Have you ever played a video game where you would level up after each achievement? This may seem smart for an alternate reality, but it can also help you in the real world. The concept of how to level up as a woman, while always necessary, has become a pretty popular topic lately.
This is more true than ever, with issues like the gender pay gap gaining attention. So how do you level up as a woman, not just with your job, but in every aspect of your life? Well in this article, we'll be breaking down just how to level up in life!
Defining how to level up as a woman
What is leveling up as a woman even about? Leveling up means achieving more success in career, finance, and your personal life than ever before. But as a woman, it comes with extra awareness. When one woman succeeds, it helps all women to believe they can achieve more.
Your success should motivate not just you but others. And it should help you find joy and contentment with your life along the way.
How to level up as a woman for your health
Your health is so, so important! If you don't feel well physically, mentally, or emotionally, it will affect the rest of your life, too. That's why keeping good health should not be just prioritized but an absolute must.
Meal prep and nutrition
Meal prepping allows you the luxury of being thoughtful about what you eat. Preparing your meals early means you can pick out foods on purpose that are good for you. Foods with vitamins and protein that will help you form good eating habits are best.
To meal prep, simply make a list. Start with what meals you want to eat for the week - this includes not just lunches, but breakfasts and dinners, too. After you decide on meals, make a grocery list of everything you don't already have. From there, you can shop, come home, and prepare your meals.
You can do the entire week's worth of food, if you want, storing meals in your freezer or fridge, depending on when you'll use them. Not only does this start the week off in an awesome way, but you'll eat well at all times.
Working out
Exercise is healthy and will keep you feeling great. For your best workout routine, find something that you enjoy doing that also gets your heart rate up. While going to the gym is fine, if you prefer other things like rowing, pilates, dance, or karate, do that instead. You could even work with an online personal trainer.
Another essential for staying fit is to give yourself a goal for how many steps you walk each day. You might have heard before that walking 10,000 steps a day is healthy. This isn't actually true. The 10,000 steps a day was part of a marketing campaign, originally.
In fact, after research, it was found that between 8000 to 7000 steps a day can be good for your health, according to Gabby Landsverk of Insider. So get some steps in, but don't stress about the 10,000!
Last, when working out, it's essential to set goals. Give yourself targets to reach for with your health to keep things interesting. That way, whether your goal is to make it to 90 minutes of exercise a week or to join a soccer team, you'll know you're leveling up.
Mental and emotional health
Your mental and emotional health is just as essential as the physical. If you find that your health is not where you want it to be in this capacity, first decide what healthy emotions and a healthy mind means for you. Then create steps to level up your mental and emotional health.
This can take several forms depending on you. You may choose to start journaling, begin meditation, see a therapist, or disconnect from social media more often.
You may just need to tweak a few things to feel better, or you may decide you want to take more action. Whatever you need to do to have good mental and emotional health, make it a priority to level up your life.
How to level up as a woman for finances
Finance may seem like a challenging subject, but it's actually one of the easier things to define as far as how to level up in life. Since finance deals with concrete numbers, it's much easier to figure out your goals and know if you're reaching them or not. Here are some tips to help.
Know your net worth
Before going forward, you have to know where you are right now. Your net worth will most definitely tell you. A simple definition of net worth is your assets minus your liabilities.
Assets include things you own worth monetary value, such as your home, investments, and savings. Your liabilities are things you owe, like debts, student loans, and a mortgage if you have one.
Once you know your net worth, you know how much money you have or don't have. To find out for sure, use this net worth calculator from Bankrate.
Achieve investment goals
Creating and achieving investment goals is a big part of how to level up as a woman. When you invest, you are assuring that your future self will have money, and you're making sure you can thrive.
If you're already an investor, decide how much you want to invest in the coming 1-3 years, and then adjust your spending and budget to reflect that.
If you aren't investing yet, begin to do so, even if you start small. Either way, keep an eye on your investing, adding more money when you can, and maintaining a conscious plan throughout the investment process.
Know your five-year plan
Planning is crucial for your financial success. After all, if you don't know what goal you are trying to reach, how will you know how to level up in life? To make your five-year plan, you'll need to take some time to get organized.
- List everything you want to achieve financially in the next five years.
- Add numbers to the list - know how much money each achievement will cost.
- Make a savings and spending plan and break it down by year.
- Break down your goals by month now.
- Check in on your plan regularly.
Plan for retirement
Your retirement years can be way in the future, in your sixties or beyond. Or if you want to retire early, you might find it isn't so far away. You can plan for retirement by deciding how much money you need to have saved and invested to live off of it in retirement.
Once you know your retirement "number," you can begin making plans to save enough. Even if you feel like you won't be able to save as much as you'd like, still get started. More opportunities will likely come your way as you level up your life.
