Earlier this year I met Eloise, a 66-year-old woman who has lived “home-free” for the past two years.
Eloise told me about some of the great adventures she has had — and those on the horizon.
Mountains in Patagonia. Alaska. Road trips through the Rockies. This summer she will be going to the Greek Islands.
It sounds like a “bucket-list” journey. Except for one crucial difference. According to Eloise,
I don’t have a bucket list. Things just show up.
Things show up and she trusts them. She sees doors and walks through them.
Not “someday/maybe.” Not “when I finish this next project.”
When the opportunity arises.
I absolutely love this.
The “bucket list” sounds like an expansive concept: all the things you’re going to do.
Someday. When you’re free from other obligations.
In reality it’s a limiter – in two ways.
Restriction to Your Conscious Awareness
First, what’s on our “bucket list” is generally comprised from what you know is possible.
Usually the things and experiences we put on our bucket list are things we heard about through others or saw in movie or read about online or in a book.
On some level, you know it’s possible. You know is a thing. It’s in your conscious field of awareness.
You can’t have a bucket list to do something that you aren’t even aware of. Awareness is what puts it on the list.
The bucket list, therefore, is a restriction to what’s in your consciousness.
Deferred Happiness
Second, the bucket list is often a “someday” thing. Or a “someday/maybe” thing.
Everything on your someday/maybe list drains energy from the now. The more you look to that list, the more you project your happiness to the future — to the someday when you can do those things.
And often, when you get to someday, those things on the list are no longer relevant or interesting to you.
What’s Open Now?
Why restrict yourself to a bucket list?
What’s possible that’s not even on your bucket list, and because you don’t even know it exists, you don’t know to ask for it?
What might be possible if you paused to listen, to notice, to see what shows up, and what speaks to you, and trusted that it was there to serve your highest good?
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