When I was a manager in the civil service, the finance wonks set us off on an out of the norm budget exercise. It was called zero base budgeting.

The idea was to eradicate all the items in your existing budget and then start adding elements back in. In this way, we’d be forced to look at what we were spending money on in our division. A deeper look and closer consideration had us look at our priorities. What programs must stay? Which could go?

There weren’t many seasoned managers who took the exercise or the rationale for doing it seriously. Most budgets became even fatter when the numbers were submitted.

Of course in government, this exercise was moot. There is a reason there are numerous short-term contracts available toward the end of any government’s budget year. Managers want to empty their coffers because that which isn’t spent gets subtracted from their budget in the following year.

I am finding moving is a lot like that zero-base budgeting exercise. But more to do with stuff than money. I visited our new house before we moved in several times. Each time I was in awe of the empty space. The lines of the house flowed from one room into the next. Our old house had been choppy and compartmentalized. This new house was the interior decorating equivalent of a blank canvas.

I knew it would eventually be filled with furniture and stuff to make it habitable. But the question for me was, with what? I knew what I was going for as a design concept. But achieving that vision was a lot less clear.

An analogy with my life occurred to me. With anybody’s life actually. We all arrive on the planet starting at a zero base. I know there are lots of other variables and wildly different birth circumstances. But as for you, newly deposited and still breathing through your mother’s umbilicus, you ain’t got much to begin with.

And so we land in life with a host of expectations that are inherent in the deal of whatever family you have landed in. And life evolves. You don’t get a whole lot of choices in those early years. As a young mother, I was taught the importance of offering my children “choices” in small matters to enhance their sense of personal autonomy.

So many of us stumble along like this in our young lives picking up life experiences: education, family values, friends, skills, likes and dislikes, nascent hobbies and passions that may form part a key part of our life path in adulthood.

Once we settle into a life path, that’s it for the duration for many. Not everybody, of course. But the road less travelled is an aberrant path, and not what the majority choose. Life presents us with stepping stones and goals and benchmarks that shape our path.

The person we marry will be a large part of our future experiences. The decision to have or not have children adds another wrinkle to our life. Whether you elect to study or pursue a trade or start your own business, you will learn and accumulate experiences that will stick.

The midlife crisis was once much ridiculed as self-indulgent and unrealistic. But the more benevolent interpretation is that the so-called “crisis” comes about when someone finds they are living a life, and maybe with a person, not entirely agreeable to them.

They may feel they have missed the mark somehow in making life choices to honor their own inner reality. And time is running out. It is often a time of great change. Marriages break down. And against the stereotype of the boss leaving for his secretary, it is often women who walk out on their marriages in mid-life.

A sense of urgency can arise when the realization hits that you have lived considerably more years on the planet then you will live in the future. It can sharpen the mind and the focus of your life. this is when we hear more people say things like “I lived my whole early life for my parents, my children and my husband. For the next few decades, I am going to live just for me.”

Sometimes the hand is forced as in case of death. I know more and more women now rethinking their future since they have become widows. What seemed impossible to imagine when they were were living life “coupled up” falls away. Life’s lessons rarely mollycoddle us.

So I’m giving some thought lately to “zero-based budgeting” exercise in this moving exercise. We are making choices about “what stays and what goes.” As stressful and disruptive as the move is, choices are being made to decide what is and isn’t important to keep in our lives.

Not a bad exercise which like much exercise, shapes us as the same time that it strains us. Guess that is all part of the birthing process. One we can frequently repeat throughout our lives to get us closer to the essence of who we really are and what is true for us.