A relatively hot topic turned up at the end of last year, found in and among commentary on national bestseller lists, with scores of subsequent articles and essays in magazines, journals and online: taking risk to achieve the happiness you crave and deserve in life and work.

Suggestions abound about the necessity (not mere option) of striving toward certain pinnacles in life, be they health challenges to overcome or professional goals to better implement. The condition of being human in a complex world requires much life-energy spent on going after what’s really important and required of each of us, rather than in chasing distractions.

I like the addition to this philosophy, though, of an element I believe that’s equally required in the mix. It was well stated in a New York Times Career column editorial on Sept. 30, 2012, describing that mere work and dedication are not enough to reach one’s goals.

Real “audacity” must be paired with a balancing measure of “humility.”

When we’re stressed, if often feels like everything begins to fall apart. It’s during stressful times that we misplace our keys, forget important events on our calendars, fail to call our mothers on their birthdays and leave important work documents at home.

Now, in addition to your original stressor, you’re under more pressure because you’re scrambling to find lost keys, dealing with hurt feelings or frantically reconstructing forgotten projects.

And on top of that, when stressed, our emotions are running rampant. That scramble for the keys is anything but calm and a remark from your mother about that missed phone call can send you deep into guilt.

In his book The Art of Uncertainty, Dennis Merritt Jones writes:

“Between a shaky world economy, increasing unemployment, and related issues, many today are being forced to come to the edge of uncertainty. Just like the baby sparrows, they find themselves leaning into the mystery that change brings, because they have no choice: It’s fly or die.”

For persons struggling with depression and anxiety — and for those of us who are highly sensitive — uncertainty is especially difficult. Forget about learning to fly. The uncertainty itself feels like death and can cripple our efforts to do anything during a time of transition.

I have been living in uncertainty, like many people, ever since December of 2008 when the economy plummeted and the creative fields — like architecture and publishing — took a hard blow, making it extremely difficult to feed a family. In that time, I think I have worked a total of 10 jobs — becoming everything from a defense contractor to a depression “expert.” I even thought about teaching high school morality. Now that’s desperate.

I don’t think I’ll ever be comfortable with uncertainty, but having lived in that terrain for almost five years now, I’m qualified to offer a few tips of how not to lose it when things are constantly changing.

Take the toughest challenges you have to tackle at work, at home or with extended family and friends:

– Bosses who seem clueless to your job requirements; colleagues who can’t relate to you (or vice versa); the stress of deadlines and dissatisfaction of being in a job you are not even sure you belong in.

- Family members who throw plans into disarray, disregard you and have you questioning your commitment (as well as your sanity). Perhaps adult siblings who ask for money or come to you for advice, only for you to soon find yourself involved in maddening family triangles, or aunts and uncles who pull you into long-entrenched but silly feuds.

- Then of course there are friends who you would like to shake to knock some sense or self-reflection into.

Get the picture?

How do you cope with the trials and tribulations of being human and having to live and work among others? Laugh it off? (That’s a good element, actually.)

I was going to comment on health care expenditures with an article entitled, “How the High Cost of Health is My Fault.” In it, I would briefly outline my experience with mental illness and detail the cost of caring for it, which, at present, includes medication and doctor visits, totals at least $10,500 per year. Much of this cost is borne by an insurance company.

Then I was going to relate the story about how, in the summer of 2002, I chose to stop taking my medicine the way my doctor directed me to take it, and then I stopped taking my medicine at all.

This was a bad choice. As a result, my illness became an emergency.

Nine hours in the ICU, four days in a private room, and two more weeks of hospital care brought a bill that topped $95,000.

The cost of nine years of care was eaten up by just a few weeks of my irresponsibility. That was cost that the health care industry, including my insurance company, would not have had to bear if I had only taken my medicine as directed.

For their book, “The Wisdom of Failure,” authors Laurence Weinzimmer and Jim McConoughey interviewed 1,000 managers and leaders on one of my favorite topics: failure. The results comprise a fascinating volume on the benefits of blunders.

Here are some insights from their book.

What can understanding failure teach both seasoned and aspiring leaders that they can’t learn only by modeling success?

