Your Bucket List

You will have seen books in bookshops entitled “101 things to do before I die” or “200 places to visit before you die”. Now let’s be honest, some of you hate the idea of reading these books and steer clear of them entirely whereas others secretly read them in search of ideas and inspiration. If you are anything like me you do find some ideas of dreamy, far-off places that you’d love to visit balanced with some crazy excessive adrenaline-fuelled experience guaranteed to make you believe you are about to die anyway.

There is a great film with Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman called the Bucket List – in short it is a film about two terminally ill older gentlemen and how they deal with their last weeks of life. It is quite a heavy film in some ways as it touches on how we as individuals deal with and face our own mortality. On the other hand it is a very refreshing look at how to spend your remaining days and weeks before you meet your Maker. The two men create a list of experiences they still wish to encounter before they depart, some are funny, some personally very challenging and some completely stupid. Well worth watching if you get a chance.

My challenge to you is to create your own bucket list – it can be 101 things you want to do, see or achieve before you die or it could be a long list of things you have always wanted to experience but have managed to find reasons or excuses not to do. Therein lies the problem – we are usually brilliant at finding excuses or reasons not to do something because it is too easy to fill our time with other ‘things’ – just “faffing about” being busy.

What would you do for the next 24 hours, the next two months or the next …. if you knew that was all the time you had left? Go on – in the words of Richard Wilkins, avoid having a near-life experience and have a truly fulfilling life by taking action now.