F*ck the Bucket List for the Health Conscious: Trusting Your Heart
“Ayelet Baron is fierce with faith that to buck the system and trust our hearts is an act of radical self-care. Forget fear, frustration, formulas and false beliefs. Find fortitude within these pages to follow your heart to a more fulfilling, health future. Full of provocative questions and expeditions, F*ck the Bucket List for the Health Conscious will reframe your sense of what’s possible for yourself and our collective courageous future.” —Shelly L. Francis, author of The Courage Way and Founder, Creative Courage Press
You are being invited to the biggest transformation on the planet today and it’s up to you to take the first steps. You may not know where you’re headed, but you’re becoming more courageous and curious to experience life and all it has to offer.
When you are health conscious, you become a dynamic creator of your life. You can no longer afford to sit back passively and complain or blame the world or anyone outside yourself for your problems. Why? Because you can no longer be satisfied with the world the way it is now. You consciously choose to step out of being told how to live your life.
F*ck the Bucket List for the Health Conscious serves as a wake-up call for anyone who is no longer satisfied with the way things are, and an inspiration to anyone who is trekking into the unknown.
There’s no going back when you’re walking through a gateway of awareness. You can easily lead yourself into a healthy world of possibilities. You are already on your way if you’re engaging with this trilogy. The rest is in your hands. What if by tapping into your heart you’re already here, and you allow yourself to play and experiment as a health-conscious creator? What then? What’s whispering to you? Are you ready to listen?
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More Reviews:
“‘You are not alone,’ Ayelet Baron assures us in this heart and mind-blowing third book in her visionary F*ck the Bucket List series. If you are becoming more awake and aware, this book is an insightful call to action, a compelling invitation to take charge of your own life from someone who walks the talk.” —Lynnda Poliio, multi-award-winning author, Trusting the Currents
“Ayelet’s book(s) is a roadmap for those seeking to challenge their norms and achieve enlightenment. A must-read for powerful creators who care deeply about the world around them.” —Ahad Bandealy, founder & CEO, Get A-Head
“For years, if I stumbled and lost my way, I have turned to the writing and wisdom of Ayelet Baron to find my way back to myself again. She masterfully guides us to trust ourselves, and to travel our most purposeful path. In this powerful, insightful, and essential third leg of the F*ck the Bucket List trilogy, Ayelet invites us to dance with the possibilities pre-built into our lives—to shift from being a consumer to being an adventurer and creator. If you are seeking to enhance how you trust yourself, pursue meaningful work, and open your heart to completely new possibilities, this book was written just for you!” —Bill Jensen, best-selling author of Simplicity, The Courage Within Us, and The Day Tomorrow Said No
“Our heart wants only the best for us. Ayelet’s third book in the F*ck The Bucket List trilogy compels us to go within to uncover the deepest desires within our hearts. Trekking into the unknown is about trusting our inner voice, the calling within our heart. No one else knows what is best for us. Only we know what is best for us. We are the creators of our destiny. We must let the magic of our hearts guide us to create happiness, joy, and freedom consciously.” —Carol Chapman, Host of Hearts Rise Up Podcast and Community, heart-centered guide, author, speaker
“Sometimes you come across a trilogy of books that speak to you deeply and personally. Except to nod your head in agreement, feel the challenge of going against the grain and the exciting pull of personal adventure. Ayelet Baron will take you on a trek into the unknown, one from which you will never want to come back.” —Kay Newton, author and midlife strategist
“The timing of this book couldn’t be more perfect. As our world continues to change, so many people, myself included, have been forced to look deeply at the ways we work and live, at how we relate and connect with one another, and how we choose to take care of ourselves. Already so many norms have been blown apart, giving us a huge opportunity to change our course. What do we keep? What do we leave behind?
As the leader of a community of female founders where we regularly connect, collaborate and co-create, this book is particularly valuable for me, as I suspect it may be for others. It is a guide to not only how to ensure you care for yourself, but also in exploring new ways of caring for each other as we build new paths together.
