Living To Do

A large percentage of women—and many men, I’d wager—might list “Have my dream wedding” in their Living To-Do list. And, as my little girl would say, “Why not?” Getting married, if you choose to do so, is a huge decision and, hopefully, a once-in-a-lifetime thing. Like anything else that’s only going to happen once, you hope to make it memorable.

Many people think that because I chose to get married at the courthouse with my husband, I didn’t have a “dream wedding” in mind. Honestly, I didn’t; sure, some Celtic clothing, bagpipes, and no shoes would have been nice—something very intimate and casual but lovely all the same—and we did talk about it; but when it came down to it, it simply wasn’t that important to me. We already had a baby, I was still finishing school, and we were happy—why spend a few hundred (or thousand—or more, if you’re many people!) dollars on that single day?

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As this week is Build a Better Image Week, it’s a perfect time to start setting some personal goals in our Living To-Do Lists that fit this concept. Whether you interpret the week as a time to work on how you see yourself, how you look to potential employees, or simply digging deeper into yourself to find out who you really are, you can use it to your advantage in building your list.

Perhaps you’ve had a rough year with your job or school, and you’re questioning your previous goals in life. That’s reassuringly common, and the question, as Julia Cameron always says, is not, “Why me?” but “What’s next?”

So what’s next for you? Set some goals on paper this week and take the next step. Here are some ideas.

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Something that I recently added to my own Living To-Do List is to offer gratitude to the people who have really made a difference in my life. And boy is that a lot of people! From teachers to relatives, hospital staff to past employers, it’s sure to be a list that will keep growing throughout my life, even as I check each person off.

Most of us do say thank-you, if nothing else as a simple gesture of good manners. We say it to our waitress, our flight attendant, our spouse… or do we? Try counting the number of times you say a simple “thank you” each day and see what you come up with.

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Learning something new can—and should, I say!—be a high priority on many people’s Living To-Do Lists. But it has to be realistic. I was talking with a friend the other day about her list of 100 in 1,000, and she was lamenting about how she had a goal to do a daily practice—learn something new each day through a specific means—in mind that she had yet to start, and she was upset because the goal was to do it every single day.

Now, my friend is a resilient, smart girl who is involved in activism, school, a job and freelance writing. I know for a fact that she’s very busy, as well as ambitious; such a goal would not only be hard to accomplish but also dampen her spirits.

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