Do you remember the 2007 movie, The Bucket List with Jack NIcholson and Morgan Freeman? They portrayed two old men who met in a hospital, both dying of cancer, who decided to do the things that they always wanted to do and had never done. “They go skydiving together, drive a Shelby Mustang, fly over the North Pole, eat dinner at a famous restaurant in France, visit and praise the beauty and history of Taj Mahal, India, ride motorcycles on the Great Wall of China, attend a lion safari in Africa, and visit the base of Mt. Everest in Nepal.” (Thank you Wikipedia). The movie was a joy to watch.
Do you have a “bucket list”? A bucket list is a tabulation of all those things that you have wanted to do during your life and haven’t done yet. They can be long term goals that you have not achieved, or they can be things that just pop up in your mind that you want to do sometime while you still can.
A bucket list falls into the category of Having a Purpose in the nine step Personal Energy Formula I talk about in my workshops on Health, Fitness and Personal Energy for Active Seniors. Having a Purpose is one of those things that observation and research have demonstrated contribute to longevity. Here are some criteria:
- Can be selfish or altruistic.
- Can be to save the world or travel the world.
- Can be to go someplace you have never been, or go back to a place you didn’t get enough of the first time.
- Could be to do something outrageous that you’ve never done – like skydiving at age 85, or learning to scuba dive at age 70.
- Write a song or a novel.
- Paint (Dwight Eisenhower, George W. Bush, Winston Churchill, Grandma Moses.)
- It could be anything that you have never done that you simply want to do while you’re still alive and kicking.
It doesn’t have to be a long list. If fact the shorter the better. Why? Because to get the most from your bucket list, you’ll need to prioritize the things on the list and do those things first that you really want to do. It takes time and money and you’ll want to do the things that are the most important to you, first. Some people seem to make the list as long as possible and their joy is simply crossing things off the list rather than really enjoying doing or seeing them. When you prioritize, you do or see those things that are really important to you.
The point is, that if there is something that you really want to do that you have never done, then by all means, figure out a way to do it while you can. The Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman characters did it, maybe you can too. Why not consider starting to make up your bucket list today, and start prioritizing the things on the list. Then start doing the ones you can. It could help you to live a longer, more enjoyable life.
Thanks for reading.