Travis Bell

‘Bucket List Porch Thoughts’

Long before the Hollywood film The Bucket List starring Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson was released, Melburnian Travis Bell was in the business of waking people up through presenting his life-changing seminars as The Bucket List Guy.

Although Travis had a positive outlook at life, at 18 he created a ‘before I die’ list of the things he most wanted to achieve. One by one he managed to ‘tick’ them off with a sense achievement and personal growth.

At the top of his list was to establish a franchise of personal training studios. He succeeded with 21 studios operating around Australia. Tick! He undertook an Iron Man Triathlon consisting of (3.8km swim, 180km bike ride and 42km marathon run), climbed to base camp on Mt Everest, surfed ‘Cloud Break’ in Fiji and met his business hero Richard Branson. Tick! Tick! Tick! Tick!

Although Travis created his own ladder of success through his fitness studios, after twenty years, he realised it was travelling up the wrong wall. Travis struggled to get out of bed to go to work each day and when he did, he cringed every time the phone rang or had to attend a meeting.

Locked away in his office, Travis began thinking about what he truly wanted to do in his life (again) and turned to motivational speaking, presenting and writing books. During his first presentation, Travis quickly adopted the name The Bucket List Guy and has since helped 1000’s of people around the world to reach their true potential.

I caught up with Travis on his Bucket List Porch where he was preparing for his upcoming signature 3-day ‘The Bucket List Xperience’ seminar in Melbourne (August 23-25), that won’t commence with a typical welcome address, coffee, notepad and bowl of white mints, instead, attendees will immediately forward abseil (Rap Jump) down at 10 storey building in Docklands hearing the words ‘Good morning, I’m Travis! This is your wake-up call.’

You have the unique ability of helping people transform lives by starting at the ‘Why’ in their lives. Why is it necessary to start your seminars abseiling down buildings?

People have both conscious and unconscious blinkers on their life. These are combinations of different stories, belief patterns and identity traits that have been running from day dot. When people are placed in situations (like on the side of 10 storey building) where they think they can’t achieve something and then they do, they then start thinking about everything else they thought they couldn’t achieve.

Most of us have seen or heard about the 2007 Hollywood film ‘The Bucket List’. Is the theme in the movie similar to your Bucket List seminars?

No. Most people write a bucket list based on the story in that movie, but I don’t agree with it in terms about what I present, and mentor people with, through my Bucket List techniques. My mission is not have people wait until it’s too late or diagnosed with a life-threaten illness to start living their lives.

I would imagine that people who attend your seminars have reached some point in their lives that desire some sort of change and come to you for leadership and direction. Is creating a bucket list the best starting point?

Essentially I help people write their bucket lists based on the blue-print I have developed. I help create and articulate a personal and meaningful life strategy in what I term to be living a tangible life. It creates a reason for doing what we do on a day-to-day basis.

Most of us are busy with our careers and raising families and perhaps don’t have finances to fund our bucket lists just yet. Are these scenarios typical of what holds us back?

My Bucket List Lifestyle has specifically been designed so we have ‘time-flow’ and the ‘cash-flow’ to do the things we want on our Bucket Lists, when we want to do them. A business and career plan should fit in your life plan, not the other way around.

Once successfully completing the Rap Jump, how do we start a bucket list?

The Rap Jump encourages people to think about what is real and gives them another sense of reality. Following the jump, bucket list items are easily created. The first step is to get out of the rut and really think about what you want out of life. It’s about paying attention to the things that really light you up. I give people the space to take the time out of their day-to-day lives to focus on the things they want to achieve.

If our bucket lists are about what truly floats our boats, are there typical bucket list categories that can guide us to identify what is tangible from what may be unobtainable?

Every bucket list is different but my aim is that should anyone be diagnosed with a life-threatening illness, I want them to be really happy about what they have achieved as individuals. I have seen many bizarre items listed that involve a lot of nudity, voodoo rituals and even cage fighting to raise money for charities, but there are also a lot of people who have gone on to walk the Kokoda Trail, publish books, jump out of planes and travel the world.

How do bucket list accomplishments make us grow?

On the other side of your bucket list is the ‘you’ who you don’t even know exists. As human beings we are addicted to seeing ourselves grow (it’s a basic human need) and you see yourself grow through seeing your potential, just like when we were little kids, it puts a smile on your face. When we become adults, we often fall in-line and a lot of us find ourselves existing rather than really living.

So going back to the ‘Why’, why is starting there so critical if we can’t achieve something on our list now?

The ‘why’ answers the really big reasons such as, ‘why do get out of bed each morning?’ If you put big and small carrots out in front of yourself, you at least you have carrots with something to look forward to. We go through a process from the ‘why’ to identify where people are at now. I introduce techniques of how to close the gap from where they are to where they want to be, really quickly.

What is your Porch Thought For The Day?

“A Bucket List is not just about the fun stuff to do before you die. It’s about who you grow to become in the process of ticking the things off your list. Your potential as a human being exists on the other side of those ticks.”