LifeDev

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Post by Ibrahim Husain. Follow him on Twitter.

One thing that I push my readers to experience is living proactively instead of reactively. A prolific lifestyle is one where you create your own opportunity, you take responsibility for your life and you go into your world and shape it into what you want it to be. A reactive lifestyle is just the opposite; you go out into the world and wait for life to interact with you, then you just react to each stimulus as it comes. People who live prolifically are more satisfied with their life, and I’ll tell you why.

People who live a prolific lifestyle decide what they want and create ways get it, rather than deciding what they want and waiting for the opportunity to arise. The difference isn’t necessarily in the end product, because with a little bit of luck they may both end up in the same place. Rather, the prolific one creates his own journey and therefore finds more satisfaction in it. It isn’t about the final product, the satisfaction comes from every step it took to get there.

With that in mind I urge you to try this little experiment. I started in 2008 and last year I experienced more stories worth telling than the rest of my years combined.

Make the Bucket List

Photo by Christabelle????

A bucket list is a list of things you want to do before you “kick the bucket.” I imagine you all know what that means, but just in case, a bucket list is a list of things to do before you die. You might have seen the Jack Nicholson/Morgan Freeman flick of a couple years ago with the same title. In the movie the two men escape from a cancer ward and take a road trip to check off all the things they want to do before they die.

I decided to put a little twist on my own personal bucket list. I make a yearly bucket list. What my list consists of is things that I want to accomplish or experience by the end of each year. And I make my list LONG. Last year is was 75 lofty accomplishments and experiences I wanted to have. I didn’t finish the list, but I enjoyed crossing off each one that I did finish. And this year I reassessed the ones that i didn’t get to last year, and the things that I still wanted to experience made their way to this year’s list.

The reason behind my yearly bucket list is twofold; if we wait for death, it may sneak up on us, leaving us unable to complete our lists, and if we make a list each year we will have accomplished life goals every year of our lives. Life will be richer, we will be happier, and we will have never lived stagnantly, because we always had a great experience or accomplishment just ahead of us.

Try my yearly bucket list this year. Print it out and hang it somewhere where you can see it each day, with a highlighter to mark things off as you experience them. And for even more enjoyment, make one of your goals to write the story of everything on your list. It will be such a wonderful peice to look back on, and it will motivate you to continue when life tries to slow you down. When you reach the finish line, you’ll have so many experiences under your belt that you won’t regret not doing the little things. And If we meet at the end, I’ll be looking forward to hearing your stories.

To read more of Ibrahim’s writing, check out his excellent blog ZenCollegeLife or follow him on Twitter.

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