KAROL'S TIPS

Now it's 2020, isn't it time to tick something off your bucket list? Time is speeding by... I've always wanted to take a road trip across the USA, but it always seemed like there was something to stop me - usually lack of time, or lack of money, or when I had these perhaps the transmission bearings in my car needed fixing, or perhaps the kids were too little and I couldn't get childcare, or perhaps it just seemed more important to do something else.

A bucket list is essentially of things you'd like to do before you die. It comes from the phrase 'kick the bucket' and was, we think, invented very recently, actually by a film of the same name starring Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman. In it, the pair play a couple of cancer patients who decide to tick everything off their bucket lists.

If we all lived a little more as if time was limited, and decided to do something we really wanted from time to time, then bucket lists wouldn't be lists full of yearning and past disappointment, but merely checklists full of memories and future plans.

Most of us want to travel so a bucket list usually includes places you want to travel to.

Other items might be activities you'd like to try, things you'd like to see, food you'd like to eat, people you'd like to meet or speak to.

A bucket list is also about being daring and taking risks. If you've always wanted to try paragliding or snowboarding, bungee jumping or skydiving, this is your chance.

The list is also an opportunity to face fears, if you would like to. It's inextricably tied to those regrets we harbour, such as our fear of heights or fluing5 stopping us from traveling, or never speaking up for a person who was bullied in school. The bucket list is a kind of checklist, but it allows us to tie up these loose ends.

Some examples for your own list might include:

• taking that once in a lifetime trip!
• apologising to the girl in school who you weren’t kind to
• writing your memoir, finally
• taking a spa day or sky diving at or from the top of the tallest building in the world!
• learning to speak a second language and visiting that country

So have a think about what might be on your bucket list - what you'd like to do in your limited lifetime - and write them down. Then, start to check them off. You've nothing to lose, so dare to win, be, and enjoy life to the full!