About two years ago, having read Jack Canfield’s Success Principles, Walt and I sat in Ireland and composed our list of goals. The assignment, as Jack put it, was to create a list of the 101 things you want to do, be, or have before you die.
I dug the list out the other day after one of my friends questioned the ability to come up with 101 items. Believe me, this task isn’t as easy as it sounds.
Now, looking at the thing, I’m astounded by what I read. Like snooping through a medicine cabinet, or rifling through bookshelves, you can tell a lot about a person by looking at her goals. Some of these items, particularly numbers 16 and 17, make me cringe to read out loud. I’m not sure I like what they say about my value system. But, here we go.
I’d like to note two things. The first time I did this exercise, I only thought up 87. The last few items I added during the past week. Which is cool, because the idea is to keep the list active. To replace the goals you’ve accomplished with something fresh. The second, those in bold I can check off as completed.
- Run another marathon
- Finish a sprint triathlon
- Finish an olympic triathlon
- A half ironman
- A full ironman
- Bike across Spain
- Bike across Vietnam
- Spend 3 months in Australia
- Rent a house for 3 months in Bali
- Own a house like Derrylea in Cork, Ireland
- Finish my book and publish it
- Start a blog
- Get an essay published in the NY Times
- Be reviewed in the NY Times
- Speak at a commencement ceremony
- Be on Oprah
- Weigh 113 lbs.
- Enter a Beauty Pageant
- Have no debt
- Be on the NY Times Best Seller List
- Scuba dive in Bali
- Learn to surf
- Go to a publishing/writer party
- Do a book tour
- Become an argentine tango champion
- Fly a helicopter
- Take a houseboat tour of India
- Do 10 days of Vipasana mediation at a retreat
- Hike in Nepal
- Teach a class at Bread Loaf
- Study Tango for 3 months in Argentina
- Visit New Zealand
- Get paid to read my writing to an audience
- Get an agent
- Have a top tier publishing house court me
- Kayak the islands of Maine
- Visit Washington State and Oregon
- Have an eternity pool
- Bike the Great Wall of China
- Motorcycle in Montana
- Get accepted into an amazing writer’s conference
- Be Oprah’s book of the month author
- Have an article published in Oprah Magazine
- Have two million dollars or better in our retirement account
- Lean to speak as well as Jim Rohn
- Create a book of photos and stories with Walt
- Have three separate residences in different countries, spending time each year in them
- Whiten my teeth
- Have skin treatments that will make me look 10 years younger
- Have the youthfulness and vitality of Suzanne Summers
- Speak at a writer’s symposium
- Publish a collection of essays
- Have a movie adapted from one of my books
- Have a top-end classic Mercedes
- Visit Rome and Florence
- Hike the interior of Iceland
- Sell Cedar Glen
- Do the Appalachian Trail from start to finish
- Spend a week at a nudist colony
- Have a spotless garage to park my car in
- Explore Morocco
- Become organized
- Ski out West
- Become well versed in Shakespeare
- Read the one hundred most influential books
- Get to a point where I can have facials and massages once a week
- Have a closet full of banging clothes
- Hire a personal shopper/stylist
- Have staff
- Stop worrying
- Show up on the back page of Runner’s World
- Wear a size 2 (really a size 2)
- Create an e-book for the best vegan dinners
- Spend a weekend per year alone with each of my kids
- Spend a week at The Red Rock Spa in Utah
- Write an Adventure Travelogue and publish it
- Develop a talk about finding our authentic voice for girls and women
- Sail our boat without help to Block Island
- Learn to swim the crawl for a mile without getting winded
- Scuba off of Zanzibar
- Win a Pushcart Prize for literature
- Visit South Africa
- Start my own writers’ workshop
- Have an outstanding relationship with my kids and step-kids
- Climb the tallest mountain in Greenland with the boys
- Hike to the bottom of the Grand Canyon
- Fly fish
- Study with Cormac McCarthy and Anne Lamott
- Do the Pilgrim’s walk across Spain
- Get Fulbright scholarship
- Get a writer’s grant
- Sing in public to applause
- Be totally centered
- Sail the Greek islands
- Visit the Dalmatian coast
- Start an Adventure club/Mastermind group
- Lead mountain climbing tour up Kilimanjaro
- Embrace my juiciness
- Summit Aconcagua
- Paraglide
- Climb all seven summits
What’s on your bucket list? Isn’t it time you started one of your own?
