Last night I found myself in my living room, cozy with candles lit and a fire crackling in the fireplace, with a small group of friends. It was the third and final session of a class I’d been teaching and we sat, over sushi and wine, ready to focus on the subject at hand.

I had just put logs into the fireplace when the first friend had knocked on the door. I was grateful, as I am new to the whole fireplace thing. My anxiety takes the form of dueling concerns: burning the house down, on the one hand (God forbid); the fire going out after a short burst, on the other. So I was glad that someone more experienced showed up. (Lest you think the teaching in this community goes only one way. To quote Rabbi Chanina in the Talmud (Taanit 7a), “I have learned much from my teachers, more from my colleagues, and most from my students.”)

As we sat thinking together about shabbat, how we make space in our lives for friendships and also the barriers to it and how we avoid it, the fire burned behind me. And then, sooner than I’d wanted, it dimmed. I looked at the woodpile; nothing more to add. “Oh well,” I thought, feeling the room growing colder. Suddenly I’m exploring in my mind the possibilities—all as we’re still talking, the conversation fully under way, only now I’m distracted; I could leave the room, head out to the garage to get more logs—but no, I’m teaching, we’re in the middle of something here—wait, focus, pay attention—but it’s cold, my mind says! Soon my guests will feel it too! I could turn the heat up, my monkey mind says—but no, the damper is open. I glance behind me and that’s when the advice comes from the friend who’d helped start it: “Just turn the log over. There’s enough heat underneath to get it going again.”

Sure enough, just a few minutes later we had a roaring fire again.

We do a lot of work to tend the fires of our lives, to keep ourselves going, lit up and energized and active. We get tired and run out of sparks or oxygen—whatever the metaphor might be about running low. We burn out, you might say. And that’s often when we start to feel anxious, when we come up with all sorts of grand solutions (winning the lottery, taking a cruise to the Bahamas, shipping the kids to boarding school, chocolate) to self-soothe. If only it were different, we think. If only I weren’t doing this thing I’m doing; if only I was doing something else instead. If only this (insert here the thing that’s stressing you out, keeping you worried and anxious, burning you out) weren’t happening.

The new you is right here. The sparks are here inside of us. Trapped underneath. To light up from within, we just need to turn ourselves over.

Each of us is made of holy sparks. That’s Kabbalah 101: the nitzotzot, tiny sparks of Divine energy, which animate all life and all creation. They need tending. We need tending.

Monkey mind tells you there are grand solutions here. But there don’t need to be. Cut your news consumption in half. Limit your social media. Meditate for 10 minutes every day. Pray. Light candles for shabbat tonight and invite friends to be with you to light them together. Call the people you love. Treat yourself to a massage, take a hot bath, sit at the window and space out. Relax.

The sparks of the new you are already lit within, waiting to shine bright.