F*️ck the Bucket List for the Health Conscious is an excellent guide to the questions we will have as leaders of the new world. It opens up possibilities for us all as to what’s next. Don’t miss the opportunity to have Ayelet as your guide.” —Jenn LeBlanc, author, Changing Tides: Powerful Strategies for Female Founders and Launching for Revenue, and founder, Changing Tides Movement and ThinkResults
“Ayelet Baron’s trilogy of F*ck the Bucket List is truly an empowering read. Ayelet poses questions that are critically important for this time in our evolution and more importantly-for our survival. Many of us have been so conditioned to giving our power away by yielding it to the status quo that we have lost our individual voices and as a result, compromised our collective future. Ayelet reminds us that we each have a voice and provides the space to explore what that is and to unapologetically use it. A must read!” —Tammy McCrary, artist advocate, author, and founder of Artistology
“F*️ck the Bucket List for the Health Conscious: Trusting Your Heart helps us examine the unhealthy role fear plays in our world by exposing stories of influencers and experts we have been conditioned to trust. It helps us discover, at our own pace, what and who is for us, and who isn’t, by listening deeply and questioning everything. We learn that we don’t need to stay in a divided world of winners and losers. We begin to see the abundant opportunities that lie in front of us. This may be the last book in the trilogy, but just the beginning of creating what’s possible in our lives and our communities.” —Tim McDonald, former Director of Community, The Huffington Post
“F*ck the Bucket List trilogy is a primer for the courageous heart on the journey to true self-discovery. Ayelet does not do the work for you in this process of divine discovery but she points the way across the threshold. As she says, the way forward involves action and commitment to a goal which might seem hazy, but she is there as a companion to accompany you on perhaps the greatest adventure of your lifetime. The journey to YOU!” —Flicka Rahn, musician, author, sound healer, and educator
“F*️ck the Bucket List for the Health Conscious is an extraordinary ‘radically change your life’ curriculum to listen to the ‘whispers of your heart’ and finally be bold enough to live YOUR unique and beautiful life. Grab a pencil and paper because you’ll get busy doing imaginative and inspirational practices in the first few pages of this fabulously written book!
Ayelet, with the Universe, gives us a ‘Divinely Disruptive’ story about what’s not working in our human design. She exposes the fears that drive our decisions in health, relationships, love, money, and what we’ve constructed in this ‘Houston we’ve got a problem’ reality. And then she offers up the ‘Medicine’ from both her very personal life experiences and many beautiful people who have undergone their own transformation to provide potent truths that instantly enhance your life.
Ayelet’s years of being a sought after corporate wiz to a futurist with wisdom borne from loss, faith, trauma, truth and most importantly selflove and service to help others thrive is a gifted guide. In each Chapter/Expedition, you’ll find ways to ignite the True You. And through your imagination, boldness and courage, you’ll take the steps right here right now to manifest your Soul’s purpose. And how to reconnect to your best friend ever—Nature! A key ingredient for living in deep love and unity with Grand Earth and each other.
Take your time on this best ever summer read! I felt myself getting so excited to get to the next Expedition because something magical happened to me on my own journey to live a wildly spontaneous and joyful life! The F*ck the Bucket List trilogy inspired me on such a deep personal level that I now have a grazing plan to restore Bison habitat near the New Mexico border to heal the soil and Soul of GrandMother Earth on the land I call Oniya, which means ‘to breathe.’ This book guided me to go deep inside myself and continue charting the course for a healthy life filled with possibilities.” —Tara Sheahan, founder, Conscious Global Leadership LLC Oniya ‘Restoring Bison and Biodiversity to heal GrandMother Earth’, and Breathelab ‘Natural nose breathing to rewire for happiness’
Author Bio:
Ayelet Baron is a visionary author, healer, and global futurist. She was recently recognized on Forbes as one of the world's top female futurists. In the midst of a very successful career as a global strategy executive at Cisco Systems, she went through her own transformation. She wrote this book trilogy because she wished she had this universal guidance when she started on her own journey. Her dream is to help unleash millions and millions of people, who are ready to do our inner work, and become the architects of humanity.
Book Excerpt:
Introduction: Listening to the Whispers of Your Heart
When we set out on a journey, we usually know where we’re going—often we think we do, when we don’t really have a clue. In November 2016, I took a leap of faith and left San Francisco to start a new adventure. I moved to a remote town with people I thought I trusted. I had never heard of Lund or the Sunshine Coast of British Columbia before, but during my first visit, I fell in love with its natural beauty, expansiveness, and tranquility. Living close to the ocean had always been a dream of mine but living in a rural community was entirely unknown to me. I had spent much of my life in large urban concrete jungles (cities) and was accustomed to having easy access to anything I desired, be it work, entertainment, art, healthy food, or friends. But I left it all behind to trek into the unknown—to explore possibilities.
The intention of creating something purposeful was exciting, and my enthusiasm and trust blinded me from truly seeing that the people I had bet on were not healthy for my well-being. They talked a good game, and I allowed myself to be hooked into their vision, but when it came to actions and creating what was most needed in unity, there were always excuses and reasons why we couldn’t do it. The talk was louder than the ability to execute something meaningful, together, in community. And it wasn’t anyone’s fault that it all fell apart. But the real reason I came to this town was not to build something with them but to have a place deep in the rainforest to connect with nature, become health conscious, and let these three books flow out into the world.
