Find out your current level of Mental Fitness. Choose the answer that most closely matches your situation:
1. When under high stress--such as you owe the IRS more money, your kid's flunking school, your weight's up 25 pounds--your typical response is to:
a. Become depressed, withdrawn, irritable, and angry, taking it out on others.
b. Occasionally vent to family and friends, experience some sleepless nights, but you keep trying to regroup.
c. Rely on your spiritual life, taking time to pray or meditate while adapting and adjusting each day.
2. During a checkup with your doctor, she sees that you're under a lot of stress. Because you have heart disease in your family, she warns that the stress may impact your health. Your response is to:
a. Blow her off and say you'll get to this sometime when things calm down.
b. Read her brochure on stress management and occasionally try a few breathing exercises when you're anxious.
c. Immediately take yourself on, make an appointment with a counselor, buy a meditation CD, and start to practice breathing exercises.
3. For you, as you go through each day, you feel:
a. Out of control, with everyone else and their needs controlling your life.
b. Able to get at least 50 percent of your to-do list accomplished.
c. Satisfied that you have achieved your personal and professional goals for the day.
4. You see your friends:
a. Frequently. Your schedule is full of plans for dinner, coffee, visiting museums, etc.
b. Occasionally. You wish you could see them more, but everyone (including you) is so busy. You end up constantly scheduling, canceling, and rescheduling.
c. Rarely, and you have only two you've stayed in touch with over the past 10 years.
5. If someone asked you to explain the purpose of your life, you'd:
a. Have no ready answer.
b. Be intrigued by the question, realize you've thought about it occasionally, but don't feel prepared to discuss it without more thought.
c. Be happy to share your personal insights and relate your work, personally and professionally, with your life purpose.
6. Your mother breaks her hip and is hospitalized. You're the primary caregiver. Realistically, this means that:
a. You stop exercising and eating well, begin to worry constantly while you're getting only 4 hours of sleep every night.
b. You're able to get the basics of life done--your job, the grocery shopping, picking the kids up from school--but you're exercising less and occasionally stress-eating.
c. You take healthy food to eat when you stay with her at the hospital, and you bring your sneakers so you can get a brisk walk in through the hospital corridors.
7. Each night, you are typically getting how much sleep?
a. Fewer than 4 hours a night
b. Between 5 and 7 hours
c. Between 7 and 9 hours
8. If you're feeling depressed or anxious, you're most likely to:
a. Have a glass of wine or scoop of ice cream.
b. Neutralize stress with any combination of exercise, meditation, sharing with helpful friends, and journaling.
c. Self-destruct with overeating, drinking, smoking, and/or taking drugs.
9. While walking alone at night, you hear someone coming up behind you quickly, so you:
a. Panic and freak out, drop your belongings, and begin to run away.
b. Try to stay calm and alert as you look around for a place with people and safety.
c. Clutch the pepper spray in your pocket and mentally replay what you learned in self-defense class.
10. Your company has just been sold, and the new personnel manager announces that 40 percent of the staff will be laid off. You:
a. Divide your time between bitching with co-workers and sending out résumés.
b. Seize the challenge and immediately put the word out to your contacts, send résumés, and avoid the water cooler rumor mill and gossip sessions.
c. Start smoking again.
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Fitness Assessments are reprinted with permission from Fit to Live by Pam Peeke. Copyright 2007 by Pamela Peeke, MD. Permission granted by Rodale, Inc. Emmaus, PA 18098. Available at the Discovery Store, directly from the publisher by calling (800) 848-4735, or wherever books are sold.
