Now examine the pace of your work. Does your job allow for periodic stretches? Do you have to spend hours sitting, or can you get up and walk around? (Many of us just settle for the inevitability of a work situation in which the needs of our bodies and minds will always be secondary to the demands of productivity. Changes in the work environment may require active steps on our part.) Who sets deadlines? Are they generally realistic? Are you expected to work overtime regularly or to take work home on weekends?

Look at the cultural norms in your office or work group. Are smoking or drinking encouraged? Are heavy lunches of high fat food the usual fare? Is coffee the beverage that fuels work? Do other people support one another in exercise or working out in some way? Do you?

If there are difficult people with whom you have to interact, are you able to maintain your sense of self worth despite their actions? If not, what internal messages do you give yourself when you leave these people? Are you self critical, defensive, upset? What do you and your coworkers talk about when you are not working? Do these conversations create momentum for creative action and uplift or stimulate you, or are they full of gossip and generally depress, drain, or bore you?

That’s a lot of investigating. Maybe you’ve opened up a few cans of worms that you hadn’t wanted to touch. Summarize what you’ve discovered for yourself. Write a letter to yourself in which you describe the health of your current job situation.

Or give yourself a job health quotient by assigning yourself a score between 1 and 100, where 100 indicates an ideal, high health work environment, and 1 means a work situation that is about to kill you.

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