1. Start a folder of travel ideas.  Every time you see something or somewhere wonderful in the media or get a recommendation from someone, pull out the page or scribble a note and keep it for inspiration when you next have the opportunity to plan a trip.

You could also keep folders of reviews of restaurants you fancy or books you will read one day, bush walks you’d like to do….

2. It takes less than an hour (including the trip to the pathologist for a blood and urine test and an ECG) to have a full medical and you get a complete data sheet on how you are doing in all of your body’s major functions – and maybe get the chance to fix anything that needs attention.  If you haven’t had one ever, this week could be the first time.  Pick up the phone.  If you are over 35 it’s a great idea to make it an annual diary entry.  Perhaps for your birthday each year or as part of each new year’s resolutions.

3. Reader Helen suggests you feel wonderful when you make time in your work day, especially when you are really busy, to take your husband out for lunch.  Feel free to make that wife, partner, child or significant other should husbands not be your thing.

4. Also loved the suggestion from reader Marcus for people who drive desks for a living to aim to leave your office five times every day.  He even keeps a tally!

5. Do as post-cancer Kylie said on her Channel Nine interview – “wear the diamonds today” and say “yes, I will have a glass of wine, thanks”.   (Is another day more worthy than today? What are you waiting for?)

1. My very capable, very gorgeous friend got up super early one work morning to prepare her daughter for her primary school disco that afternoon.  She painted her nails and did a disco-worthy do while Miss Nine assembled her outfit, make-up and accessories for all the final touches at her friend’s house after school.  The results were stunning, the daughter delighted – an outstanding mum effort!

The same mum reported being ‘horrified’ by her own reflection in the mirror in the ladies at work, having trammed and trained it there, as usual, once her girls were organised at home.  (Apparently nothing some make – up and a quick work-worthy do couldn’t fix.)

What is it that flight attendants tell us about placing our own oxygen mask over our face before assisting our children?

2. I moved house last year and inherited a 50 year old garden that is full of treasures every season.  All winter I have been cutting incredibly scented daphne from a metre wide bush and giving bunches to people as I think of it.

One recipient said she loved daphne and had always wanted to plant a bush but had been put off the idea because it is notoriously slow growing.  Result – no daphne.

Someone else told me they always wanted to be able to play the guitar but he – in his thirties – couldn’t have lessons because “the people who are good at it started learning when they were kids”.  Result – no guitar playing.

Another, a teacher in his twenties, wished he was a lawyer but couldn’t start a law degree because he “would be 32 when he graduated”.  Result – I am sure you can guess.

We don’t have to have the biggest, be the best or the youngest.  We do have to ‘do’ though if we want to fill our lives with the things we fancy.

1. Why do people who espouse the promotion of ‘family values’ always consider that they are the ones who should define what they are?

2. I teach some classes of first year public relations students at Monash University and during a discussion with them it became apparent that although most of them watched Big Brother, virtually none of them knew how the show got its name.  (I kid you not.)  Think about that – they didn’t understand the ‘big brother is watching you’ concept, never heard of 1984 or George Orwell.

Can you imagine my difficulty peddling my explanation of this prediction of life in futuristic 1984 to people born in 1987?