Sometimes our biggest gifts are disguised as what society calls failures and disappointments. Healing is an inside job. Challenges become problems when we allow ourselves to react without taking the time to think and feel through situations. Sometimes our heart is calling us to weed out what is obstructing the energy at our core, and many of us have learned not to listen to its call. But strength comes from facing our challenges and moving away from the norm by transforming them into our greatest opportunities. When we can look at a challenge and examine its root cause, we take a step toward self-awareness and mastery. We are always free to choose our own experience and adventure, even at times when the external world is calling us to take sides and fight for our lives—which is the current story of our times.
I had two choices: stay in an unhealthy partnership or listen deeply to the warnings my heart was whispering. I did not know at the outset of this expedition that I had come to this peaceful little town to get in touch with my own roots, learn from nature, and heal. And in 2020, when the global pandemic was unleashed, I felt gratitude to the universe for providing me with these choices, because if I had been successful with these partners, I would have ended up with a conscious leadership academy at the edge of the world that no one could travel to because of the lockdowns. And once again, I tapped into the universal wisdom that there are no accidents. Maybe the Universe conspired to help me practice my ability to adapt to change?
Nature teaches us that deviating from the norm and staying in flow is how we thrive. And it need not be a battle of survival. The natural world thrives when it adapts to change by becoming stronger and more resilient. While the hungry bear may have climbed the plum tree in our yard and snapped a branch with its weight, a new branch is waiting to emerge and flourish with new fruit. A healthy tree will always find a way to birth new fruit despite the hardships it faces. Each of us has been gifted and wired with this same potential, and our heart is simply waiting for us to tap into our true abilities and flow with our natural rhythms.
Living in the midst of nature entirely changed my life and provided an opportunity for me to learn from her pure fierceness and beauty. I learned to connect with the heartbeat of the earth and listen to the deep whispers of my heart. I was reminded that we are not separate from nature and that there’s a natural flow to everything. But by no means has it been easy. Like any of us, my inner self was waiting patiently for me to begin a healthier chapter in life and unlearn much that had been stuffed inside me by those who had walked their own paths before me and felt they knew what was best for me. I learned to ask questions and get to the source of everything, because no one had my answers, especially people who didn’t bother to find out what my questions were because they had a predetermined agenda of their own.
Sometimes our destination is not clear, and it’s hard to face the unknown because we’ve been led to believe that we should always have clear goals in order to achieve success in life. Why else do so many of us greet every New Year with resolutions? Why would depression, burnout, loneliness, and stress-induced diseases be spiraling so high among so many of us? Why have we been brought up to believe that we’re here to achieve more and more success? Why have we been taught that happiness itself is a destination, and we’re seen as “losers” when we fail to attain it?
When we travel along our path, we can become increasingly aware that there is no destination in life—just life itself. Many well-known authors have written about being present and appreciating the moment—a task that has proven to be challenging for many of us, as it’s out of alignment with societal pressures to achieve and become a “someone” who is celebrated and known.
One Day You Break Free
You may not know where you’re headed on your path, but at a certain point you become more courageous and curious to experience life and all it has to offer. And this is where you may find yourself right now. The rest of your journey is in front of you, mysterious and unknown. The darkest hours can be behind you when you do your work and choose to trek into the unknown. And to do so, you jump into the third leg of our journey where you wholeheartedly begin to trust your heart, your intuition, and the deep whispers of the universe. When you start listening and becoming fully aware of what’s healthy and what’s toxic for you—when it comes to the people you put in your heart, the beliefs you put in your mind, and the food and products your body consumes—you become a healthy, conscious creator of your life.
As more of us awaken to the voice deep within us, we will understand that when we come together in unity, not conformity or uniformity, our collective journey on this planet will also transform. There are stories in this book of courageous people who are transforming education, fashion, health, and agriculture, for example; they are included simply to make you curious enough to connect with them and with others who are creating healthy systems. Instead of trying to save or fix our broken systems, there is an opportunity to create what is needed most.
Each of us is here to do our work in addressing our wounds and traumas in our own way; we dove into this in the first two books of this trilogy. You are the only one who can lead yourself out of your own darkness to live a healthy life. What if you could have more joy, less stress, and more energy to play? What would it be like to no longer frantically obsess over “achieving” or winning the good life?
We are all fumbling along, doing the best we can with what we know and have. As we explored in the first two books of this trilogy, it’s up to each of us to direct our attention and energy toward what and who is healthy and away from what and who is toxic for our mental, emotional, and physical health. Intentions are key as we take our first steps in being consciously aware of whether people have healthy intentions beneath their words and actions. And we are always seeking to understand the root cause of our own intentions and actions. We have an opportunity to become increasingly aware of whether we are acting out of fear, guilt, shame, or a sense of having to be responsible. This is where living in alignment and tapping into our heart guides and directs us into healthy actions and outcomes and away from stressful situations and people.
