Where are we headed in 2017?

This is our annual post, where we focus on where we are heading for the coming year in business, life, and travel.

I’m not one for setting goals. They often lead to disappointment. James Altucher has written about this here and in his book and does a much better job of explaining why I don’t set goals. He doesn’t agree with goal setting either (love him!!)

Now be warned – I am a highly motivated person. I don’t need a S.M.A.R.T. goal to whip me into action.

I know the big picture of what I want to achieve and I take daily action steps towards that. More importantly, I work on my mindset and spiritual mojo to make the creation of it more effortless and I always leave the doors open to change and something better.

I don’t pressure them into happening by my determined date and a set amount. I let it happen at the right time BUT, and this is so important, I do take constant action. If you need SMART goals to help you stay focused and take action then do them!

I often write on a list of things to be done for each day, just so I don’t forget anything that is due or important. I don’t often stick to them because something may come up that draws my attention. I tune into how I’m feeling and if my gut says keep going with this and I do.

98% of the time this leads me to new discoveries, directions, and insights that have dramatically helped my life. If I was so rigid to the list and goals, I would have missed it.

That’s why I follow this process now rather than setting goals as it has proven over and over again to benefit me more.

I still plan things out and am working towards something, but the process I use gets me in the framework of working on getting it done, rather than being something I’m working on doing.

James suggests operating around themes instead of goals. I call them focus words or intentions, but it’s the same thing. I share more of that at the bottom of this post.

If you know what’s important to you, what you want to create and why then you don’t need goals, you’ll get it done each day with small steps.

When I reflect back on my life all the amazing achievements that happened have been total surprises.

Don’t mistake that for luck. I’ve had a very significant role in creating the surprises, but I’ve also let go and allowed the right opportunities to come at the right time.

I enjoy life so much more when I let it flow and let go of SMART goals. When I attempt to embrace them I never enjoy the process, I don’t get results that thrill me and they make me feel dissatisfied and disappointment.

It’s all about the feelings y’all. It’s the year for unplugging from what doesn’t serve you!

For you it may be different – you gotta stay in tune with what floats your boat. This is just a new approach for you to mull over.

Travel for 2017

This is going to be the year of America Unplugged. We’ve been planning this for 18 months now and have had so many delays.

But as I said before, I’m flowing with it. If I was so rigid to those goals and time frames I’d be so disappointed and bitter by now with how this has turned out.

I trust that it has not yet been the right time and things are still moving into place. The delays have actually allowed us to get a lot more done behind the scenes so we can handle the growth and change of the new journey without getting stressed while on the road.

We’re going to enjoy this trip.

We’ve submitted another 50 odd pages of extra requested documentation for this O1 business visa – a detailed three-year itinerary. How can you plan three years in advance?

We’ve adhered and created it, which has been good for the direction and story ideas, but of course the disclaimer, “this is subject to change” is also on it!

Here’s what we intend to happen for travel in 2017.

Hawaii

Boom. Three weeks in February. Let’s kick off America Unplugged in style. It’s been a lifelong dream.

Colorado

Colorado is the Flavour of 2017 for us. We are madly in love with the state so have planned multiple trips for this year.

• Skiing in March
• Summer fun in July and August
• Christmas – a log cabin in the Rocky Mountains has been our White Christmas dream for many many years. Let’s make it happen.

If you have any tips on things to do in Colorado please add it to this post. It’s where we are collecting them.

North Carolina

We cannot go back to the US for an entire year and not visit our home state.

If you’re only new to our blog, North Carolina is not our original home state – we are Australian, but we lived in Raleigh for four years and are madly deeply and truly in love with North Carolina.

Gotta get back there in time for March Madness to see our Tar Heel Boys bring it home and jump over fires in Franklin street like we did in 05 and 09. Yep, we’ve got the winning mojo for them. We plan on exploring NC (and hanging with friends) for April and May.

If you have any tips on things to do in North Carolina, please add them to this post.

Texas

Craig has scheduled in Texas for May and June. Not sure what’s happening in these months, but it’s a good time to visit and brings us closer to the mountain states and California for the rest of the year.

BlogHer Conference in Florida

I’ve already brought my ticket to the BlogHer conference in Orlando.

I enjoyed it so much last year and got so much value from it that I’m pretty sure I’ll fly in for it no matter where we are. It will be a much shorter flight than flying from Australia for it.

This could be an opportunity to sneak the girls for a surprise visit to Harry Potter world. Kalyra will kill us for waiting even this long to take her. We’ll see if it will be a solo mission for me or the whole fam can fit it in.

New Mexico

We’ll be heading to New Mexico. We’ve spent time in Santa Fe before. We want to revisit this time and also explore this state more in-depth. We’ll be calling for your tips soon.

Utah

Utah partly inspired our American Unplugged road trip idea. We think it’s one of the best states in the US for travel.

It’s so beautiful, yet we’d rarely hear of travelers going there, choosing instead to visit the most well-known places in the USA and so missing unplugged secrets like southern Utah!

We’re very excited to return and explore more.

Nevada

Our friend, Spencer Spellman has completely sold us on Reno – forget Las Vegas!

I’m watching his Insta stories every day and getting inspired to hike, ski, SUP, rock climb, drink great coffee, and smoothies, and of course share a few of his cocktails with him in all those bars he keeps showing.

We’re planning on a Nevada visit for the month of September.

California

Let’s close out the 2017 year with an in-depth exploration of California through the months of Sept – Dec.

High on the bucket list is to attend the Ontrapalooza conference in Santa Barbara. It’s a conference hosted by Ontraport, which is my email management software system.

I recently attended an Ontraport Bootcamp and found it to be one of the most beneficial and practical workshops. I have a powerful tool at my fingertips and I’m super excited to use it and learn more about business building at the conference. I am now a super fan of Ontraport.

