Is it realistic to keep a personal bucket list during times of fear and uncertainty in the world around us?
Most people these days feel like they are running in place just to stay informed, keep their jobs, provide for their loved ones, and maintain their emotional and physical health.
Add to that the civic responsibility many of us feel to do what we can each day to keep our democracy alive by making our voices heard to elected officials, signing petitions, and attending rallies. With all that, is it foolhardy to plan for that dream trip to Venice for Carnavale? To record your own album? Or live in a cottage in Key West and finish your novel?
Stick With It
Fact is, it’s neither foolish nor naive to hold onto our bucket lists — it’s human. In times of upheaval, personal hopes and dreams can serve as a grounding force, a reminder of what truly matters to us. The current landscape may be turbulent, but our aspirations are a reflection of our inner world, not the chaos outside.
A bucket list is an action plan for our life’s best experiences. Writing down and prioritizing our most-hoped-for adventures makes them real and sets them in motion. We only live once, as they say, and every good person deserves to have their life’s dreams come true. But with life’s ever-changing circumstances, it makes sense to revisit and refine our bucket lists often.
Get Real About Your Intentions
What have you been dying to see or do all your life? Visiting the Eiffel Tower or Capri or Kathmandu simply to post photos or videos of yourself on Instagram, Facebook or X, and then check it off your list? If that’s so, think again.
Personal trainer and nutritionist Justin Thomas Miller says, “Just ask yourself if you would want to do this if you couldn’t tell anyone else about it. It’s common to want to do something because we think it will make us cooler, more interesting, or impress someone. This can lead to pursuing things that have no real meaning and value to you – they’re essentially for someone else.”
Instead, focus on life experiences, adventures, or goals that you want to accomplish so passionately that you wouldn’t post anything about them on social media or even take a single photo. Those are the ones that will enrich your soul the deepest.
And a good idea is to keep your list manageably real. A “top 10” life list is a good way to start.
Take Action Steps
Prioritize your bucket list and take real action steps with the most irresistible items on the list like opening a travel savings account or taking a language class. Those steps will move you closer to your goal in a very real way. Then set timelines for each item that could easily align with the other commitments in your life.
Update Your Original List
Our tastes change over time. Update your list to reflect your current interests. Maybe being a contestant on TV's “Survivor” no longer holds the appeal it once did. Get rid of it or replace it with a new personal wish like taking a tour of New York’s Metropolitan Opera house and asking your guide if you can sing a few notes from the stage!
Adjust your list to include a friend, lover or family member. Or create a new, shared bucket list together.
Create a Mini-Bucket List
Taking a world cruise or opening a small jazz club may not be achievable dreams right now for one reason or another. Instead, wellness influencer Dr. Howard Murad recommends creating mini-bucket lists that you can more easily accomplish every year, every month, or even every day: “Start acquiring a new skill you’ve always wished you had: playing an instrument, becoming an amateur pastry chef, riding a horse, starting a fire without matches.”
An annual mini-bucket list might look like this:
Hike a new trail once a month.
Spend 5 days in a new city this year.
Explore a new-to-you ethnic neighborhood.
Do something that scares you once a week.
People not Places
Doing something significant for other people is the kind of bucket list item that multiplies happiness x 2, like volunteering for Hospice, tipping a room maid or waiter $100, or paying for a nephew’s flying lessons.
Here are a few altruistic suggestions from The Bucket List Project:
Fulfill one child’s wish in person through Make A Wish Foundation.
Buy a round of drinks for a full bar in honor of someone special.
Fulfill one bucket List Item for anyone who helps me with one of mine!
Find two 4 Leaf clovers and give away one to someone who needs luck.
Anonymously help someone in a way that changes their life.
Raise a minimum $2500 for a charity.
Build a “Little Library,” stock it with great books, and put it in front of my house to share.
Journey Inward
For Colorado Poet Laureate Andrea Gibson, her bucket list of dream accomplishments is a journey of personal growth. “For many years now my biggest dreams haven’t required passports or parachutes. As much as I love traversing the world outside, healing my inner world has been most of what I’ve longed to do in this life.”
Here are a few of her beautiful and inspiring life goals:
To see through the lens of my spirit, and not the bruised and clouded eyes of my wounds.
To wear my heart on my sleeve and never grow out of that shirt.
To stand guard over my own attention.
To understand how much my attention is worth, and to only let it be bought by the silver in my love’s hair, the gold of an Aspen tree in autumn.
To think like an inventor.
To refuse to be a product of a thought assembly line.
To have a heart so warm it could heat the homes of my haters.
Don’t Wait
Tend your bucket list regularly. It’s OK to adjust and reprioritize to suit the changing events and circumstances of your life. When you pay attention to your dream goals, you’ll often become aware of opportunities – available time or resources – that may suddenly allow you to make a bucket list dream come true.
Final advice from Dr. Howard Murad is that if something is important to you, do it now. He learned this from his dying patients. “They understand that their time has run out, but the truth is that none of us know how long we’re going to live. We act like we’ll live forever, but so far that’s not been possible.”
“Give yourself permission,” he continues, “to…do it now! We often tell ourselves that the conditions aren’t right, but sadly, they may never be right. I like the quote attributed to Doris Lessing:
‘Whatever you’re meant to do, do it now. The conditions are always impossible.’”
Header Video, Kindel Media; Woman in recording booth, Elements.envato.com; Hot air balloons, Elements.envato.com; Man hiking,Tommy Milanese; Walt Disney World Resort, Orlando, Unsplash.com; Little Free Library, Littlefreelibrary.org; Venice, Italy, Elements.envato.com.
:-) Please Like and Share with anyone else you know who has their own bucket list of hopes and dreams -- Thanks!
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