How a Bucket List and Goal Book Can Help You Achieve What You Want Out of Life

Someday I want to be fluent in French, play the guitar, do the splits, run 3 miles every day, act more, write more, and travel the world. These are only some of my life desires. I wanted to come up with a way to get to them realistically rather than keeping them all in the dream stage because of lack of time. I work full time and keep busy with creative projects, writing, and "having a life" with friends and family ~ how can I ever be able to achieve my many life desires?

Everyone has things they want to accomplish, do, become, places they want to visit, people they want to meet, relationships they want to develop, and more in life. And most people, like me, are short on time.

Here's my simple, sensible guide for getting to all your life desires.

Make a list of all the desires you have that you'd like to accomplish some day in your life. The list can be as long as you want. What matters is that it is true to your heart. Since your heart might change over time, it's perfectly OK to come back at any time and revise your list. Keep it current and true to yourself.

This list can include anything your heart desires, including a career change or promotion at work, travel, hobbies to take up or get back to, people to meet, languages to learn, a business you want to start, and so on.

Now prioritize your list by numbering every item in it in order of what you'd like to accomplish first, second, third, etc. Some things can be accomplished quickly and some are ongoing. That's all OK. Later on you can work on achieving more than one item at a time. This is just to help you get organized and clear on what you're doing to achieve what you want out of life.

Creating goals is an important step in achieving the items you list on your Bucket List. For good advice on setting goals check out:

• Top 10 Ways to Set and Reach Your Goals
• How to Set and Attain Goals

Now create a Goal Binder. What you're going to do is translate your prioritized Bucket List to a Goal Binder by making each item a goal with a set end date.

Break down an item like this:

• If it costs money to do, you'll have to plan for it so you'll need to know how much to save and earn to accomplish it. An example would be a trip to Hawaii.
• If it's something like "learn to play the guitar" you'll have to know the answers to the following questions and translate all of that into a goal. For example, do you have a guitar or do you need to buy or acquire one somehow (trade with someone, get one at a garage sale, etc.)? Once you have the guitar, you'll have to factor in how much time you'll need to practice to get good and make yourself goals with learning chords for instance, or learning your first song by a certain date, etc.

Once you have changed your bucket list items to goals you can start working on them.

Since a bucket list is long and since you've prioritized yours, you can see easily which goals you want to work on right away and which you're willing to hold off on for some time while you accomplish earlier goals.

Once you start working your goals you can track your progress with the goal binder and add pictures and notes of your goal accomplishments as you go.

You can revise your bucket list priorities or change your goals if you want to as life goes on.

Often accomplishing a goal is its own reward, but don't forget to give yourself a reward when you complete a goal. Not only will you likely deserve a reward, but it will keep you motivated to work on your other goals.

By making your bucket list and turning it into goals that you work on to accomplish what you're really doing is crafting the life you want in the most pro-active, successful way.

May you accomplish your dreams.