A Radical Bucket List for World-Changing Goals

Alex Wagman’s Bucket List Journal: Create a Lifetime of Inspiration and Purpose is the perfect companion to a dreamer, list maker or goal setter. Or for anyone who wants to become this type of person. He redefines bucket list – it doesn’t just have to be about what you want to accomplish before you die. Bucket lists can also help us achieve incremental change or get real with ourselves about where we want to be headed.

One type of a bucket list is the radical list. Here you dream big, crazy dreams and commit them to paper, ensuring you’re one step on the way to making these world-changing dreams a reality.

Radical Bucket List

Many of us have dreams that we keep to ourselves—dreams that we give up on prematurely after telling ourselves that we don’t have the courage to follow through with them; dreams that seem so outrageous that we never dare to write them down on paper for fear that we might be called crazy. It’s human nature to want to explore, to find a line and want to go beyond it. There can be a strange thrill of accomplishment, a self-congratulatory sensation, when doing something radical, like skydiving, even when it’s completely unwarranted. Simply letting gravity take control as you tempt nature by jumping out of an aircraft can fill you with such a rush that you believe you can achieve anything. The same goes for cliff jumping, especially when the jump is high enough to take your breath away as you plunge beneath the warmer water at the top, down to where it’s dark and cold at the bottom—so cold that it sends you gasping back for the surface and the sun. After that first jump, you have to do it again, partly because you can’t believe you did it and partly because the fear has given way to the thrill of such freedom.

I think that a bucket list specifically designed for radical living can be significant. It allows us to reach as high as we want and reminds us to venture toward all of our dreams and passions instead of just the safe ones. I’m not saying that you should build a bucket list filled with eighteen different versions of Russian roulette, but I am saying that it may require you to redefine the parameters of your comfort zone. Remember, no one is born with courage; sometimes all you need is ten seconds of insane courage or ten seconds of embarrassing bravery.

Now, I am asking you to step up and put your greatest desires on the page. If you had permission to do what you really wanted to do, what would you do? Don’t ask how—that will cut your desire off at the knees. Our lives really can be the great adventure we so passionately want them to be. Wouldn’t you rather live a life of “oh wells” than a life of “what ifs,” and besides, the most dangerous risk of all is the risk of spending your life not doing what you want on the bet that you can buy yourself the freedom to do it later.

Swim with sharks, tackle a marathon, jump out of a helicopter with nothing but a pair of skis on your feet, go crowd surfing, breathe fire, bungee jump off a bridge, race a sports car, test your luck in catfish noodling, saddle up on a bull, kayak down a waterfall, participate in an open-mic night at a comedy club, or camp out in the wilderness with nothing but a knife, a flint rock, and the clothes on your back. Pick the thing you are most afraid of and conquer it. Now it’s your turn. Dream big!

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