3 easy steps to change your life and take that “big leap”

Changing your life is very scary, I get it. It was also very scary for me, took quite some months, if not years to decide whether I really want this or not. In the end, we did it: we quit our jobs, left for 3 years of world trip… and well, in the end Covid-19 hit in the 8th month of our trip, and we have no clue again what will happen next.

As a side note, the original plan was leaving a year earlier, so now we would be in our second year of our travels, we would have seen more, experienced more, and I wouldn’t be sitting now with this mixed, broken feeling about how my life-long dream seems like shattered. Which is, in fact, somewhere not true, I am very committed to continue this journey in the near future, even if I really wanted this whole trip to last for 3 years and not only 1.

During El Camino, I have spent some hours of the walk with podcasts, and this is how I found Jason Moore‘s Zero to Travel one, where many talks resonated so perfectly with the way I am thinking and the way I planned this world trip. Today I have listened the episode about How to take “big leaps” so you can travel, and what the interviewee, Caroline “Caz” Makepeace said there was worth sharing!

She was quickly starting the interview stating that her life is not perfect and that people shouldn’t strive for perfection, but rather you should be in control of your life, which comes with figuring out things during your leaps. She also started little: she was teaching, working with a working holiday visa, and as she said, she was chasing the wrong things which was not coming from her heart. This drove her and her husband to a very difficult financial situation, but some time later they have found something which was actually coming from their heart: travel blogging. (Even if they had no clue how to do it, it just made them happy, but guess what, this blog grew out to be one of the top US travel blog!)

My favourite part of the podcast was the formula she figured out based on patterns during her leaps: how can you decide whether you should take that big step? How to manage that fear, what should you think about?

It has 3 simple steps.

1. What would be the best case scenario if everything goes well?

For me it is hands down the amazing memories, achieving a life-long dream, growing stronger and more resilient and pursue a better life I have had before.

2. What is the worst case scenario?

I may not like the trip, I may not find a similar job after I go home, but maximum we go back to Europe, where we loved to travel and I will find something, I am sure about that. I was having so many kind of jobs in the past 12 years, I will find the beauty in everything!

Yet another sidenote: after taking the leap and travelling in Asia, I must say that we certainly fell in love with many countries, where we need to come back!

3. If I don’t make the leap, what will my life look life?

Here Caz’s answer was, and I can fully relate: “For me (…) [it] would be full of a lot of regrets, (…) being stuck and never getting that life that I dream about, it’s always going to be out there, it’s always going to be someone else living it and not me.” In the last months I didn’t feel good at my work place: as much as I loved in the beginning the tasks, the freedom, my colleagues, unfortunately the environment became toxic at the end and I was counting down in the last months. I tried to take more tasks, training to find my place, but it was not the same anymore. Without this big idea, maybe I would be still there, feel the evergrowing dissatisfaction of the fellow colleagues and I would be still unhappy.

And now, you know what is the worst. Can you accept it? Yes, let’s go for it!

I am in the first phase of facing the consequences of my decision. Have I enjoyed travelling? Yes. Did I have bad moments? Also yes, but the positive moments were blowing them away. (Waving to Goa from the amazing Japan.) Will I have a job after I go home? Well, I hope so, but to be sure, I got 3 US certificates in the field of digital marketing and content management during the lockdown, just to be sure.

As Caz said,

With every major decision I leap, I land, I’m okay.