Dear Reader — I’ve been working on my attitude/gratitude situation, which is really just a way of filing the calamitous state of the world under “It Could Be Worse.”

It’s an ersatz form of positivity, like lighting a cigarette off a road flare when you can’t find your lighter in the upside down wreck that your car has become. Here’s my new gambit to goad the gratitude—I call it “Alien Takeover.”

In this exercise, we meditate on the notion that none of us are ever starting out completely from scratch. Imagine you’re an alien being that has just taken over your body. You’ve elbowed out the old consciousness and have just awakened in your new human bod. Now, you’re assessing the earthbound circumstances in which you suddenly find yourself.

Since you were recently a disembodied extraterrestrial consciousness, everything in this new physical world is a bonus. For example, did you wake up in a house with a roof? Steller—that’s huge for a lot of people on this planet. Is this body ambulatory, is there something to feed it? How many senses do you have? Yes, yes, and five! Dude, that’s a lot. This body needs constant respiration, is there air? Yes? Score! What skills and talents has it honed? It can type 50 words a minute, it can play a barre chord on guitar, it has a life partner! “This earthling is stoked,” you think to yourself.

What does your alien inhabitant see with its hyper-intelligent inner eye that you can no longer see for yourself…about yourself?

Also, keep in mind, your list can be as idiosyncratic as you are. You’re probably doing wayyy better than you think (or at least better than a disembodied alien intelligence… for now).

Your Alien Guru Editor,

DH