Bucket Lists Unveiled: A Blueprint for Personal and Professional Fulfilment
Explore the transformative journey of creating and achieving bucket list goals, from personal adventures to business milestones. Discover the emotional fulfilment and lasting memories that come with ticking items off the list, along with the importance of accountability and setting realistic objectives. Join the conversation on visualising dreams and embracing new possibilities!
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Transcript
So if it's a new client that's coming in for the first time, I'll, I'll just ask them what's on, what's on your bucket list. And, um, quite often you'll get a. Response that's talking about, I'm not sure what you, what you mean, what's the, what's a bucket list. What's, but a lot of people haven't, thought about it.
Well, sorry, I'll take that back. They've thought about it, but that's all I've done. So we then get the conversation going about, well, what are the, some of the things that you want to do over the next year, five, 10 years? What are some of the things you is a must do before you're, you know, no longer part of this earth?
Um, And it just starts to then, it becomes a process, they start to think about it. Uh, I'll then get them to go through the exercise of, of, of just a brain dump, getting it all down onto a piece of paper and then starting to refine it a little bit. Um, and, and as people go through this exercise, you can, you can actually see.
mind expanding on, on the things that they want to do. Um, and I think until you start to get it out in the open and out of your head and onto a piece of paper and start talking to your family about it, uh, you're probably a little restricted on the things that you want to, that you think you want to do.
Um, but by actually sitting down and going through the exercise, suddenly all these other opportunities open up that, that you may have missed out on.
[:Nice big bucket full of lists, but I guess the thing isn't it, um, How, in your experience, how, how much are people really thinking seriously about what's on a, on a bucket list and how far ahead are they thinking and how realistic are they thinking?
[:And I think that's the important part is to, is to write it down and get it on paper. , and even have it somewhere that you can see constantly to, just as a reminder that, that these are the things that we want to do. Because I think people get too caught up in their day to day and they forget about.
the longer term picture of what it is they want to do.
[: [:Um, and it's important to understand what those things are, you know, all those different elements of, of the, the family bucket list, what, what those elements are so that you can start to, you know, Put them in place and start to work towards helping each other achieve your goals and your collective goals.
It's um, it's something that we don't do enough of.
[: [:It just gives you a good feeling, a good sense of the work that you're doing is worthwhile. So those times where you have to put a bit more time and effort into your business, you look back and go, Yep, it was worth it because we've been able to do this family holiday, which we haven't taken for three years.
[:And, but to be able to have done it is just huge. And I know, you know, my, my kids are older and probably at the point where they don't want to come on holidays with us too much longer. Although, you know, if dad pays, then, you know. You know, maybe that will always come. I'll be happy to go anywhere. Yes, but it was certainly, um, it's certainly, you're absolutely right there, it's a huge thing to be able to tick that off the list, and I guess, I think that's an important point as well, is that I guess we didn't really think of it in terms of a bucket list, we didn't maybe put that label on it, but it was something that we had talked about as a family for a long time about places that we wanted to go and the kind of holiday we wanted to have.
Um, and explore and it was the absolute trip of a lifetime and and I know and I think that's the, you know, personally, I think it's also important to make sure that you don't once you take something off a list. You don't, you know. just forget it either. Um, you know, for me, there's a great little thing that, um, the iPhone has that allows you to change your background based on an album, uh, that you have.
And, uh, I've picked the album of all of the photos from our trip from last year. And so every hour, there's a new photo that comes up and just reminds me of, of that holiday and, uh, makes you think about what you want to do next on the list. Right.
[:As an example, we were in Sydney last week and we caught up with some friends and it was virtually 30 years to the day that we'd all travelled over to the UK. We kind of went separately. Uh, and, and met over there. Um, but the, the, the memories that that's created, I mean, they've lasted 30 years, and they're still, when you see it, we were going through photo albums, and when you see the photos of, of certain events and situations, it, it all comes flooding back to you, and it's, you know, it was like it was yesterday.
If you don't do those things, and I could have easily not have taken this trip overseas, there was , pressure to focus on a career and do all that kind of stuff, but this was kind of like a once in a lifetime opportunity, and 30 years later I'm still talking about it. So that's the kind of, uh, those memories are invaluable, um, and they'll last with me till the day I'm no longer here.
