set yourself an intellectual challenge a specific one ie concerning your interests and the highest achievement you can attain in its field eg I like looking at the stars at night when things got tough way back when (as things so often do these days) I started reading cosmology and ended up writing a book about the mc2 component of Einstein's e=mc2 equation ..er without the maths, well, be real, one can only push intellectual barriers so far, needless to say, NO one hardly read it ('Cosmic Wonder' it's on the net), but it sure as hell dried up the tears and lead to greater more meaningful directions in life