In a recent podcast interview with Lisa Connors Vogt for Ever Better, we spoke briefly about Chapter 7 of my book, Inspired Action, Create Your Life List and Lifestyle List. That brief discussion inspired me to share with you the excerpt of Chapter 7 which explores these two lists. I hope it inspires you to create these two guiding lists to bring even more vibrancy to your life.
Chapter 7: Create Your Life List and Lifestyle List
While your purpose is meant to be the core focus and driving force for your life, that doesn’t mean that every waking moment of every day needs to be directed there. Life is about exploration, learning, and growing. As Henry David Thoreau says, “I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life.” It’s time to let loose completely and imagine!
Have you seen the movie The Bucket List? Two older guys, both in the hospital in varying states of health, set out to accomplish their list of all the things they want to do before they “kick the bucket.” The characters in the movie get motivated to undertake their adventures only after recognizing their mortality. But why wait? Life is here to be lived to the fullest, now! Each day you have a choice to make the day memorable—to work toward a once-in-a-lifetime dream experience, or to just get up, go to work, and go back to sleep, mechanically, one more time.
Personally, rather than focusing on the end—kicking the bucket—I choose to consider this project to be a life list. It is a summary of all the activities, outcomes, and dreams that I would love to check off during my life. As an innovation on the classic life list concept, I have decided to segment mine into two lists: a life list and a lifestyle list.
On the life list go all those one-time achievements, adventures, and accomplishments that would bring passion and excitement to my journey. On my lifestyle list are the more habitual actions involving how I want to be in the world and who I am becoming: meditating each day, practicing yoga, doing cardio exercise regularly, engaging in a daily writing practice. In fact, that’s a good way to think of this list: What are the practices that you would like to incorporate into your daily or weekly life? Perhaps you’ve wanted to start a gratitude journal. Perhaps you’ve wanted to have a regular game night with your family. Or maybe you want to spend some time reading each day.
Why create two lists? Because the methodology for working on your life list is very different from the way you’ll make progress on your lifestyle list. The life list is a set of goals that can be broken into projects and tasks that can be checked off as done. On the other hand, on your lifestyle list are the elements that when embroidered together evoke the richness of the everyday life you want to create; they are habitual practices that don’t have a precise beginning or end. These practices might wax and wane throughout your life as new ones arise and others fade away. For instance, once the kids go to college, that game night will probably no longer be a weekly event. But new practices may take their place. My mother took up painting after I left for college, and now she has a studio in her home where she can paint or draw every day.
Why are these lists so important? Because it is impossible to live your best life if you never take the time to define what your best life looks like! Both my life list and my lifestyle list are living documents. I have tools that I use to keep its items visible and vibrant to me every day. I also have established an annual ritual with my husband for my birthday. Every year on my birthday we go out to my favorite restaurant and bring with us the book that holds our lists. With a fruity cocktail in hand we look over his list, my list, and our shared list. We check some things off our life lists, and we talk about the memories of completing them. We add new items and occasionally remove ideas we’ve become less excited about (for instance, “Maybe I no longer care about performing with my harp at an Irish pub….”). Then we go through the same process with our lifestyle lists. What practices have we ingrained deeply this year, what do we want to develop further, and what new ideas have arisen? My life list and lifestyle list keep me passionate, curious, and engaged in my life as broadly and deeply as possible.
How to Start Your Life List
If items for your life list don’t immediately start jumping into your head, there are many different ways to prime the pump.
Here are some questions that might help you get started:
- Where have you always wanted to go? France, Taiwan, Bali, the battlefields of the Civil War…?
- What have you always wanted to see? The Statue of Liberty, sunrise over the Rio Grande, a meteor shower, a breaching whale…?
- What would you really love to learn? How to speak fluent Italian, how to bake excellent croissants, how to deep-sea fish…?
- What experiences would you love to have? Skydiving, hiking the Appalachian Trail, sailing around the world…?
Hopefully, these questions will get your ideas flowing. The goal is to dig deep into your heart and mind for experiences that would thrill and enrich you. What could you do to turn blah into wow for you? Dream big! Every outcome starts with the idea. Capturing your ideas is the first step toward creating them.
How to Start Your Lifestyle List
To create this list, think about practices that you intend to weave into your daily or weekly life. Some of them you may already do; others you may have just heard about. What are the elements that would fill your daily life with beauty, intentionality, and joy? Can you think of a few practices you want to include on your lifestyle list?
Here are some examples: meditating, drinking morning smoothies, reading, playing golf, writing morning pages, practicing yoga, taking a weekly night out with your sweetheart, praying each evening, reading your Bible or inspirational books, paying a compliment to someone each day, taking a deep breath before starting your car, and reading to your children each night. One of the great habits I have adopted is to ask people I admire to share their daily or weekly practices. This is one way to discover their recipe for success, whether it be success in their career, their relationships, or their parenting. What are the habits that make a difference?
You might come up with quite a number of items on this list as well. It may look like your personal recipe book for a richly lived life. Now, taking action on these items will involve building habits or routines, so if that’s where you feel called to start, take a look at Chapter 14: Habits: The Power of Patterns and Chapter 15: Your Ideal Week Vision.
Bringing Focus to Your Lists
With both your life list and your lifestyle list, you’ll make the most headway when you focus, so you might want to choose just one item from each list to start working toward. You can always choose a different one next season (see Chapter 48: Seasonal Planning). Sometimes fortuitous opportunities will allow you to check items off with very little effort from you, or you may be guided to see that now is the time to work toward an item that you did not choose initially. For instance, if your company wants to send you to Japan, then the answer is yes, and it’s time to check that item off your list!
Next Actions
Just start writing. Anything that pops into your head will do for the moment. Remember, you can always change your mind later. You have a whole lifetime to manifest these dreams.
Think back to when you were a child. What were your biggest dreams when you were five years old? How about ten? Keep paging through your life in five-year segments, and see whether there are any old dreams that you’d like to dust off and add to your list.
Talk to your partner, and create your lists together. You might learn a lot about each other—the dreams that you share, the lifestyle elements that matter to each of you, and the adventures that you never considered on your own but would be tons of fun to have together.
Watch the movies The Bucket List or Last Holiday for some great laughs, poignant moments, and fun ideas for your list.
Browse the bookstore or library aisles, and see what jumps out at you. Places to visit, things to do, and skills to learn might launch themselves at you from every direction.
Ask people you admire about their daily and weekly habits. Many successful people consciously or unconsciously have developed a recipe for success that you can uncover and emulate.
And of course, if this has resonated with you, then you can also pick up a copy of Inspired Action to help you take action and move forward.
Images for Blog Post: Image used under License Agreement: ©Anna Omelchenko / Stockfresh
