By Randie Levin

With 2019 sprawled out in front of you, NOW is the perfect time to reimagine your renewed bucket list. This year instead of lumping every wish and goal onto a huge pile that resembles a mountain of wants, choose instead to systematically fill your bucket with a streamlined selection of initiatives that holistically represent your commitments to actionably living your legacy NOW.

Big difference when instead of wanting success, you are actively living it!

What does it mean to “fill your bucket?”

When I ask audiences and clients what they most want in life, 9 out of 10 report…happiness.

What if filling your bucket simply meant permitting happiness in? Only you can do that for yourself. No one else has that super power except you. No one can “make you happy” it has to start with YOU. It has to begin with a disconnect from excuses and limiting beliefs and a reconnect to your inner voice, intuition and soul.

By extension of this thought process, filling your bucket is essentially living your happiness. How do you navigate there?

1. Study your smile: What makes you smile? More than likely you are in tune with what makes you sad, but what inspires your happiness? Make a list of things that make you smile. Dig deep in putting this list together. Now circle 3 things that you can maximize more of in your everyday. Knowing where your happy triggers are allows you to do more that naturally makes you feel good and enjoy life. Repeat this process weekly.
2.  Ask YOU about YOU: Get on your own list! Life is a series of meetings. You meet with your boss, your employees, your vendors, and your clients at work. You go home and meet with your significant others for dinner…you meet on the soccer field with your kids, at the doctor’s office for an appointment, with your friends for lunch, at the gym for a class. Think about it, who is missing from your meeting list?

The single longest relationship that you will ever have is with yourself, and yet it is the most forgotten! As you pivot into the new year, plan monthly meetings with yourself to check in on successes, readjust expectations, define what is next, and to access who you are in the moment. If you recycle old goals and wishes from one year to the next do they still align with YOU? Do a recheck.  

3. Manage your overall EXPERIENCE: Think about your to-do lists, bucket lists, goal lists, wish lists, New Year’s resolution lists…what do they all have in common? More often than not, these lists are simply words on a page, random need-to-have items that you think may alter or elevate your life in some way. Change your point of view. Switch your list for the coming year. Group together similar ideas and items from your various dream lists and repurpose them as an experience list! Make your list purposeful and make it count!

Reaching for the experience rather than the random items on your list is a broader ask of yourself. The results are richer…AND…actually easier to grab hold of. Why? Let’s say that more travel is on your bucket list every year, and somehow you keep going to the beach. As stated it is unspecific and has no action steps, no process, and basically no commitment to making it happen. If you want to experience a historical and art filled trip to Italy and you put that on your list, it is easy to formulate all the action steps involved in making that experience a reality. When the process to your goal and the goal intersect…guess what? You live successfully and you do so in the current moment!

What do you want to experience in 2019?

Success feeds success. Even the most basic goals or resolutions can be thought of in terms of what you wish to experience if you have this particular thing happening in your life. Instead of reaching for various random items off your list, fill your bucket with meaning. Once you have the experience you seek formulated, take the necessary action steps to bring it to life. In order to experience it you must be in the doing and living of it. How do you want to feel, what do you want to see, what will add value to your life and your legacy? Now is your new next… seek the solutions or experiences you want and reverse engineer your bucket lists accordingly. Less can be more, fill mindfully!

Randi Levin CPC, founder & CEO, Randi Levin Coaching – is a nationally recognized transitional life strategist, Fortune 500 keynote, author, and reinvention expert. Randi supports women in becoming legends in their own lives! She works with emerging entrepreneurs and women in transition to redefine their legacy so that they can move from wanting success to living successfully. Randi is widely quoted and featured in top media outlets and she is regularly a featured guest expert on podcasts, radio, and women’s panels. Her workshops have been featured in The Wall Street Journal and Randi is the creator of The Personal Success Accelerator System and a contributing author in the anthology series Get RESULTS!