Civil servant, Laura, started at Life Clubs just after her 29th birthday in March 2008.

“There wasn’t anything wrong with my life, but I was excited about seeing how things could be bettered and about making changes. I wanted to take stock, do things differently and have time to think “Where do I want to be in a year’s time?” I’d just bought my first flat and knew I wanted to change my job – though I didn’t know what to – but that was it."

“I’ve enjoyed Life Clubs from the beginning. It’s been helpful right across the spectrum in a really basic way and has been a fun thing to do every week. The Balance Chart makes me think about each area of my life and deciding on a weekly goal has stopped me procrastinating. The goal I set shortly after I’d joined Life Clubs led me into my new job. The goals help me prioritise doing things for myself so I don’t get distracted and I maintain momentum so that things actually do happen.”

“I wanted to rebalance my attention from work to myself and I’m doing it – Life Clubs has made me much more relaxed. I have more fun, I think about how I want to spend my time more carefully, I find it much easier to treat myself to things. I’m more self-reflective in all sorts of ways – I think about what I want.”

“It’s even come out in my style of working. I used to put attention into things that weren’t the best use of my time. I now check my e-mails twice a day and the rest of the day turn my e-mail off. I felt so deviant at first but I don’t get distracted all day.”

“I’ve changed in lots of ways. Making one change makes space for all the other changes. I have a job with shorter hours now and I’ve been taking lots of exercise, eating a much healthier diet, having fun buying clothes and getting organised about my new home. I treat myself more nicely.”

“Life Clubs have so much to offer people who don’t have any particular angst or problem, but simply want to live more positively and with greater focus on what’s important to them.”

Last month’s Star Clubber

When Frances started at Life Clubs she had no hair from her chemotherapy, had already started working hard back at her job as surgeon (because she was ‘better’) but felt her life was a little bit out of kilter. “Life Clubs made me focus. I remember the workshop in which I thought about what made me happy as a child. I then put a few of those things into a week which would otherwise have been grind, exhaustion, collapse.” Frances says. “It made the difference between having a ‘happy’ or a ‘sad’ week.”

Filling in her Balance Chart regularly showed Frances what was bothering her and she kept making very small changes to her life, noticing how each one was making a difference, especially to her self worth. “I stopped beating myself up so much.”

The one missing thing in the equation was a partner. Divorced at 31, told by a matchmaking bureau at 38, “You’re too old and you earn too much money – there’s no demand for women like you”, Frances had been ‘terribly lonely’ for twenty years. “I think I’d gone past the point of no return. I thought I’d never meet a man, let alone one that was free. And I’d also begun to think I’d be no good at a long-term relationship. Life Clubs made me realize that the only obstacle to meeting anyone was me.”

“But when you’ve given up finding anyone and least expect it and when you’ve got your life pretty well under control (thanks to a year at Life Clubs), things happen and I met Martin at an all-girls lunch, he was the brother-in-law of one of my girlfriends and just happened to be there.” Frances and Martin have been together for a year now. “He’s all I have looked for all my life,” Frances says. “If I hadn’t done Life Clubs, I would have been so buried in the hazards I’d had, nothing would have registered. Instead it was so easy.”