How to Compose Your Own Bucket List

We all have things that we would love to see or do before we die, yet we seldom ever make any sort of plan to actually accomplish any of those dreams. This is why you should really think about creating a bucket list, so that you have a clear, detailed list of those items that you can check off as you finish them. Imagine going grocery shopping without a list of the items that you need. You can pretty much guarantee that you will have forgotten at least one item when you start putting away all of your groceries. The same rules apply when it comes to your bucket list. As morbid as it may sound, you don’t want to be lying on your death bed and suddenly remember that one thing that you could have easily achieved, but failed to do because you didn’t plan it out.

The main problem with bucket lists is that people tend to put them together without giving any real thought to where they are in their life. If you are a starving artist that is struggling to make the monthly rent, the chances of you ever making it around the world, traveling first class the entire way, isn’t likely to happen unless your situation changes drastically. That doesn’t mean that you have to abandon that dream completely, but rather just leave it off the list until it actually becomes a possibility.

There may be nothing more depressing than seeing all of your hopes and dreams go uncompleted, but that is what can happen if your bucket list is a little too lavish for your financial means. One good way to create a bucket list is to write down everything that you can think of, no matter how small or incredibly grand. Once you have that large list made up, it’s time to start delegation items based on priority and reality. Who says that you have to have a single bucket list? You could easily break your list down into 2 or 3 separate lists, starting out with one that contains items that you know you can manage fairly easily. Put the other lists aside for now, but don’t give up on the dream of fulfilling those just yet.

Your first bucket list should be filled with nothing but achievable goals: learning to play a musical instrument, taking up a new language, running in a half marathon, and other such items that you have always wanted to do, but kept putting off. Seeing them in a list with a box beside each item just waiting to be checked off is often the inspiration that people need to go out and fulfill those dreams. There is a major sense of accomplishment that comes with having checked off all the items on that list, and it will likely inspire you to want to do more. Perhaps as a reward for completing that first batch you might look at one of the items on the “rich list.” Think about perhaps treating yourself to a vacation to a destination that is somewhere on that other list, staying within your financial budget of course.

Even if you never have the means to get to all the more harder to achieve dreams, you at least have the satisfaction of knowing that you got to complete a bunch of the things that you always wanted to do. As mentioned earlier, never give up on those bigger items, simply because you never know how your life is going to change. What you might think of as an impossible dream today is something that could be very attainable a decade from now. The one thing that you have to do is not beat yourself up for not getting to every item that you wrote down on that very first list. Being unable to get to them all usually had more to do with where your life takes you rather than a lack of effort on your part. Don’t live your life dwelling on the things that didn’t occur, and instead spend time celebrating those that did.