Episode 41 Shownotes - Living Intentionally

Well, hey, my best lifers and welcome back! I am going to kick today off asking you to please rate, review and subscribe on Itunes. I am really making a concerted effort to get the word out, so if you would take a minute and scroll down on Itunes under the list of podcasts, you can rate the podcast and leave a review, and I will be so grateful! If you have already done so, let me take a minute to thank you – I have read them all (ok, I admit, more than once) and they all make me so happy to be doing this much needed work! So – THANKS!

Today is a topic I am so excited to write and talk about. It is how I live my life, each and every day, and is one of the core pillars of what I believe all of us as humans with limited time in our lives should be doing. It is about not waiting to make a bucket list, and checking things off of it at least annually! To start this podcast, I spent some time researching the concept of a bucket list. From Merriam-Webster, a bucket list is a list of things one has not done before but wants to do before they leave this life. The first known use of the term was in 2006. I couldn’t find who coined it, but what a great concept to help us clarify what we really want to experience and accomplish before our time here is over. As part of the research for this, I watched the movie with Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson from 2007. This is where the term became well known. It is a completely unrealistic movie about 2 patients told they have 6 months to live, and how they decide to live them. It had a lot of great moments, and was endearing and amusing, but not at all realistic, unfortunately.

But what I did find while I was researching that I think is super appropriate, is a website called BucketList.org. It lets you create, track, share and inspire others with your list. How cool is that? I signed up immediately and you should check it out, too. What I love about a bucket list is that it encourages you to think about what you want to accomplish in your life. I actually think we should all make a bucket list at our high school graduation. Every year, you should check things off and revamp it. Why? Because I think it keeps people living intentionally. It makes us think about things we want to do, and not just put things off for “Later” and I say that in quotes, as we know later may mean after retirement or worse. I break down my bucket list similarly to how bucketlist.org categorizes ideas. I think a great bucket list should have 6 things and I am going to tell you what they should have and why.

I want to take a minute to talk about a discussion I had with a Hospice doctor recently, Dr. Faryal Michaud, though, before we jump into this. She felt like a bucket list was NOT a great thing right at the end of life, because it lead to people feeling sad that they didn’t check off all of the things they wanted to do. This makes so much sense to me, too. If you are approaching the end of your time on the planet, I love her idea of writing your last chapter. She has a podcast of this name, so if this is where you are, that might be a better option than making a bucket list.

But for those who hopefully have a lot of living left to do, let’s do this! I love, love, love the idea of planning for life instead of just letting it happen TO you. Here are the things I think we should be considering, and ultimately PLANNING for. Because you know what? All of these are more likely to happen if you PLAN for them to happen. First, I think we should write down the life milestones we want to achieve – and I break this into personal and professional. If you have already achieved them, feel free to put them on the list and check them off! I love to check things off lists, part of that super-type-A personality. On mine was meet the man of my dreams, get married and have a family. My list also included who I want to BE. I want to be a mother that spends quality time with my kids, and is involved in their day to day life. I want to be a wife that loves to do active things with her husband, and I wanted my husband to be my best friend. I want to be a genuine friend that has a smaller number of truly beloved friends over 100 “good acquaintances”. I want to make time to do things with my friends that enrich our friendship and bring us joy. I have planned my life and my time to make these things the reality in how I live my life.

The second part of life milestones may be our professional life or career and finances. What do you want to achieve? What have you already completed? You can put them on and check them off if that brings you pleasure! For many of us, graduating highschool and college, getting graduate degrees, is on the list. Career goals can go on this list. Be promoted to manager. Own a business or start a side hustle or passion project. Head a major project at work start to finish. Speak at an industry conference. Reach “Expert” level in your field. Write a book about your career expertise. Negotiate a raise. Take a job where you have to travel. Mentor a younger coworker. Less tangible ones might include finding a job you love, or learning to love the job you have. Learn how to negotiate workplace conflicts. Decide when you want to retire, and make it happen! Other great ones might be getting out of debt. My husband and I put that on our bucket list after getting done medical school and residency. It lead to us deciding to stay in our little townhouse another 18 months, when all of our friends were moving to big houses to knock our debt out. It was a great decision for us, but was partly based on having an early on bucket list of how we wanted to live our lives. For sure, paying the interest on my med school tuition forever wasn’t part of mine. On ours was buying a home – first our tiny townhouse, and then a bigger home to raise our family. One of the things that got added much later was a bucket list item of living on water, which lead to us deciding to move and build on a property on a small lake. Maybe later in life your list might include buying a vacation home or timeshare. I think this helps us to chart out the course of our lives. Some other bucket list goals: building up a rainy day fund, starting a college fund for your children or grandchildren. Donating regularly to charity. Become a millionaire! This week, with some of my clients, we not only did this exercise, we created a path to making these things happen, so that they have the mindset to create exactly what they want. It was so much fun!

