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"What do you say when someone asks How are you? Or How are things at work? Do you ever stop to wonder if you&amp;#x27;re really &amp;quot;so stressed&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;so busy&amp;quot; the way we often say we are? I started thinking about this the other day when I uncovered a book I&amp;#x27;ve been meaning to get to: Spent: End Exhaustion and Feel Great Again by Frank Lipman. It was a stressful day; I had yawned through a morning meeting (if we haven&amp;#x27;t met yet, I&amp;#x27;m a deputy editor at Glamour and head of the health department), coaxed three friends through layoff fears or other financial crises, and my to-do list for after work was so long that it seemed I&amp;#x27;d be up all night. The subtitle sounded just like the prescription I needed. So I took this quiz in the first chapter of the book: Do you wake up in the morning and not feel refreshed? Um, yes. Is there anyone who does? Do you feel unusually tired most of the time? Isn&amp;#x27;t my yawning proof? Do you need coffee, soda, or sugary snacks to get going and keep going? Sugar is a daily requirement. Although you feel physically exhausted, does your mind continue to race? Yep. Do you feel as if you are aging too quickly? My four-year-old recently asked: &amp;quot;What&amp;#x27;s that on your face Mommy?&amp;quot; I thought he meant my mascara was smeared. &amp;quot;No Mommy, those lines,&amp;quot; he said, pointing to the wrinkles around my eyes. So yes, I&amp;#x27;m aging too fast. Do you have gas, bloating, constipation, and/or indigestion? Thankfully, I can say no to this one! Is it a struggle to lose weight in spite of dieting and exercise? If I get my workouts in, I&amp;#x27;m usually OK here, too. Do you have achy muscles and/or joints or tension in your body--particularly your neck and shoulders? Ask my husband--he&amp;#x27;s always trying to massage the &amp;quot;boulders&amp;quot; out of my neck and shoulders. Do you have a diminished sex drive? Pleading the 5th here. Do you often feel depressed or have trouble concentrating and focusing and remembering things? Yes. Have you found that little or nothing seems to rejuvenate you? Yes. Do you lack motivation to accomplish even small tasks? Yes--I&amp;#x27;ve procrastinated cleaning my closet for so long that I can&amp;#x27;t find any chilly weather clothes! Do you find that you get sick more frequently and that it takes longer to recover? No swine flu yet, knock on wood. The book says if you answer yes to three or more questions, you are &amp;quot;Spent.&amp;quot; I said yes to eight of them! Clearly, I&amp;#x27;m a wreck and need this prescription. I kept reading--the book has some good tips about easing stress and finding &amp;quot;balance&amp;quot; (whatever that may be for you). But when it said I might have to give up my sugar habit, I put it aside, contemplating if I could really go cold turkey on chocolate, weekend pancakes, even good-old-fashioned-it&amp;#x27;s-not-organic-or-natural peanut butter. Two days later I found that bookmarked quiz page again and re-tested myself. This time, I felt pretty good. I was psyched about a new project at work, and I was looking forward to my son&amp;#x27;s first flag football game (pretty hilarious when he has no idea which way to run). My closet was still chaos, and I still ate chocolate daily, but life didn&amp;#x27;t look so grim. And then I realized: I had just had a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. It was so simple, but letting myself be OK with having a bad day made me feel instantly better. My life wasn&amp;#x27;t a mess. I didn&amp;#x27;t need to start a new yoga routine. I just needed to stop and breathe and say tomorrow would be better. In fact, the days since have been better. How many questions above did you answer yes to? Do little quizzes like this make you feel worse instead of better? Do you ever just let yourself have a bad day and move on, and not see it as a need for total-life-overhaul? Need more ways to relieve stress? Try these research-proven tips to unwind instantly. PS: Facebook Connect is here! Now you can sign in to glamour.com using your Facebook login, plus instantly share your glamour.com comments with your Facebook friends (or not--your choice, every time you comment). Just click on the Connect with Facebook logo in the comments section to begin! More Ways to Get Glamour You could win $50,000 just for registering or logging in to Glamour.com! Sign up for Glamour.com&amp;#x27;s Style Tips of the Week and Beauty Tip of the Day newsletters! Add Glamour to your iGoogle homepage. Follow Glamour on Twitter. Photo: iStock"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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