Great post on appreciation, and in shifting your perspective to just decide to see the goodness in life now, in front of you. Makes me think of the Reality Transurfing books 1-5 by Russian author Vadim Zeland ( translated to English ). He talks about "life tracks" and when you decide that things outside are conspiring to help you, even though they might look bad.. your life trajectory changes to put you into a parallel 'life track", where good stuff happens. He gets pretty metaphysical.

Also, the gratitude lists,.. very potent stuff.

I'm actually on day 15 of doing the 30-day Gratitude Exercise from the book "The Magic" by Rhonda Byrne. It's having a pretty profound effect on my 'default emotional setpoint'.

I had a similar experience as you, when I was evicted from my apt in 2002 and stayed with my parents ... there were challenges, but a lot of growth as well.