Because we are businesswomen, my friends and I will meet up after work to go for walks. This is a very Midwestern thing to do. You talk and you walk just enough to trick yourself into thinking you’ve exercised without breaking a sweat.

One of my walking buddies is married, nearing 30, and suffering from an acute case of Baby Rabies.

“Look,” she’d say at every passing stroller on our last walk. “She has a baby. Everyone has a baby. Why don’t I have a baby yet?”

And even though she is a businesswoman and would likely roll her eyes hard enough to dislocate them, I told her the best piece of advice I’ve ever received: you need to believe in Abundance.

I’m not an OB/GYN, but I can tell you that pregnancies are not like the Missoni for Target line. There’s enough of it to go around, and no number of ladies in this fair city can snap up all the pregnancies.

A few days ago she called to tell me that when I gave her that advice, as we walked and talked and yes, followed it with a glass of wine, there was already a little piglet brewing inside her.

There are a few key takeaways I’d like you to learn here:

1) I can get you pregnant with new-age logic

2) I’m pretty much always right

I learned this mindset of abundance from my friend Kerry, who is sunny and thoughtful and squeezes every moment of enjoyment out of her time on earth.

I’ve been reminded of its truth nearly every day since I met her.

Change is inevitable, but it has come in heaping spoonfuls over the past few years. Some friends are on a skyrocketing career trajectory. Some friends are getting married. Some friends are getting married in lavish weddings that cost more than you’ll make this year. Ex boyfriends have fallen off the face of the earth, walked down the aisle with the Other Girl or bought the country house you talked about together for his new wife and kids. Family members move away. Win the lottery. Get a photo taken with Emilio Estevez at the airport. Co-workers get credit for a project that was your brainchild, get promoted, and get the last donut.

There are two ways to react to these things. You can feel as if you are less, have less, are less worthy or realize that their green grass doesn’t make yours any less green, that their victories don’t make your own any less victorious, that their joys don’t make yours any less joyful.

If this were a Choose Your Own Adventure book, you would skip to the back and know that choosing the first path sucks. This is the path that leads you to eating ice cream alone in your bed, crying silently in your shower or road raging at strangers while belting out Billy Joel ballads in your car. It’s not jealousy, really. It’s something worse. It’s an inner ugliness. It leads to premature wrinkles and bad posture and the kind of smile that makes children fear you. In other words, it’s the wrong path.

Choosing the second path is awesome. It leads to happiness with what you have and genuine joy for those around you. It makes small animals greet you by name, and turns rain into lemondrops and gumdrops. It makes you the kind of person worth basing a ChickAdvisor article on. Isn’t that the kind of lady you want to be?

Do you know what I’m talking about, or am I just a weird hippie?