Checking Off My Bucket List

I am a bucket lister. Well, I’m an “everything” lister, for sure, but I do have a list with (literally) 1001 things I want to do in my life! #goalsgoals If you’ve wanted to make your own bucket list, but need some help coming up with some ideas, today I’ll give you some pointers.

It all started back in 2006 when I discovered the website 43 Things. It was a social networking site where people share lists of their “43 things” they are currently working on. The site is no longer online, but in 2005 they won the Webby award for “best social networking site” (according to Wikipedia). I guess things change after a decade!

Well that was fun until I hit the 43 thing-limit. But they had a sister site where you could make lists up to any number, and that’s where I started my bucket list. It was a great place to start, because there was a built-in sidebar that showed goals other people had added to their lists, and with one click I could add those same goals to mine.

I don’t use those sites anymore, but I still have my list, and I’m still hard at working checking it off. Here are a few of the things I’ve completed:

Run a marathon
Solve a Rubix cube
Have a baby boy
Have a baby girl
Visit Asia

And here are a few things I’d like to do soon:

Drive the Pacific Highway
Take voice lessons
Visit England
Spend Christmas in Maine (with my family)

Starting your own bucket list is super easy! Just start writing things down that you would like to do, and start doing them! You can use paper and pen, a journal, a spreadsheet on your computer, or if you’re more artistic, maybe a collage or something like that! You don’t have to be a crazy person like me have 1001 ideas.

Here are some prompts to help you get started:

1. What are your major life-long dreams? Think BIG things, seemingly impossible things! I’m talking private island, save $1,000,000, climb Mount Everest kinds of things!

2. Where would you like to travel to? What would you like to do there? Examples: eat pizza in Italy, drink tea in England, ride a cable car in San Francisco.

3. Think major life events: graduate from college, get married, have a baby.

4. Think accomplishments: own a business, run a marathon, get a promotion, do 10 pull-ups.

5. Think fun: go to a spa, ride an upside down roller coaster, feed a giraffe.

That should be enough to get you going. Challenge yourself to check off one of your bucket list items by the end of this year!

It’s Day 12 of the “Baby Steps to a Better You” 30 days of personal challenges, and today I want you to think back to Day 1. It was then that you established a goal and took the first step, whatever that may have meant to you, toward achieving your goal.

Today, take the second step. Maybe you don’t even know what the second step would be. Find out. Then act.

You’re going to do great things!