While studying success provides valuable lessons during good times, often these lessons aren’t applicable in hard times. The road isn’t always smooth and the sky isn’t always blue. When challenges present themselves, lessons gleaned from previous failures can help leaders avoid making the same mistake twice or making the wrong decisions.

Making mistakes — or failing — are part of taking healthy risk. They provide us with new ways of thinking and give us new insights into how we can improve as leaders.

Whether you’re experiencing anxiety, depression, anger, jealousy, envy, guilt, hurt or shame, you are most likely (perhaps unintentionally) perpetuating your problem by your thoughts. Let me explain.

When we function in a healthy manner, we don’t just experience joy and happiness, prancing around without a care in the world. We actually still experience a range of emotions, some of which can be very difficult to live with.

It’s absolutely healthy to feel anxiety, depression, anger, jealousy, envy, guilt, hurt or shame. But what makes experiencing these emotions healthy is that we don’t linger in them for longer than is good for us. We don’t demand that they ‘go away.’ We accept the appropriateness of how we feel, and do something about our situation.

Let me give you an example of how a person’s thinking can perpetuate depression.

Did you ever find yourself questioning an arrangement between yourself and another person? Not an arrangement that was mutually agreed upon or even spoken about –- but a habit, or series of habits that detrimentally affect you but which you find yourself continuing to do nevertheless?

It could be between yourself and a partner, a parent, a co-worker — even a boss, an adult sibling or an annoying someone you run into every day on your way to work. Likely, it is doing something to temporarily boost yourself or the other person in the mix. Ultimately, however, it is not to anyone’s benefit.

Unspoken bargains, these so-called “arrangements,” are those things that rear their heads in times of challenge, chaos, crisis or just haste. They appear out of nowhere and can be maddening, upon first reflection, demanding us to ask ourselves, “why did I say or do that again to this person?”

One day, when two of my children were only 4 and 3 years old, they wanted to play “let’s pretend” with their dad and me. My older daughter, as older children often do, declared herself the director.

“You and Dad sit over there”, she commanded. “Now, my brother and I are going to be the father and mother you are the day care center.”

With that, the two of them brought us a couple of dolls, kissed them goodbye and went to the next room.

“What happens next?” I called.

“Oh, you play with the babies and then we go to work for awhile and come back and give you a check.”

“And what are you doing at work?” By now I’m curious about where this is going.

“We talk to people and do stuff and get tired.”

With that, they came back in the room, handed us “checks” made of some coupons I had lying around and took their babies off for bath time and stories.

It was hard for my husband and me not to laugh. They were so serious about it. Ahh. A kids’-eye view of adult life. We go do something mysterious at this thing called work, get tired, and then collect them and real life begins again. That was my first indication that maybe we needed to tell our kids a little bit more about the work that took us away from them all day.

I’m sitting down for my yearly physical with the blood pressure machine in view. From the displeased expression on the nurse’s face, I gather it wasn’t a perfect reading. Instead of jotting the numbers down in her notes, realizing that I’m probably just nervous (because I do have “white coat syndrome”), she sighs and expresses the urgency to take my blood pressure again and again, until she’s satisfied with the result.

Then, I walk into the lab next door for a blood test and the line I hear is: “Oh, your blood pressure was high, let me see if I can draw your blood now.”

Wait, what? Do they actually think that these comments will make me feel more relaxed?

When it comes to creativity, distractions “are a mixed blessing,” according to Christina Rosalie, a writer, mixed-media artist and author of A Field Guide to Now: Notes on Mindfulness and Life in Present Tense.

“Sometimes they lead to innovation. Sometimes they lead to hours of time dwindled away without purpose.”

In other words, distractions are not created equal. But more often than not the same distractions deplete us and steer us away from creating.

Whether creativity is your livelihood or an integral part of your self-care, here are 15 ways to deal with distractions.

People with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) often struggle with everyday tasks and getting things done in a timely manner. For instance, a task that would be otherwise easy to complete in an hour takes 3 days instead.

Do you often find yourself distracted until time is wasted? The challenges of ADHD and attention deficit disorder (ADD) are very real. But there is hope. When you understand how ADHD has been affecting all areas of your life, you can learn to minimize its impact and live successfully with ADD /ADHD.

Here are some steps to help you build confidence, clarify and prioritize your goals, minimize your ADHD challenges, and get you past being stuck to actually following through with your plans.