Do yourself a favor:  find your list of goals and dreams — be it typed up in a cryptic excel spreadsheet, or scribbled on a yellow legal pad — maybe it’s a pile of random sticky-notes that are stacked up on the nightstand.  Delete.  Cross out.  Throw away these lists.  YES, “delete the bucket list” is what I appear to be saying.  In whichever way yours might have been created (be it an actual list, notes in a journal, an app on your phone), go on and get rid of it.  Toss it aside and promise me this:  You will not live out life’s ambitions under the confines of a “LIST.”  Ah, see where I’m headed, now?

No, I would not actually want someone to rid themselves completely of visualized goals or intentions (e.g. there is a vision board in my bedroom).  In fact, putting such objectives out into the universe is a powerful tool and fundamental pillar of the controversial Law of Attraction, a premise to which I personally subscribe and often professionally encourage (in so many words).  Family therapy theorist, Virginia Satir said, “We can learn something new anytime we believe we can.”  And so, could we not also become something new anytime we believe?

Let’s magnify this metaphorically, of course.  What if your “list” could become expansive beyond all reason?  What if we create instead a “well” of dreams?  A “cosmos” of opportunities?  Ditch the container and do not be defined by an end.  Of course, do take whatever small steps are necessary to bulk up the intention, by way of concrete action.  Do not neglect the latter and vital component of the word “attrACTION.”  Chunking down goals into small steps, allows not only the actual manifestation of desired achievement in time, but sustains also a kind of residual, and effervescent feeling of hope – which itself can be a pretty remarkable entity that supports us in carrying on.  In carrying us forward with drive and motivation.  Perhaps towards other goals, perhaps towards other everyday things.  Hope, born out of goal setting, might just be one of the best prescriptions that we fill in our lives which can help manage fluctuations naturally endured as human beings.

To hope is to cope.  I have to assess the capacity of hope with clients on occasion.  It proves one’s ability to see ahead of themselves.  Not to be confused for a perpetual “looking forward” or relentless concern that bears anxiety or panic.  But hope?  Hope can indicate an intrapersonal strength and mark of seeing beyond one’s physical boundaries of the self.  I would propose then, that to dream is to be reverent.  And perhaps hope is a direct path towards this admiration.  If we have hope about ourselves and our intentions, perhaps in turn, we have for ourselves the highest form of self-devotion.  To generate this specific care and loyalty, towards the only person that you are surely spending the rest of your life with (aka: YOU), well that kind of love and affection is not to be ignored.  Cherish, nurture, and fill yourself with hope.  You and your dreams are unconditionally worth it.