Make This The Year You Become A Professional Jetsetter

There's something about the New Year that I love that gives me a sense of excitement, hope, adventure and energy. If you’re like me, you’re still thinking about all of the things you want to accomplish this year.

But if we’re not intentional about it, the year can fly by, leaving us in the dust.

So I want to show you how you can use the natural momentum of this time of year to get traction on your career and travel goals that you have for the year.

Look we all know how it goes. Work and family responsibilities and sheer exhaustion can distract us and sideline our goals if we don’t take proactive measures.

But what kind of proactive measures work best?

If you’re ever going to finally get out of the day-to-day grind, live the global lifestyle of your dreams and use your career to do it, something has to change.

Because for various reasons, I see many women fail to reach their career goals and stall out before they even get started, because they don’t know where or how to begin.

But no worries! I have three ways you can set yourself up for success this year.

#1: Set an intention for the year.

You may have been wondering for some time how you can find a career that you love waking up to each morning that doesn’t make you sick to your stomach. But you won’t ever be ready to do so until you really get serious and define specifically what you actually want to do.

You need to get intentional and develop laser focus regarding what exactly your career goals are as it relates to how you want your life – not just the professional aspect of your life – but how you want the combination of your personal and professional life to be. Remember, if you don’t know what you want, you’ll probably never get it.

The more clearly you can articulate what you ultimately want in your career, and the conditions of a job you need for you to be satisfied and more fulfilled, the more likely you're to achieve that dream job where you can get paid to travel, that leads to a fabulous global lifestyle.

While at this very minute you may not have a crystal clear idea of exactly what you want in your career and life - and that’s okay for now – what I’m pretty sure you do have is a crystal clear idea of what you don’t want in life.

Think about it. What’s something you’re experiencing now that you really wish you weren’t?

There is an underestimated power in allowing what you don’t want, to drive you towards what you do want.

The underlying thing that drove every decision I’ve made for the most part throughout my life is that I didn’t want to be a frustrated, bored and bitter woman who’s always waiting for her next scheduled vacation to really live and enjoy her life, who’s secretly jealous of other women who are traveling around the world on a regular basis and having drool worthy experiences.

Declaring what you don’t want is the first step in learning what you do.

Think about how things have been going for you over the last few years. Why are you experiencing what you don’t want in your life? What would it take for you to remove those things? What would your life look like if those things were no longer present?

#2: Ignore the myth that you need experience if you want to make a career change.

We as women often think that the more experience we have, the better we'll be at something. I've found that this is only sometimes true.

The women who get ahead are those who innovate and blaze new trails, not the ones who repeat old ways of doing things. Women who get ahead welcome new ideas. They listen, they adapt and they’re constantly learning and challenging themselves.

And those women who land amazing jobs where they get to travel all around the world are those who can sell themselves the best and have functional skills that are transferable from one job to another.

I see women discount themselves all the time and not apply to jobs that would’ve literally changed the trajectory of their careers and lives, because they believed that they didn’t meet all of the qualifications or experience.

Don’t use your perceived lack of experience as an excuse to not take action. Don’t passively wait for your dream career to happen. Women who are top performers don’t let qualifications or experience hold them back and they know where they can push boundaries.

But what’s a shame is that many women will stop here because it seems too hard to reach their goal of a new career. Finding a dream job doesn’t have to be a 100% deep plunge where you quit your job today. I’m all about setting smaller goals and starting off gradually.

#3: Understand failure for what it really is.

At the start of every year the focus is always on New Year’s resolutions of course. And I know it feels good to get out that pretty planner with your colored pens and plan a magical year where everything is possible, where we can write down what we want and not worry about time or money or motivation.

“Where do I want to travel? What do I want to change about myself this year? What do I want to happen?”

It’s fun to imagine all the things we want to change. But if we’re honest, didn’t we do this last year? And the year before?

How many of us actually followed up on our resolutions?

Ah, there it is. There’s that uncomfortable feeling in the pit of our stomach that we hate feeling and talking about.

It’s so not cute to acknowledge, let alone talk about, failure…

…especially our failures.

But I want you to reframe how you think about this big bad thing that we call failure.

The biggest failures aren’t things you did. They’re the things you didn’t do.

Because playing it safe is one of the biggest failures possible.

And the first step is learning to recognize it.

Just think about this for a second.

The real failure in working at a job you don’t love is that every day you’re not being challenged, you’re staying stagnant, and you’re actually moving backwards compared to other women who are learning new skills, getting more responsibility, and getting paid what they deserve.

The real failure in not traveling and putting it off another day, and then another day, and then another day, is that soon we’ve become an “I’ll do it later,” type of woman – that never actually does.

Now, the truth is you don’t have to do anything about any of these things. What’s the worst that could happen right?

On a given day the worse that could happen is nothing.

But over the span of a year? Maybe a little.

And then all of a sudden it’s been five years, and all of the instances and times where we played it safe or didn’t take advantage of opportunities to do something different, added up, compounded, and allowed us to accept the identity of someone who’s accepted things the way they are.

And that’s when we start believing and saying things to ourselves like, “It’s fine, whatever…I didn’t even want that.” Even though we know deep down that we’re just trying to make ourselves be okay and feel better.

I’d rather go through the real work of making what I want in my life happen, instead of just imagining it.

So you have big dreams of traveling around the world? Get started now. You have big dreams of being a professional jetsetter? Get started now. Don't wait for the perfect moment. If you wait until you feel comfortable, then it's already too late.

I believe that we’re all born big dreamers, with a limitless concept of what’s possible for our lives, but along the way we’re told that we’re dreaming too big or that we need to “face the facts.”

But in all actuality, those “facts” don’t have to limit us. We’re all capable of so much more than we give ourselves credit for.

And that’s true for you too.

Trust that you have what it takes to make big things happen in your life, no matter your current reality or what the facts are telling you.

So here’s to making this year your best year yet for your career and life.

This is your year.

Become a professional jetsetter.

What intention are you setting for this year and what’s one step you'll take to bring you closer to it?