Plus, Kalyra was named after a winery in Santa Barbara so we’re keen to return.

If you have any tips on things to do in California, please add them to this post.

Business & Blog Growth

Email community

Email is the most favourite part of my blog and business!

It’s where I have the most intimate conversations with our VIP travel tribe. Join us here.

I love them. I share with them messages of inspiration, love, and hope each week and they reply to me with open hearts sharing their stories, their struggles, and their dreams.

A few weeks ago, I asked them to share with me what was interesting about them; I had the most wonderful evening reading their replies and learning more about them.

This year, I am focusing on growing my email community even more. Not just growing it, but ensuring I am sending the right messages to the right people.

As mentioned, Ontraport is about to help my email community and communication improve immensely.

New Website

Yep. Another new redesign of our website. We hate the current one. The branding is all wrong and the navigation horrible. You can’t find any of our best content.

We’ve been working with an amazing design team this year.

Amanda from Kaleidoscope Design Studio has completely nailed the new look and branding, and Chris from RTWLabs our web maintenance and developer guru who is doing all the coding and making the design come to life from functional code perspective.

We hope to have this launched by the end of January.

We’ve also created a bunch of super useful resource pages to help you find the content you need to travel more and create better memories.

I’m creating new free email series and freebies to match the new site and messaging which is all about unplugging to reconnect to those things that really matter – travel being one fantastic way to help you do that.

Video and Instagram stories

We started creating travel videos last year, we’re continuing that this year.

We’re looking at investing in new camera equipment (this Sony Mirrorless is on our wish list) and will be doing all we can to learn how to be better videographers. We really love our videos.

We’re also loving Instagram stories. Our community is growing over there and they are loving the raw behind the scenes sneak peek at our life – not always travel related.

Craig and I both now have personal Instagram accounts that we are having a lot of fun with. You can catch us at Carolinemakepeace and craigmakepeace.

Expanding our team

Last year we shrunk our team. The cost of living in Australia is ridiculous, plus we’re saving for our big US trip and had a lot of other priorities to funnel our money towards.

We’re coming back out of that hole and have much better financial structures in place. We can’t manage all we do on the blog with full-time travel so we’re looking to expand.

I’m not quite ready yet, as there is still a bit of fear and uncertainty to work through, but it’s an intention I’m working on for this year.

Traditional media

We’re very focused on getting into traction in media once we start our America Unplugged journey.

We think our story is pretty cool to share, we want local communities to jump out and share their unplugged secrets with us, so we can share them with you, and we’d love to share what’s so wonderful about Australia as well while we’re in the States!

We’ll be working hard behind the scenes to make it happen. My Aunt suggested over Christmas that we aim to get on the Ellen show. I must say I like that idea!

Focus words/intentions

So instead of goals, I tend to have focus words or intentions. They align more with how I want to feel, rather than what I want to achieve.

Instead of focusing on X amount of email subscribers in a goal format, I’m focusing on growing my email list, but with the underlying intention and focus being creating something that feels joyful and loving.

Putting quality above quantity. The number doesn’t matter as long as the purpose and feeling is strong.

Everything we create in life is a result of how we feel. So if you focus on that, then life will bring you experiences and moments that align with those feelings.

Goals won’t matter to you at all then because you’ll be living a life that feels good.

It keeps you open to surprises and miracles and keeps you connected to awe, gratitude, and wonder which only helps you to create more amazing things to feel great about! Yay – these cycles are no longer vicious.

Mine are simply the same each day and year:

• Freedom
• Abundance
• Vitality
• Joy
• Love
• Growth
• Security

I consider what each of these looks like for the various aspects of my life and then take daily action steps to make them happen.

For example, my daily morning routine has evolved from this.

• I go for an early morning walk/run (vitality)
• I watch the sunrise and meditate (joy/love/freedom)
• I have my morning tonic tea (vitality)
• I read empowering books (growth)
• I cuddle my girls when they wake (love/joy)
• and then work on my business and different parts of my life I want to grow (growth/security/love/freedom/abundance).

Step by step. I don’t feel pressured to do any of these by a looming deadline or goal. I do it because of how it makes me feel. My results don’t matter so much because the moments of my life feel free, joyful, secure, loving, abundant, healthy and purposeful.

I don’t feel pressured to do any of these by a looming deadline or goal. I do it because of how it makes me feel. My results don’t matter so much because the moments of my life feel free, joyful, secure, loving, abundant, healthy and purposeful.

I do it because of how it makes me feel. My results don’t matter so much because the moments of my life feel free, joyful, secure, loving, abundant, healthy and purposeful.

I would never get up early and go for a sunrise run because my goal was to lose 5kgs and get fit. But, I effortlessly get up at 5:15am to do it because it helps me feel all those things above.

Sometimes I walk, sometimes I run, sometimes I do yoga. It depends on what I feel like, (freedom allows me to choose what that is each day).

I’ll be moving every day in some form because vitality is important to me. I don’t even consider the end result of losing weight and getting fit, it’s a by-product.

It’s amazing how much my life has evolved by focusing on these things instead of goals. These feelings grow for me each day, which is how I evaluate if my life is successful and in balance.

Try it.

But don’t expect overnight results, please. It takes time to change – step by step, day by day.

I had a subscriber email me today to tell me how she completely transformed herself and her life in just nine months by choosing to do one thing different each day – simple things like shopping at a new supermarket or trying a new dish.

She said she can’t even remember who the old person was. That’s how you subtly and slowly change your life. Small steps fueled by a feeling that you value the most.

That’s how you subtly and slowly change your life. Small steps fueled by a feeling that you value the most.

Small steps fueled by a feeling that you value the most.

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Where are you headed this year in travel and life?