Do you feel as if your life is just way too busy?

Is your schedule out of control?

Are you ruled by the tyranny of the urgent?

Well, you're not alone.

Take a look.

NARRATOR: Like so many moms, Alli Worthington

knows what it's like to have a busy life.

At one time, she and her husband each worked a full time job,

were raising four sons with one on the way,

and were very active with church responsibilities.

She took steps to find her way out

of chaos and into a life of balance.

Now, she speaks to other women about how

they can find balance too.

In her new book, "Breaking Busy",

she shares how you can identify the signs

of being too busy so you can find a pathway out.

Please welcome to "The 700 Club" Allie Worthington.

And Gordon and I were laughing and saying

when you say Alli Worthington who

had five boys and a full time job, that's two full time jobs.

It really is.

You open your book "Breaking Busy"

with a funny story about a cell phone,

and how it really showed you that you were over-the-top

in commitments and time.

Tell us the story.

Well, I booked an early flight.

And when I got into the shuttle from the airport

to catch my flight, I did what every normal person does.

I promptly went to sleep, because it was very early.

And I arrived at the airport and realized

that I had left my phone on the shuttle.

And I love my phone, when I can't find my phone,

the world stops.

So I get into the airport and turned around

to this sweet couple behind me and say,

can I please use your phone?

I have to call my phone, and the shuttle driver

is going to hear it ring.

Just let me use your phone.

So they look at me like I'm a little crazy,

give me the phone.

I'm dialing my number, I look at them

like, I got this, thank you.

And just as it goes to my ear, my bra starts ringing.

[LAUGHING]

Right there in the middle of the line.

There you were.

And I have realized I put it in my bra,

because it's my extra pocket, right?

I fell asleep on the shuttle, and had

to turn off the sweet people's phone, hand it back to them,

reach into my shirt.

And that's when I realized I had hit my capacity.

My busy-ness was out of control.

Right there in the airport, calling my bra.

You know, sometimes Alli, I think

in the craziness of life today, we get these systems going

and we feel like we're in charge.

When really, every overcommitment that we make

is draining us from something else wonderful.

Talk a little bit, if you will, about what

happened to you and your husband.

Because you had very successful lives,

nice house, beautiful cars, everything going well.

And then--

We did.

We were living what looked like the American dream.

Everything from the outside looked great,

but we were in a lot of debt, we just

thought the money was always going to keep coming.

But we went through a period where my husband's job ended.

I decided that we were not going to give up our big fancy house,

I didn't want to move to a different state for a new job,

and we ended up losing our home to foreclosure.

I like to say it was right before the recession,

we lost everything before it was cool to lose everything.

Before there were others joining you in the process.

Yeah, it was shocking at the time.

But we ended up losing everything we owned,

except what fit into two little storage pods.

And we went and lived with my grandfather,

and spent weeks with him, going to different job interviews,

and us praying and going where did we go wrong?

What do we need to do right?

And really asking God to take over.

I joke that we went to God and said,

we need adult supervision, because we're not

making good choices.

So what happened during that time for you and your husband?

Because you know, so many times we

struggle against the things like that in life

that bring unexpected, and what we see as negative surprises

to us.

But in fact, God's teaching us some things.

What did God teach you in that process?

He taught us the lessons from the Bible.

You know, that security isn't in what we store up on Earth,

security is in Him.

What you knew here before, and that's true for many of us,

we've got it up here, we even want it

to be that way in our hearts.

But we're not living it.

Absolutely.

And it's great to say, we say it at church,

we sing songs about it, we teach it to our children.

But then what we spend our time doing

is collecting and collecting and collecting.

You titled your book "Breaking Busy"

how to find peace and purpose in a world of crazy.

So how did you break the busy in your life?

Well, the concept of "Breaking Busy"

came from me looking at my husband

after we had built things back up, and life was good.

And you know, when life's good, you get busy.

The commitments come at you, everything happens.

And I said, we're doing everything

we're supposed to be doing, but this busy-ness is breaking me.

And we have to scale back.

So what we did is we wanted to look at things through the lens

of what God wanted for our lives,

to stay focused on him so he wouldn't miss

our destiny, our true calling.

And so for us, we just made a few simple changes

and started living life in a different way.

And God says that it's in quietness and confidence

that we find Him and His strength.

What were some of the practical things you and your husband

did that brought you that?

I mean, here you are.

You've done everything that you feel the Lord is telling you.

You've been restored, but what did you do?

Well, normally what I would do is

I would decide that I was going to work my way out of it.

And I would start striving.

Do.

Yeah, do, do, do, which got me in trouble in the first place.

And I would make a to do list of all the things

that I was going to work my way out of.

And so my husband and I, we started

making stop doing lists.

So we looked for the things that were really

draining the energy out of us, the things we

didn't feel like we were really called to do.

And then we wrote them out on Post-it notes.

Two or three things at a time.

When this situation comes up, I'm going to stop doing this.

Or I'm going to stop doing this tomorrow.

I mean, for him, it was as simple as not

getting wrangled into refereeing peewee football every year.

Wow.

He didn't like it.

He wasn't especially patient or good at it,

and didn't like doing it.

I would go see him every spring and he'd say,

they've made me ref again.

So it's just little things like that.

And we learn that when we say yes to things that we're not

called to do, and it isn't in our gift mix to do,

we're taking that opportunity away from someone else.

Because someone else would love to do it,

they just need the chance to step into that role.

So how do you evaluate what those things are?

Because as you said with your husband,

sometimes we do things because we feel like we have to

or we're supposed to.

We don't want to disappoint people.

How do you evaluate what needs to go?

Well, I have this fun formula called 10, 10, 10.

So I ask myself how I'm going to feel

about a certain decision in 10 minutes,

in 10 weeks or 10 months.

So I play the game called future Alli.

What will future Alli think about this decision

if I say yes to it in 10 minutes?

10 minutes is always good, because when you tell someone

yes, it feels good in a moment.

But then in 10 weeks, I may not have the time or the energy

or the resources to fulfill it.

And then in 10 months, I can go, oh,

future Alli is going to get mad at today's Alli if I say yes.

So that helps a lot.

You know, you have so many wise and practical things

in this book that we can all use, like 10, 10, 10.

Alli's book is creatively called "Breaking Busy"

and it's available wherever books are sold.

In the crazy chaos of today's world,

we all need to read this and then

sit back and evaluate what we can get rid of on our list.

Thank you, it's so good to have you here.

Wise words.