Hello CyberSpace

Welcome to my first post on my Blog "Living in the Bucket".....The name comes from the concept that if you organize your Life Wealth correctly, there is no need for a "Bucket List", as each day is lived in a style that is in integrity with your life goals.

I am starting with the first newsletter I wrote in 2002, I will use that as an example of how I intend to continue my work of helping people define and accumulate wealth in the nine dimensions (only one is money!), in order to "Live in the Bucket".  The full Library can be found at : http://lifetimesolution.com/site/newsletter.asp

Bob

 

 

Climb Every Mountain …

My wife and I just returned from a two week trip to Olympic and Mt. Rainier National Parks.  For those of you who have visited the wilderness of the Pacific Northwest, you know what a spectacular place it is.  For those of you who haven’t, I hope your future plans will allow you to.

We started planning for the trip in January.  This would be the first time that we had taken such a trip together and there was a need for some negotiation on the itinerary.  We ordered trail guides and maps to help us in our process.  The first guide that arrived had a picture of a bear sow and her cub on the front of it.   After seeing this picture, my wife announced that she was not going anywhere that there were bears!  I assured her that, in all my years of hiking, I had yet to see a bear and that the risk was worth taking.  Reluctantly, she continued our planning.  The area has many eco-systems --- such as mountains, glacier valleys, hot springs, rain forests, and seashores.  We wanted to see them all!   Our plan was to camp in the campgrounds and then spend the last three nights at The National Park Inn at Mt. Rainier.

Over the next few months, we laid out our hikes, planned our menus, and went thru our gear.  We had to add a few items of equipment; so we researched them on the internet and purchased some of them at local stores.  We even began a training program at the gym that lasted two months and had us in tip-top shape for our adventure.

Finally, we arrived in Seattle.  After spending a few nights there, we were on our way.  Over the next few days, we found we had to improvise; as some of our plans did not work out as we had thought.  Mother Nature forced us to shorten one of our hikes.  To my surprise, we also had to turn back on one of the trails when – yes, we ran into a bear and her cub!  They were a few hundred yards away from us, playing in an open field.  They never saw us, so we were free to spend some time watching.  What a treat to see wild animals in their own environment!  What we thought of as a danger actually turned out to be one of the high points of the trip.

 
It occurred to me that such an adventure is much like life itself.  We spend many hours planning for the future.  With the help of some sophisticated tools, we make projections.  Still, only the most naïve would believe that the final outcome would exactly match the original plan.  We spend most of our lives adjusting our plans to the reality of the moment.  Sometimes that reality involves confronting our fears and finding out that it was our pre-conceived perceptions that were the issue in the first place.  I still feel strongly that planning is a critical part of the process of living a successful life.  Still, it is in the adaptation of that plan that real life is experienced.   I guess there are always “bears” in every life, but with a good plan as a foundation, it’s easy to take a broader perspective and see the beauty of this thing we call life