What To Do With a Bucket List

 

A few weeks ago, I saw the movie the Secret Life of Walter Mitty, and I have also seen the movie The Bucket List. What is it that both of these movies have in common? In both of these movies, the men realized that life is a journey and in due time, it comes to an end.  The most important thing we discover at the end concerns whether we really lived our lives or if we simply go through the motions of living.

Creating My Bucket List

The first lesson in the book 50 Lessons I Learned From The World’s Greatest Achiever by Vic Johnson is to create a list of life goals that we want to accomplish over the course of our lifetime that if you complete the list at the end of your life you feel as though you had a complete and wonderful life.. I have already done a lot of the things that I always wanted to do in my life. I have traveled to most of the United States. I was in the military (all state side), I had three wonderful children, and so far I have written and published 3 books with the fourth one almost ready to publish as well. I wrote my list as so far, my list consists goals related to being an author including writing, marketing, and speaking, and goals related to traveling (including learning languages). Still other goals are related to living healthy including exercise, proper diet, and living a simple life. My ultimate goal is to travel the world at leisure, writing, marketing, and speaking along the way. It also includes what could be the opposite, a simple home where I can live off what I grow as a person.

 

Thinking Outside The Box

The second lesson in the book relates to thinking outside of the box. The idea here relates to the idea presented in the book Acre of Diamonds where a man sold everything he had, including his farm in South Africa to search for diamonds. He died broke. Several years after his death, the largest diamond field in the world was discovered right on the farm that he had sold years earlier. This story relates to the premise that what we want in life is usually right in our own backyard. In other words, look around you and looking at your surroundings with a different viewpoint.

This step involves a radical step of identifying a goal and taking massive action to begin accomplishing that goal.

I am taking two massive goals this month. First  Goal I am: “Developing a simple lifestyle so that I can focus my resources toward traveling, writing, and speaking in different locals”.To start going in this direction, at the end of April, I bought a used travel trailer that I am moving out onto my friends’ place at the edge of a national park to live in and to fix up. I plan to later this month that begin doing a little gardening. Maybe next month I will be able to get a few chickens and a goat.

The second Goal that I am taking Massive action on is: “Become a best-selling author.” A step that I have taken this month is that yesterday I had a session with a professional photographer for my author photograph on my books. In addition, I have updated my bio and the cover descriptions on all of my books. I intend to have help coordinating the covers of The Locket Saga so that they don’t just look like individual books, but that they look like books in a series. I will put all of these aspects together and update my books by the end of the month. Then I will update my website and include these new looks to my books on my site.

Creating A Dream Board

This lesson involves identifying who you want to be and create a dream board.

In this exercise, I created a dream board with the words Speaking, Ministering, Author as the center. Then I used mind mapping to create words that describe that sort of person.

Words that I used to describe this person that I want to become would include radio blog, Bible courses, speak at churches, Youtube videos, visit women’s groups, helping people, sharing what I know with others, traveling around the country, and visiting book stores,  festivals, meeting many different people, It involves living in peace, living healthy, and living simply.

 

Donna Brown is an ordained minister. As Author Cygnet Brown, she  has recently published her first nonfiction book: Simply Vegetable Gardening: Simple Organic Gardening Tips for the Beginning Gardener

She is also the author of historical fiction series The Locket Saga. which includes When God Turned His Head and Soldiers Don’t Cry, the Locket Saga Continues. Her upcoming book A Coward’s Solace will be available soon. Click here for more information about Cygnet Brown and her books.