Each year we like to do a wrap up of the year. It’s important to always be evaluating your life, checking in with your goals, and celebrating your achievements, but I think it’s especially worthwhile at the end of the year.
The end of the year brings a contemplative energy and the space to prepare a cleaner state to embrace the New Year. You might as well take advantage of that energy to tap into the power of clarity and awareness and use the insights learned from past highlights and lessons as a powerful source of fuel for 2016.
You might as well take advantage of that energy to tap into the power of clarity and awareness and use the insights learned from past highlights and lessons as a powerful source of fuel for 2016.
The end of the year is a bleeping alarm notification reminding you to move through this process. Without it you’d keep sliding by with a mouth full of Christmas pudding and port blissfully unaware, yet continuing to do the same old thing.
The same old thing doesn’t help you evolve.
I tend to evaluate my past year in terms of what were the highlights, what worked well and why, and what were the biggest lessons that are helping me to evolve into a better me and a better life creation.
2015 Highlights
Travel
The first half of this year was spent finishing off our Australian road trip … almost. The batteries completely ran out and we skipped South Australia. After 18 months in a small camper trailer together, someone was going to be killed! (I’m hyperbole-ing!)
Here are the biggest travel highlights for us in 2015:
Margaret River, Western Australia
It’s probably the region that finished us off – three weeks here enjoying plenty of wine and craft beer tasting and hanging out with friends! The Margaret River area is hard to beat in Australia: stunning beaches, beautiful forests to explore, and gourmet food and wine. Take me back!
Posts
- Staying at the big house with friends (one of our fave accommodation experiences in Australia)
- 9 beaches in Margaret River you must set foot on
Incredible West Australian beaches
We think the beaches in Western Australia are the best in the world. When you stand in front of it and see those colours, you swear, it’s been photo shopped. That colour blue just can’t be real! Check out our favourites here . There are far too many to individually list in this post!
Quirky towns
There’s not a lot of quirk in Australia. But, Gnomesville and Coober Pedy did not let us down! Sure was fun discovering these places.
Uluru and the Red Centre, Northern Territory
A definite highlight of the entire road trip was visiting Uluru and the Red Centre. We were exhausted when we arrived here and even though I just wanted to get to Burleigh and in a home of our own, there was no way I was not going to experience the heart and soul of Australia on our road trip. I’m glad we sucked it up as it was incredible.
Posts:
- 9 ways to experience the magic of Uluru
- Postcards from Uluru
- Yes you can do the Kings Canyon rim walk with kids
- Surprised by the West MacDonnell ranges
Outback Queensland
What a delightful surprise Outback Queensland was. We fell in love with this region: the history, the culture, the landscape, but more importantly, the people. I think they win “friendliest in Australia award.” Stay tuned – we’re heading back there next April.
Posts:
- 3 things to do in Longreach
- Why Winton is our favourite Outback town
- Going underground at Mt Isa
- Contemplating the cosmos at Charleville
Burleigh Heads, Gold Coast
We are so in love with our new home. Burleigh is the best place to live in Australia. We know because we travelled the country to find out. It has everything we want in a destination: great climate, close to an international airport, incredible beaches, thriving food and cafe scene, local farmer’s market, health conscious outdoor lifestyle.
Posts:
- Best of Burleigh – our top 8 local finds
- The Best place to stay on the Gold Coast (for reals)
Fraser Island, Queensland
It was so great to go back to Fraser this year and experience the Champagne pools for the first time and take on some hard-core 4×4 driving. We also experienced the Great Beach Drive from Noosa to Inskip point (which also continues to Fraser) Incredible!
Posts:
- The Great Beach Drive
- Chasing whales at Hervey Bay
South East Queensland
While Western Australia wins as the most beautiful Australian state, Queensland wins for most surprises and most liveable and friendliest people.
We’re loving exploring South East Queensland on small getaways and discovering incredible places like:
- Bunya mountains (it snows here and they have wine!)
- Binna Burra, Lamington National Park
- Sunshine Coast hinterland (post coming soon)
- Moreton Island
Barossa Valley and Adelaide Hills, South Australia
The Barossa Valley always been high on my bucket list so I was ecstatic to visit this wine region in South Australia. I think it might have just pipped Margaret River as my favourite wine region in Australia. The food in this region is the best in Australia and they have the most beautiful gum trees I’ve ever seen.
- Barossa Valley and Adelaide Hills romance
- Barossa Valley and Adelaide Hills food and wine
- Barossa Valley and Adelaide Hills natural beauty
Port Macquarie, NSW
Port Macquarie is such a delightful coastal town in New South Wales. It was a treat to visit with the kids for a few days, even though I was quite ill during it! The girls had a ball and we enjoyed exploring a bit of the hinterland region here for the first time – superb.
Stay tuned for a post next year sharing our plans for 2016. It will involve a lot of travel. As most of you know, a big US road trip is being planned. We love your enthusiasm and support for it!
Blog highlights
- The best community ever. Thank you for being so awesome. For your support and encouragement for our lifestyle, your suggestions and tips – you’re really a part of our journey, and for being so positive and inspiring in following your own dreams and standing up for others.
