to rest and sleep a little death.

A day has the same shape as a life, only small enough to hold. You begin it knowing nothing about how it will go, you spend it, and you set it down at night. Seeing the scale that way takes some of the weight off any single one: a bad day is a bad small life, not a verdict on the whole.

Try letting a day end rather than trail after you. Before sleep, name one thing that happened and let the rest close. In the morning, begin as though the ledger were clear, because for the purposes of the next day it mostly is.