I was visiting a good friend for coffee and comfort cake the other day and she was complaining about how she was short of cash AGAIN and had the car rego due next week. So I asked that awful question: ‘How’s your budget?’

‘Look in the tea pot.’ I did, and found there was a $10 note, a used train ticket and some bits of Lego. That was all she had until next Thursday, and today was Friday afternoon.

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Have you spent much time thinking about what you want to do with your life? Or are you too busy doing your life to think much about it?

The first time most people start thinking about what they’ll do with their lives is towards the end of high school years, when decisions need to be made about long term future activities, like uni or career paths.

I reckon 17 is way too young to have to make a decision that will affect the course of one’s life. I would like to suggest instead that people at 17 be given the chance to make a Life List, and then encouraged to seek out and do all the stuff on that list.

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I have found that because I am doing so much, those activities are controlling me, instead of the other way around. This is where the stress kicks in big time, and all the health reports feature research done on the effects of stress – it has been found to be directly responsible for up to 80% of diseases.

When we are busy, most of us tend to skip the home cooked meals, and go for fast food. Also we will stay up late to get things done, therefore compromising our sleep time. And how important is exercise when we’re busy? It’s not, because we’re too tired rushing around to even think about heading to the gym. I get enough of a work out worrying and coping with everything else!

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Having laughed to myself about Vicki and how silly busy she is, I began to think about my own busy life.

Wednesday last week I decided I had to do a list of errands – buy a gift then get to the post office and send a parcel to my nephew for his birthday, collect my husband’s shirts from the cleaners, return some long overdue library books, and get to the newsagents to buy the lotto tickets which May, my elderly neighbour, had asked me to get for her.

That was nearly it for my lunch hour, and I hadn’t had anything to eat yet! In the queue for the lotto tickets at the newsagents, I went to pull out my purse from my handbag - and the purse wasn’t there. I hurriedly backtracked to every store I had been to, panicking more with each store that said sorry, no purse here. In the rush to get into the post office, back where I had started my lunch hour, I bumped my shopping bags against the door way.
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The other day, my friend Vicki & I met for a coffee. We hadn’t caught up for a while, and both miraculously managed to cram this coffee into two super busy schedules. We spent most of the time laughing at ourselves for being too busy, and the things which happen when our busy lives start to give us signals to slow down.

Vicki’s story first – of course, she had a super busy day. It involved the usual events of getting her youngest son to kindy and the 2 older boys to high school. Then she raced off to inspect the repairs on a broken window in an investment property. Then off to the shops before heading home to whip the house into shape before collecting her youngest from kindy.

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Are you afraid of change? Are you afraid of making changes in your life because it might mean that this new way will be expected of you all the time? Are you afraid that you can’t live up to these new expectations?

Moreover, are you afraid of what will happen in this new environment, one in which you may not know what will happen next?

Many people thrive on messy lives and feel more comfortable with chaos than with peace and order, because that is the only way they know. While they may want to change the way they are do things, actually making those changes and getting order to their lives is difficult.

They are used to the safe, familiar environment of rush, mess and chaos.

If you have had enough of this frantic, living in the last minute lifestyle then keep reading. You probably think there is no way you can fix this mess, it’s just too huge a job to tackle all at once.

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