Second, I think we should put on what we want to learn. Over the years, on mine have been new skills like podcasting and creative writing. It has included physical things like learning to rollerblade, ice skate, and skiing well enough to do the black diamonds in Jackson Hole with my husband and his family. Creative pursuits, like learning to make pottery on a wheel, jewelry making, needle felting, glassblowing, ballroom dance have all made an appearance in my life. Your list might include a new language or learning to code, learning to surf, country western line dancing, knit or crochet, or ride a horse. Maybe it’s playing the piano or martial arts. The thing is, when you make the list early, you have more time to get to all of them. Often, I’ll do one for a year and get really good at it, and then I’ll be ready to move on. Or some, like drawing and painting, I have realized I just really don’t have much talent in that arena, and after a year, I’m ready to move on to something I might be better at. These things really don’t take that much time to do once a month or every few months, but if you wait until you retire, there likely won’t be enough time for all of them. With things like a second language, that is great to put on the list earlier, because first, learning new stuff is easier the younger you are, and second, you get to benefit from the learning for the rest of your life when you travel!

The next is things you want to experience or challenge yourself to do. Some of these could be learning something new, too, but I think of them more like one-offs – you do them once or twice and that’s it. Let’s talk about the Challenge Yourself ones first. These may not be such fun, but it’s a bar you set that you really want to see if you can get to at least once. I hate to run, and may be the slowest relatively fit person you’ll ever meet, and a 5k (running the whole way!) is on my list. I also have on my list to get to midrange BMI and stay there for at least one year. You may want to challenge yourself to be a vegetarian for a month, or give up alcohol for 3 months. Maybe it is no TV for a month? No cell phone for a whole week? These things are things that may not sound fun, but may expand your mind and how you live. One of the things I challenged myself with is going a week with no showers on a rafting trip down the Grand Canyon. Definitely outside my comfort zone, but so glad I didn’t let the no showers keep me from doing it! I also have a fear of heights, and challenge myself on this front often. I have climbed fire towers, jumped off cliffs into the water, jumped off a train bridge into the water (in college when I had less sense). I have done a high wire course in Montreal where you navigated an obstacle course 30-50 feet in the air in a harness to keep you from falling. I have ziplined from one peak to the next over a valley in Costa Rica. I tried parasailing, which is over water and for me, less scary. I got goaded into paragliding, though, which was the most terrifying 20 minutes. After the paragliding, let me be clear. I don’t need to have any high up/falling or gliding experiences again. I am out for hang gliding, skydiving or base jumping.

The other section of this category is experiences you want to have – meaning you are thrilled and excited to do them. These in my mind are separate from travel and the challenge yourself experiences. These might include more extreme things like bungee jumping, or skydiving, kayaking in whitewater on a river, paragliding or riding a mechanical bull. Or they may be less adrenalin filled, like swimming with dolphins, riding a horse on the beach, swimming under a waterfall, being on a parade float or hot air ballooning. You might have rock climbing, mountain biking, snowboarding on your list. Maybe it is riding in as many unique forms of transportation as possible – think double decker bus, rickshaw, TukTuk, horse drawn carriage, gondola, traditional yellow cab, dogsled and more. One of the more crazy ones that we checked off our list was cave diving, which is scuba diving in a cave. My very favorite bucket list experience of all time was visiting an elephant sanctuary. These things may not be tied to a specific site in the world, and can get done wherever you find the opportunity. I have on my experiences list to eat the local food and try the local alcohol everywhere we travel. This has lead to some awesome food experiences, like pastries in a café in France, and some less then stellar ones, like the iguana soup in Bonaire where I got the head in my bowl. Apparently really good luck. And no, surprisingly it does NOT taste like chicken.

Finally, we come to where we want to go. As a person with a HUGE case of wanderlust personally, I save this for last. Travel, for me, is the backbone of my current bucket list. I have a goal of 25 epic trips in 25 years. Not too crazy when you realize that I just turned 50 and started this list 5 years ago. We have already checked 8 of them off the list. Some are ones that I know I should do soon while I am younger and more fit, like hiking in Patagonia and scuba diving in the Arctic. Some are better for when I am retired and a bit slower, like a river cruise through Europe. But putting them on, and planning them makes them so much more likely to happen! I love just having the list, and each year, spending time thinking about which to choose, and then curating the best possible experience I can for my family. I think some people think they don’t have time or money to do this, but I want to challenge that. When we were residents, we were really poor and only had 2 weeks of vacation. But we drove places, camped, or stayed in cheap motels. On our honeymoon, we spent most of our money getting to Australia, and then stayed in hostels and ate from street carts. Still one of the most memorable trips of my life. I guess what I am saying – don’t let perceived lack of time or money keep you from dreaming and trying to make those dreams a reality!

I hope this has convinced you to make your list, and maybe even make a list with your kids at some point! My clients after doing the work themselves were convinced about the benefits of doing this as young as possible and are going to work on it with their kids. I had no idea this week’s coaching would lead to them guiding their teens on intentional living.

If you are struggling, and fear is keeping you from wanting to make your bucket list, then schedule a mini session to discuss how to work on this. You can find a link to schedule on my website, Best Life After Cancer.com