I’m not a Christian anymore. Perhaps I got a raw deal when God was passing out churches—mine was shaken apart in my late teens by a pastor who got busted for sneaking a few hundred thousand out of the offering plate to buy Nazi war memorabilia, not to mention banging a few dozen women who came to him for marriage counseling—but I’ve made my peace with the Prince of it.

One particularly Christian principle has apparently stuck with me over the years. It wasn’t until recently that I rediscovered it. (Not animal sacrifice, which I never abandoned.) And whether Jesus of Nazareth existed as a real meat person or was the product of a coterie of desert sci-fi novelists, one thing he taught has been helping me a lot lately.

It’s awfully nice to forgive.

How to Change my Worrywort Perspective | Ask MetaFilter

The thing I love about Ask MetaFilter is that it makes you feel like you're not alone. Just when you start thinking you're crazy for feeling a certain way, someone pops up with a question about the exact same thing. Over the weekend, a poor soul calling himself a "world class worrier" asked the hive mind how he could just let it go and find his inner Bobby McFerrin.

The biggest part of my life lessons from Leslie concerned those kind of things one doesn't often consider, but which exist all around you every day. I tend to get up and shower and check email and eat a bagel and get a latte and so on and so forth, day in and day out, every day like clockwork. Repetition and expectation. Leslie was very good at listening to the gamut of my life's little disarrays and annoyances and nail the bigger picture to the wall, and usually her advice was completely obvious once you heard her say it out loud. It just took her perspective to bring it into focus for me.

I often wished she would write a book of her life lessons, and now I wish she had dictated them to me so I could write it, so I'll provide you with four of her broadest pieces of advice for instantly improving the quality of your life, and let you figure out the rest on your own.

1. A place for everything.

This has been an especially valuable lesson for me. It's easy and common to toss your keys and wallet somewhere when you enter your home. If you're not tossing them in the same place every time, the next time you're about to leave and need your keys to get back inside, you may not remember where it was you tossed them -- or maybe you left them in a pocket without tossing them at all, but which pocket was it? What were you wearing, and where is that article of clothing now?

In Part One, I relayed a few of Leslie Harpold's amazing and simple methods of looking better every day. In this episode, it's all about staying in touch with the people in your life, and letting them know they matter just by keeping track of them from time to time.

I will confess that I am awful at staying in touch with anyone. Friends, relations, friends of relations, pets... you name it, I have at one point or another completely lost touch with it. I have no excuse, really, and there are a few simple things that Leslie would do to help her not lose touch with those people in her life who were important, whether for personal or professional reasons.

There are many things I miss about the loss of Leslie, but perhaps the most noticeable to me is the lack of using her as a sounding board for some of life's everyday challenges. She had a level-headed, clear-eyed way of looking at the little problems we face every day, and somehow she always knew the right answer.

Luckily, I have collected some of her words of wisdom to share with you, you lucky reader, and I hope you find them as useful as I do.

Leslie Harpold knew a thing or two about fashion. While you and I may pride ourselves on the ability to put a white T-shirt with a pair of blue jeans, Leslie's knowledge of the why's and wherefor's of clothing choices were more varied but no less practical.

Here, then, are Leslie's Three Rules for Fashion Sensibility.

I dread conflict. In fact, when I know a confrontation is imminent, it's all I can think about. I mull it over when I could be labeling file folders, I ponder it while my inbox burgeons, while my 3x5 cards gather dust. Conflict is my productivity disaster.

Fortunately, The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz gave me a few significant tools for moving past conflict in any arena. The book is about four habits you can adopt that improve your life in general, but I find it especially helpful when I'm anxious about a tough meeting, phone call, email exchange, or personal conversation. Before I head into the lion's den, I review the agreements to put myself in the right frame of mind: