I feel like I have a lot of catching up to do on this blog. I haven’t written much this year, mostly due to my commitment to giving my family more attention. But definitely not for a lack of things to write about. My family and I have certainly not stopped living the bucket list life. In fact, I looked over my official Bucket List last week and was shocked to see how many items I recently crossed off and how many I anticipate completing before this year ends!
Has that ever happened to you – where life is hum-drum and ordinary for a while and then suddenly the pace picks up and you’re caught in a whirlwind of opportunities and experiences?
What I’m noticing right now is that, although I knew I had been taking part in a lot of new experiences, and I knew I had been checking off goals and ideas from my bucket list, I hadn’t calculated just how many long-range goals I was reaching in such a short amount of time. Over the past four months I’ve checked off eight items from my bucket list. In the next four months I expect I’ll complete another six or so. Some of these experiences had been months and months in the planning, while others have arisen completely unexpectedly.
But if I hadn’t kept a written bucket list and chosen to review it, I’m not sure I would have realized the magnitude of what I’ve seen and done. I normally hope to cross off a handful of long-term bucket list goals in a year (not including those that are added spontaneously or retro-actively). If I’m lucky. And here it looks like I will have completed about a dozen. A dozen – over 10% of my whole list – in one year!
I am overwhelmed with gratitude for how fortunate I have been. It’s not that I became independently wealthy in the past eight months and so I’m suddenly able to do more. It’s not that I’ve reached the ranks of in-demand bloggers being given bucket list experiences in exchange for publicity or endorsements. It’s that opportunity after opportunity has presented itself and I’ve been ready to take them.
How about you? Are you taking advantage of opportunities to learn new things, see new places, meet new people? Are your life goals coming to fruition in unexpected ways?
What if I told you there is one thing you could do that would help you seize on the opportunity to complete more of your life goals? Would you do it?
If you’re game, then my encouragement for you is this: write down your bucket list goals, if you haven’t already. You can download the bucket list worksheet I created to help you. Then, review your list from time to time. Review it to add items (which I did a bunch of last week – it’s interesting to see how my interests and hopes have expanded since I reviewed it last). Review it to remember what you’re hoping to do (or see, or be). But more than anything, review it to remind yourself of what you’ve already accomplished. That review and the momentum from seeing how far you’ve come will have you prepared more than ever before to seize the next bucket list opportunity that comes your way.
You might end up being as overwhelmed as I am by how much you’re living out your life dreams!
