There are still tons of places I want to travel to and see but there isn't anything specific that rises to the same level as these four things:
- Visit somewhere in Asia for continent #6 but there are a ton of options for visiting Asia that I would be happy with
- Visit Antarctica for #7. And no not just for the sake of being #7. I personally find desolate landscapes with minimal human presence beautiful and relaxing
- Experience Zero G. Something like the Vomit Comet
- Go to space. Could obviously combine this with the previous one although the price tags are a tad different.
On that tangent:
1. Having a bucket list increases the odds of checking things off on your bucket list because you have clear targets to shoot at. No targets = no direction = no progress = hard to hit a target you can't see.
2. Some of the most effective people I know always keep a detailed 5-year plan & almost always accomplish it in half the time. This is because (1) it's fairly short-term, which forces you to move ideas into the goals column, which means you take a grand, fuzzy idea & make it concrete and doable, and (2) because life seems to drastically change every few years. Most people have told me that where they are today was not where they thought they would be 5 years ago. So simply making a detailed 5-year plan & then committing to working on it means you're integrating some bucket-list items & converting them into actionable projects, and then actually making progress on them.
3. "Believe you can, believe you can't, either way, you're right!". One quote I heard regarding this was "the thing you really believe always happens". Not in a phony kind of way, but in a foregone-conclusion type of way: if you want to do something but deep down think you can't, you'll never take the first step, which means you'll never take the second step, and so one. As Waynze Gretzsky said, "you miss 100% of the shots you don't take". If you have a wish but don't really believe you can achieve it, or never bother clarifying it to the point where it's something you can really do, then it's kind of hard to get into motion on & get that motor turning because you're already defeated before you've even started. We tend to box ourselves in with our personal beliefs & worldviews, not realizing that we are, in fact, our own biggest barrier: not our situation, not our limitations, not our current financial story, but rather just being willing to clearly defining what we want & then not allowing ourselves to take no as an answer from ourselves. If you can't get over the mountain, go around the mountain! There's always a way to do something you want to do if you're willing to explore more than just one path forward!
The problem is that most people are content with what I call the BrainSnap, which is where you look at something & think "seems hard, I quit", whether it's making a bucket list or a 5-year plan or deciding that you're going to do something & decide you're not willing to give up until you achieve it. Everyone does this in at least some situations; the key is recognizing that we have control over our reactions to things & that just because the BrainSnap happens doesn't mean we have to believe it or let it define our behavior or our thinking. This was a huge step forward in maturity for me when I figured it out a few years ago...there were a lot of things I wanted to do, but would basically rage-quit before I even got started. This meme illustrates it perfectly:
Once I let go of my ego & accepted the fact that I was the one intentionally putting the stick in the bike wheel of my life & stopping all forward progress on an idea (whether I was aware of it or not), I gained the courage to get back up & gave myself permission to find another way to attack it, rather than just quitting. From personal experience, this level of responsibility is something that most people immediately reject & refuse to even consider (because we all want to play the victim), but the bottom line is that the only person you're short-changing is yourself. Giving yourself the permission to achieve great results, maintain great states of living, and obtain great assets is simply a person choice that requires grit, aka not giving up until you've found a way to get what you want, which is more or less the key to success:
We can blame everyone else, we can blame our situation, we can quit, we can give up, but none of those things will give you the results you want; as soon as you realize you have the power to keep chipping away at things & to look at things from a new perspective & try new things, then suddenly you have the power to do things like make a bucket list & check items off your bucket list. I wasted a lot of time (still do!) on nonsense growing up & it took me a really long time to get my act together & realize that no one was going to spoon-feed me what I wanted other than me. It's incredibly easy to sit around & do nothing all the time, but it's waaaaay more fulfilling to work on great things that you really want to do!
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