- Garnier ambassadorship – it was pretty cool to have a film crew spend the day with us and film my first ‘Day in the Life of yTravel’ video and a commercial !
- Speaking at Problogger and SoMeT S I love the opportunity to share at conferences!
- TV appearances – it’s been on our goal list since we started blogging. This year, we were filmed for The Today Show and Places we Go . We’ll be featured in an episode of Queensland Weekender early next year. We love this format!
- Lots of podcast interviews – I’ve been chatting on a lot of them lately and I love it. If you want something to listen to, click here to see the list.
- 30 Day money Cleanse – I finally released my 30 Day Money Cleanse into the world and was so excited by how well it was received and how life-changing it has been for many people. I’m so grateful I finally got over my fears to put it out there as it has made such a difference. It will be available again in the New year. Grab some free training and get on the list now!
- First work retreat – Craig and I just returned from our first yTravel work retreat. The first time we’ve sat down to nut out a solid business plan for y Travel. We’ve got great clarity and direction. Now to implement it and make 2016 even better for you.
- Our team is growing on yTravel and we now have paid contributors. Yes. We do pay our regular contributions and love that we can. I know many publications much bigger than ours and with greater capital don’t. We hope our next work retreat can involve our team. It all starts with a dream.
- Partnerships with booking.com and rentalcars.com When booking your next trip, please consider booking using the links on our site. You can find the booking pages here . We receive a small commission and it helps us cover the costs of running yTravel, including paying our contributors, so we can continue to provide you lots of free content and value.
Life highlights
- Seeing my family a lot more now we’re not travelling as much and the girls getting to spend time with them as well
- Surfing lessons with Kalyra (post coming next week)
- Getting more time to catch up with friends now I’m not travelling as much
- My 40th birthday
- Establishing a consistent yoga routine and a rocking early morning practice
- Learning more from the School of Modern Mystic and helping Belinda run her live coaching calls. (super fun)
- Getting my finances in order and acting more like a grown up
- Going carless for the last six months
2015 Lessons
Listen to your inner voice
Life has become way more enjoyable and effortless when I allow it to be guided by my inner voice . On a recent podcast interview, I chatted to the host about investing in my business. I told her the thing I invest most of my time into is my own personal growth.
There are so many voices and so much noise out there telling you what to do, if I work on myself first and foremost, then I learn how to connect and listen to that inner voice. That way I’ll always know what to do. My decisions and actions will be based upon what I know to be best for me in accordance with my values, my purpose and my life’s desires.
My inner voice never lets me down and those times when I think it does, when I dive deeper I see how it was supporting me to move through the chaos to learn the lesson that would empower me to rise up another level.
It’s okay to quit
If it’s broke, walk away. It’s so easy to stay doing what doesn’t work because we fear admitting failure. I don’t believe in failure, it’s only feedback helping you to progress in a more refined way.
There’s nothing wrong with things not working the way you hoped. There’s nothing wrong with quitting when it doesn’t work.
Let go of the bad energy, learn the lesson, and begin again.
Success is what you do in the plateau moments
It’s easy to win when the path is smooth and going up. It’s easy to fight hard when it’s going down as well to find new solutions (or quit). In my Money Cleanse , I talk about the dangers of complacency – the plateau. There’s more power and chance for you to succeed in the struggle than there is in the plateaus.
Therefore, your success will often be defined by what you do in these moments. Many people start to ease off and to enjoy the ride more (and that is a good idea) but in doing so they lose sight of the goal, and the purpose, and so slowly slide backwards and miss many opportunities for growth and reinvention.
The plateau is the place for you to recharge, and refine and gather the momentum again.
Joint Collaborations make life easier and projects more fun
The second half of this year saw us collaborating with our friend Mike and Ang for our upcoming Confidence Igniter program . What a treat to work with someone on a project.
It makes the creation process so much lighter and easier.
You’re sharing the workload and the costs of production. And of course, it’s more fun to brainstorm over a bottle of wine and some fun conversations. Our Skype calls and in-life meetings have extended by several hours and bottles of wine.
I don’t know what I’m doing and that’s okay
I feel like I say this multiple times a day. I also get asked multiple times what our secret to success is.
The answer:
I have no idea what I’m doing but I do something anyway.
The only way I learn is by trying, failing, and then refining. I’ve still got a long way to go and I don’t think I’ll ever feel like I know what I’m doing.
I feel the same way with parenting. Who can figure that one out?
Love and compassion is where its at
The world seems to be in a terrible state. From one angle it is. But, from another angle, I’m actually seeing love and compassion have a stronger voice. It’s starting to burst through more.
We’ve a long way to go, but despite the bombings and destruction of the earth, I do feel like we’ve made an about face and small steps are being taken towards a better way of living.
There is a lot of positive momentum happening in the world and I hope more people tune into it. I am going to do all I can to be the change of love and compassion that I see in the world. It all starts with us. I drop the ball many times, but I’m going to pick it up with love intention and do better.
The importance of reviewing your year and how to do it
