For many of us, we have whimsical dreams of greatness.

Flights of fancy, that are soon dismissed as daydreaming.

And therein lies the problem.

• We’re afraid people will laugh.
• Or tell us to “be practical”.
• Worse still.  We’re afraid that we’ll fail.  And everyone will know it.

And so, just like in high school,

We live to conform.

To fit in.

To be better than average, but not different from average.

This is no way to live (anymore).

• What if you actually wrote that list down?
• What if you actually made that list public?
• And people cheered on your aspirations?
• Encouraged you to go for it?
• What if you did one.. .just one item on the list?  And was inspired enough to go after another?

Inspired by:

• Joel Runyon’s “IMPOSSIBLE List” (from The Blog of Impossible Things),
• Steve Kamb’s “Epic Quest” list (from Nerd Fitness),
• Tyler Tervooren’s 1% Club (from Advanced Riskology),
• Chris Guillebeau’s “Places I’ve Been List” (from the Art of Non-Conformity blog),
• Lachlan Cotter’s “The Awesome List” (from The Art of Audacity),
• Lauren Rains’ “The Mad To Do List” (from The Mad to Live), and
• Jessica Meadows’ “101 Things List” (from 101 Things Before You Die)

I’ve decided to publicize my “My Life as an EPIC Movie” list.
Here’s my list.
I’d love to see the beginnings of yours, in the comments below.

Play this while you read… it’ll get you in the right mindset for world conquest. LOL!

FILM:

• Make a significant creative contribution to an epic movie.
• Contribute to a Disney movie
• Contribute to a PIXAR movie

LANGUAGE:

• Speak Spanish fluently
• Speak French fluently
• Speak Mandarin Chinese fluently

TRAVEL:

• Visit every continent
• Travel for 1 year straight

RANDOM:

• Be part of a flash mob
• Become a world-class salsa dancer
• Start a worldwide movement. Then, start another.
• Appear in a music video on MTV (DONE!)
• Swim with Stringrays (DONE!)
• Perform in the Olympics Opening Ceremonies (DONE!)

FAMILY:

• Renew my marriage vows in a different country every year
• Create a public list of 100 things to teach my sons.

SPORT & FITNESS:

• Learn Tai-Chi or Ju-Jitsu
• Learn Parkour / Free-running
• Learn Capoeira (The day after posting this list, I discovered that a neighbor of mine teaches this! WHAAAT!)
• Learn to surf
• Learn 10 soccer tricks that most soccer players cannot do (Around the world, etc.)
• Run a half marathon
• Run a marathon
• Do a triathlon
• Run the Krispy Kreme Challenge
• Do 100 pushups a day for 100 days straight
• Run a 5k (DONE!)
• Run a 10k (DONE!)
• Do the 12-mile Urbanathlon obstacle course (DONE!)

SPEAKING:

• Speak at BlogWorld
• Speak at South X Southwest
• Speak at The World Domination Summit
• Speak at Yanik Silver’s Underground Online Seminar
• Speak at TED

WRITING:

• Write and Publish a bestselling book series for kids, that will inspire them to love reading and adventure. Dr Seuss meets Harry Potter meets CS Lewis
• Write a novel during NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month – November of every year)
• Read at least 20 books every year
• Create an iconic superhero that lasts a generation
• Launch a new product every month for 12 months straight (Writing, audio, and video)

MINIMALISM:

• Own less than 600 things

Choice.

The thing is -

we get to choose.

You get to choose

And I get to choose.

Life doesn’t have to JUST HAPPEN to us.

If you think you’re not letting life just happen to you – stand back and really evaluate what you do day-after-day…

and how that bleeds into week-after-week…

and how that becomes month-after-month.

If you think you’re not letting life just happen to you -

Think about all the grand aspirations you had when you were a teenager

Or a young adult

Think about how, one by one, you’ve justified calling those things “impractical” and “unrealistic”.

Think about how your one life to live,

has become very much like a recycled documentary:
Informative but uninteresting

Volume on mute while you multi-task.

Clinical, and with as few surprises as possible.

Rote and routine, mind-numbingly mediocre.

This is no criticism.

This is the very life I’m trying to shake myself out of.

But it’s also the same truth for most of you reading this right now.

Let’s give each other a collective shake.

Let’s ditch the documentary lifestyle

And dare to dream with our feet.

What’s on your list?