Had I not moved to Lund, I would never have met my friends Janet and Rob Southcott, who are part of a local community creating Blueberry Commons, a cohousing and food security cooperative in Powell River. They are beautiful, heart-filled people who have brought joy into my life. Rob was a paramedic for many years and is now on the local city council, and Janet is a talented artist and writer. It was serendipity that we met, since I have mostly kept to myself and have not integrated into the local community, except for most of my wonderful neighbors.
Over long dinner conversations, we explore the edges. We talk about how our current reality is based on values and assumptions that we are separate individuals competing for our very survival and success. In this story, we are victims of the world where there are heroes who will save us from it all, if we choose to put our trust and faith in them. But what if we choose to take a different path and deeply question this construct that no longer makes sense to many of us? What if we looked inside ourselves and saw the beliefs, values, and assumptions buried there and questioned whether they were really ours? What if we no longer believed that we are victims of a system that is making us sick and truly understood our capacity to cocreate what is needed most right now? What if we became aware that we don’t have to be victims of a dying system but can create what we need?
The old structures are falling apart, and it’s a divine opportunity to become aware that anything that separates and divides you from yourself and others is unhealthy. When you remember you are part of nature and start listening to your heart’s internal guidance and igniting your imagination, then what emerges will be healthy thinking, a healthy ego, and healthy living. Do you realize that you didn’t come to this planet only to suffer, survive, achieve, and fight for your life? This is an old soundtrack that no longer serves many of us, and isn’t this a great opportunity to listen to something that resonates with who you truly are?
No one is coming to save you. No one has your answers. And think about it: if they did, would our world look the way it does today? There is a false belief on the planet that our political, financial, legal, health, education, and many other systems are the ones you must adhere to. But in reality, most of those no longer serve the vast majority of us. And until you go on your own journey and unlearn and uncondition from what no longer serves you, you stay trapped in a divided world, rather than choosing to spend your life writing healthy stories for yourself.
Leadership is not outside yourself, and it’s your time to understand that you don’t need false prophets, leaders, or profits to have a full life. It’s time for health-conscious souls to take our place in history and step into our power. Were you not born for these times? Can you see yourself stepping out of the manual of how you were taught life should be, to trek into the unknown and follow your heart’s calling?
This isn’t just another self-help book, spiritual book, or memoir— it’s an experience, beyond categories and labels, that asks each of us to tap into the universal wisdom that says we can live our lives our own way. I’d like to share up front that this book is not for everyone. It’s for those of us ready to start questioning everything and to simply say “fuck it”—or whatever words you choose to use—when something in life no longer serves you. The F*ck the Bucket List book trilogy has been created not to dictate meaning, but to inspire you to ask questions, dig deep, and create your own meaning.
Each one of your stories starts and ends at your pace. Once you connect with your own rhythm, you can go on an adventure of a lifetime. These books, like a journey, are a collaboration with the expansiveness of the universe. I hope you take many things out of them that help you lead a healthy life by questioning everything. It’s up to you to realize whom you trust and where your power lies. As for me, I can no longer afford to put my trust in the hands of politicians, philanthropists, business leaders, or any one person. A hero-or-victim society is simply not for me. I want to cocreate and weave with deep compassion, knowing that there is another way to live a healthy life than what I was sold and taught.
Can You Dance with Possibilities?
Life is shaped from the inside out, and much is possible when we dance with the possibilities it abundantly offers us. For some reason, we’re taught not to hurt others but that it’s okay to imprison ourselves in a world of never-ending fear and conflict. “Courage,” Plato wrote, “is knowing what is not to be feared.” And that’s what I love about truly being human: feeling into everything—from joy to grief—and becoming consciously aware of who and what we’re consuming and creating with. As we amass life experiences, with the richness of our own adventures in failure and success, we learn not to sweat the small stuff by squandering our energy on things that don’t matter or that are toxic to our well-being.
My hope is that you discover what matters most to you, when no one is looking or judging, and listen to the deep whispers of your heart while standing grounded in Mother Earth. Living each day from your heart, regardless of how young or old you are, is the boldest and most authentic journey you’ll take. The philosopher Confucius, in The Analects, depicts the cycle of life as a journey that takes you closer to your own heart and the Divine. “At 15 I set my heart on learning. At 30 I took my stand. At 40 I came to be free from doubts. At 50 I understood the decree of heaven. At 60 my ear was attuned. At 70 I followed my heart’s desire without overstepping the line.” Can you change your story and follow your heart, at any age, and dance in possibilities?
It’s up to you whether you layer more items on your bucket list or simply slow down, pause, feel deeply into your being, root in the ground, connect with yourself, build your community, and share your natural beauty with the world. There’s no real need to struggle during your journey when you realize there’s no destination and that “getting there” is playing a part in someone else’s story. What if, by tapping into your heart, you’re already here, and you allow yourself to play and experiment as a health-conscious creator? What then? What’s whispering to you? Are you ready to listen?
Enjoy your journey!
With eternal gratitude,
The Universe with Ayelet