Bucket List – A number of experiences or achievements that a person hopes to have or accomplish during their lifetime.

Looking for a fun endeavor? Put a bucket list together! It’s a great way for you to find opportunities that can potentially fill your life with new experiences and unforgettable memories.

Too often people look at bucket lists as some enormous, morbid “To Do List” that you desperately need to check off before you die. “I need to put xyz on my bucket list” is frequently said in passing about a destination or adventure that someone would like to experience, but in all likelihood never will.

Bucket lists are meant to be fulfilling…and fun! Why not take action and create a list of adventures to enhance your life?

Travel Bucket Lists

A travel bucket list is an awesome motivator. It can excite you and inspire you to get out there and see the world or go on new adventures. Find an experience that has piqued your interest? Great! Planning your bucket list will give you the time to research a destination or learn about a new experience before committing to it.

A travel bucket list doesn’t have to be 100% realistic. It can…and should…be ambitious. Find goals that are outside of your comfort zone, but be sure to include reasonable ones, too. You don’t want your goals to be so unattainable that you get discouraged to the point of not doing anything on the list.

Creating your own travel bucket list. It’s as easy as…

Find Inspiration – Do you have an adventure or experience in mind, but don’t know enough about it? Want to do something or go somewhere new, but don’t know where to start? Do you have a trip in mind that seems out of reach?

• Research where you want to go/what you want to do. If you can’t take your trip within the year, at least start planning it.
• Social Media
  • Create a Pinterest Board. Pin all your ideas and activities to it. Pinterest is a nice, easy, visual way to plant the seeds in your subconscious that say YES….you are going to take that trip and it’s just a matter of time.
  • Instagram feeds.
  • Facebook pages.
  • YouTube channels.
• Do you have friends or family who travel a lot? Talk to them! Get ideas! It’s helpful to get advice and opinions from others if they have travel experience. But keep in mind that not everyone will have glowing reviews of a place they visited…or just the opposite – they can’t stop raving about it. Stay open minded and take everything in. You can never have too much information when you’re learning about some place new.
• Maps – It may sound silly, but if you pull up a map and start journeying around looking at attractions, parks or other places of interest, eventually you will run into something fascinating enough that you’ll want to add to your list.

Set Goals – An easy place to start is one bucket list trip every two to three years. Or set small goals like taking a couple mini road trips somewhere over the weekend that you’ve never been to before.

• Realistic – Include destinations within your reach.
• Ambitious – Include at least one dream destination, even if is seems unattainable.
• Create a list of five to ten destinations that combine “realistic” with “ambitious.”

Set a Time Frame – It could be one bucket list trip a year, or every two years, etc. Once a month, or every 3 months, etc. Set a time frame, maybe even set a date – really work towards making it happen!

A Small Challenge

I challenge you to create a travel bucket list.

Your list is yours to do with whatever you want. It can be finite or non exhaustive. Close to home, far away – whatever it takes to get you out there enjoying life a little bit more. I add new destinations to my list regularly, and at the end of the year it is nice to look back and see all of the things I’ve accomplished. It also inspires me to “level up”, finding new adventures to pursue.

Who knows…if you fill your list with enough travel inspiration, it just might change your life!