[: [:They're this kind of person and then when you sit down with them, and they start to do their bucket list The things that I write down You You kind of go, wow, I didn't, I didn't expect you to be the kind of person that wanted to jump out of a plane. I didn't think you were the kind of person that, you know, wanted to do a bungee jump but there's not a huge amount.
Other than that, there's not, there's not a huge amount that you kind of go, wow, that's, um, that's out there.
[:I'm not doing it. Kudos to all those people that do. Um, but, uh, you know, once you start going down that path, that exercise, I mean, how specific do people get? Do they, do they get specific enough? I mean, is it, is it, um, or, or are they, you know, at this, you know, unachievable levels, because there are some things that are on a bucket list that are.
Not necessarily about me. Money there. It's about opportunities. You know, I want to I want to star in a major motion picture alongside, you know, Julia That's that's going to be a little bit tougher to achieve really isn't it
[:The first thing I think you've got to look at is just explore the options What would I need to do to get to that, you know, and maybe you can the movie thing You know, there's probably a fair bit of work involved there, but There may be things that you can start to do to go Hang on. This is a little more achievable than I I might have thought, you know um, maybe you start starring in some tv commercials, maybe you build it up to a to a non speaking role on a um on a soap opera and work your way through and who knows, you know, but, , I think you've got to, you've got to be open minded and you've got to be willing to explore what would it take for me to be able to do it and then potentially get to the point where you go, okay, well, that's It might be achievable, but it's by getting that one goal, it's going to stop me getting all these other goals that are more believable, I guess.
So it doesn't hurt to explore them, but I think you've then got to put that into context with all the rest of them, um, and make sure that you, you know, you're hitting all the others as well.
[: [:It's equally as important.
[: [:Um, when, so I first met my wife overseas and, and we spent three and a half months at the back end of our trip traveling around Europe. Um, and one of the things we did when we did that was we had a big book. Map, um, like a physical map, and we actually traced the roads that we went on and, and, and where we went and everything else.
Um, so it's on my list to, uh, replicate that trip, go back and do it again, um, and just experience the difference and, and we would be doing it slightly different to the way we did it 30 years ago. Um, but that's, that's there. I mentioned guitar. I, you know, I'm learning to play guitar, which is something I've thought about for years and years and years.
I've got a guitar for Christmas and I'm into those guitar lessons. I want to learn to scuba dive, that's on my list as well. So, and go to see the Northern Lights, that's on mine and my wife's list.
Yeah, so there's a lot of travel.
[:So it was a good reminder. And uh, two weeks after we'd been there, there were showing these magnificent photos of the Northern Lights. Um, so we only just missed it, which is gives an excuse to go back. So that's something to go
[: [:I mean, what does that, what does that look like? What sort of things should we be putting into it? I mean, you know, because you talk about, you know, you mentioned sort of, you know, making a certain amount of calls in a week. That's kind of a small list, but there might be awards there. There might be, you know, the bigger picture of a sale.
Um, there's lots of things aren't there that should be on a bucket list for a business. And how do you go about extracting that from people?
[:Want to achieve in business so asking how long they want to be in business for How much they would like to sell it for in an ideal world? How much would they sell it for? um how much time they want to spend in the business, , and you Do they want to win a telstra business award for you know best in their industry?
um get a feel for all of those which are which are the bigger elements and then and then Breaking it down into achievable You smaller targets that are all aiming towards that. So, you know, a Telstra award, for example, what, what does the business need to look like to have a real good shot at winning this category?
Um, what have other winners of that category, what does their business look like and how can we get to that point or beyond? Um, and once you know those numbers, break it down, um, so that you can start to chip away at it. Uh, Um, but I think one of the big ones is, is keeping an eye on how much you would like to sell your business for one day.
[:And it's not an, it's not an easy process at all. And it's one that is, um, expensive as well as, as well as time consuming, but the people that want that. What's it more for the, I think of, as much as there is definitely an advantage in terms of publicity and all the rest of it that goes with it.
Ultimately, the real advantage is an emotional one.
[:You know, the, the, the whole thing should be built around emotion. And it's an interesting thing to see the. level of excitement that people get to once you build that emotion in to their business, which is, which they probably haven't had in the past. Um, it just creates a whole new level of, of, of work ethic and, and commitment because you know that there's a worthwhile goal at the end of it, whatever that is for each individual business owner.
