Have you created your bucket list for the upcoming season? If you are not sure what a bucket list is, you should know that Cambridge Dictionary, and most online dictionaries out there, define it as a list of things someone would like to accomplish before dying.
When you create seasonal bucket lists, the deadline is not death, but the end of the season. Otherwise put, you should think of the things you would like to accomplish in the upcoming season, write them down, and start working to turn them into reality.
You can create bucket lists with your friends and family as well, by identifying the activities you all enjoy or want to accomplish and planning for them. Why would you need a bucket list, you may ask? The reasons are numerous, but I will try to summarize the most important ones in the following lines. Feel free to suggest any additional reasons you can think of!
5 Reasons Why You Should Create a Seasonal Bucket List and Get to It
1. You Can Assess the Implications
Sometimes, you think you want something, but you are not really aware of the implications. Let’s say your family’s dream for the following season is a vacation in the Caribbean Islands. Just saying that you would love vacationing there will not make it happen.
However, if you put that vacation on your family’s bucket list for this summer and you all start looking for solutions to actually enjoy it, you will come across offers, itineraries, and price information.
You will find out how much money you need for the cruise and how much time you need to take from work or when you should schedule the vacation. You can start saving right away and making arrangements at work to ensure you will be able to take the necessary time off.
2. You Will Have Something in Common with the Persons Involved and It Will Bring You Closer
When people work together for a common goal, their relationships improve. They have more conversation topics, they are more motivated to spend time together, and they collaborate better. Just imagine planning the vacation with your spouse after the kids have fallen asleep, getting together with friends to plan a new adventure, or organizing a fundraiser with your school or work colleagues to support a good cause!
3. You Will Be More Motivated in Your Everyday Life
How many times a week do you find it difficult to get out of bed and go to school or work? When your work pays for the vacation of your dreams or your grades convince your parents to pay for it, you have one more reason to push forward. You also know that you will soon be able to break the routine, and that will keep you going.
4. You Will Have Something to Distract You from Anything Negative Going on in Your Life
Sometimes, you feel that the entire world is leaning on your shoulders. Nothing seems to go the way you want it to, and your life seems an endless sequence of challenges and obstacles. When that happens, those small things on your seasonal bucket list will give you something to look forward to, something to focus on to forget about the negative stuff.
5. Your Chances of Actually Doing Those Things Will Improve
If you just say or think you would like to do something, but you don’t try to make it happen, you will never actually get to enjoy it. When you write it down, set a deadline, and actually focus on turning that thing into reality, living it is just a matter of time.
So, write down that dream vacation and start working on making it happen. After all, the only limits to what you can accomplish are the ones you set. Even if you don’t succeed at the first try, you will at least find out what you did wrong and what more you can do to succeed.
Get Your Journal and Start Writing
Whether you do it just for fun, to have something to laugh at when you get bored or on Sundays, or you really want to accomplish more in your life, creating a seasonal bucket list can’t hurt you. On the contrary, it will help you visualize your efforts and channel more energy towards accomplishing them.
Of course, whether or not you accomplish your goals will also depend on what those goals represent to you and how realistic they are. Here are a few tips to make your goals more achievable and avoid disappointments:
A. Focus on experiences, not their worth:
For example, if you would like to lose some weight, instead of establishing a number of pounds or inches to lose, buy yourself a pair of jeans or a bathing suit you really like and set fitting in it as a goal.
If you want to save for a vacation, instead of setting the cost of the vacation as a goal, focus on the vacation offer and on what enjoying it will mean. Visualizing yourself in a bathing suit, on the beach, or at a spa will be more motivating than reading the scale or counting money.
B. Set SMART goals:
Losing 20 pounds in 4 months may seem impossible, but losing 5 pounds every month is not. Also, paying for a luxury vacation in one got may seem unrealistic. But paying for the trip in the first month, the accommodation in the second one, and saving money for additional expenses in the third month will not.
Focusing on the final goal may tempt you to delay efforts to accomplish it, but those intermediary goals will make you realize that the goal is easily attainable and force you to take action right away. This step-by-step approach leaves you closer to your final goal without big efforts.
C. Set rewards:
When your bucket list does not include goals that are a reward in themselves, like a vacation or a new wardrobe, it helps to establish rewards for when you accomplish them. This way, you will have one more thing to look forward to, one more reason to try harder and not give up. Don’t hesitate to set rewards for the intermediary goals as well.
Trust me, you can accomplish anything you want if you really want it and you work hard to make it happen. A seasonal bucket list will help turn the things you want from mere thoughts into goals. It will remind you of what is at stake, motivate you to accomplish more, and give you something to talk about and look forward to with your loved ones.
Besides, creating that bucket list won’t cost you anything. What’s the worst that can happen: forgetting about it and the things on it? You’ve forgotten about things you’ve wanted before. What if, on this occasion, this upcoming season, you move on from dreaming and forgetting to actually live the dream?
Did you create your bucket list for the upcoming season? We would love to find out what it includes. Don’t hesitate to share your thoughts and goals in a comment below!
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