Create passive income
The most sought-after of finance goals: passive income. (Also known as money that you get regardless of hours and effort put in.) Having passive income ensures that you will be paid money frequently, even if you cannot work for some time or want to take time off.
While you may need to do some work to set up passive income resources, the investment of time and/or money is usually worth it.
Passive income ideas that you can try are:
- Writing an eBook
- Creating a blog
- Selling digital products online
- Real estate investing or rental income
There are lots more, but you can get started with one of these!
How to level up as a woman with your career
This is a big topic, but let's talk about how to level up as a woman with your career. Your career is a big part of daily life. What you do for a living may or may not accurately reflect the pay rate and life you want.
The good news is you get to decide how to move forward, adjusting your career to fit your money goals.
Pursue getting promoted and pay raise goals
If you like what you do for a living, then a good goal is to make more money while doing something you enjoy. Pay raises are standard after you've been with a company for at least a year. If you haven't received one, advocate for the amount of money you deserve for your work.
It's often said that statistically, women make less money than men. Many factors are involved, so it's challenging to get an exact estimate, but the Pew Research Center recently showed the results of their research.
They found that women generally earn less than men. They also found that the wage gap may be decreasing, though, which is good news.
While there may be some unfairness with the gender wage gap, it is also vital that women do all they can to work towards promotions and pay raises by asking for them. Approach pay raises and promotions with assertiveness while showing that you're genuinely good at your job.
If you do good work and have respectfully asked for more money, but it isn't given, even with time, this may be a sign of a larger management problem that needs to change.
You may find that you've advanced as far as possible with your company, and more earnings or promotions are not available. However, suppose you'd still like more responsibility.
In that case, you may find it worth it to look around for jobs with another company, possibly moving laterally to a role there and working your way further up after that.
Consider entrepreneurial options
Perhaps you find that the job you want doesn't exist, or you really want to work for yourself. You may be an entrepreneur at heart. If so, this is good news for your finances and career.
As an entrepreneur, there is no limit to how much money you can make or how large of a company you can build. While it takes hard work and dedication, you can achieve your entrepreneur dreams.
This is also a great thing to do when considering how to level up as a woman. We need more female business leaders in the world, and it's a great way to create your own opportunities.
How to level up as a woman with your goals
When wondering how to level up as a woman, goals matter. They tell you if you're on the right track, what's next, what will keep you in the same place when you need to grow, etc. Here are some ideas for goal setting.
Define success for you
Before you create goals, know what success is. It's important to note that your success will not look the same as your friends or co-workers' success. Everyone wants different things! So what does success mean to you?
For some, success is having enough money to pay your bills and needing no permanent address as you travel the world. For others, success is a nice house and a great corporate job.
Some people may see success as a happy marriage and having a family. Perhaps success to you is waking up with the beach outside your door. Or doing yoga in a new place every day, selling coffee from your own coffee cart, or maybe a combination of many ideals.
Figure out what success is by deciding on the top five things you need to feel happy and accomplished. For example, a great family, enough money to pay your bills, a good amount invested for retirement, a few vacations a year, and the chance to sell your homemade cards to people who appreciate them. Decide what matters, no matter how improbable it feels. This is the first step.
Make a concrete plan
After you know what you want, making a concrete plan is easy. Look at it like you would a game. If you need to get from location A to B, you need to do X, Y, and Z.
To further explain this point, see this example. If success means making $200,000 a year from your Etsy store, you would do something like this: Right now, the store earns $3000 a month, and it needs to make over $16,000.
So you will add 30 new products, hire a marketer, and find ways to promote your products to people on social media. Next month, the store will make $6000. Then double that. By year's end, you'll be making $16,000.00 per month, as planned.
This plan is entirely variable, but you get the idea. Make your plan and go to work because it's how to level up in life!
Set achievable goals along the way and celebrate
If you have huge goals, you might feel daunted when beginning. That's why it's good to set achievable goals along the way and find ways to celebrate your accomplishments. For example, when you get a pay raise at work or finally set up your blog, take yourself out for coffee to celebrate.
Or when you're on your way to your first six-figure year, find a way to make an extra $500 a month, every month. This is a smaller goal that is easier than going from $36,000 a year to $100,000 in no time at all. Celebrate. Set small goals to accomplish big ones.
Make a plan B
While plan B's are often frowned upon because it seems like you think you'll fail, that isn't really the case. A plan B is, in fact, a way to assure your own success, regardless of whether your original plan works out or not.
If you give plan A your all and it doesn't work out, don't be afraid to try out something new. Your plan B may work even better than you imagined and be better suited for you than your first plan.
For example, maybe plan A is to become manager of your company. But after several years of promotions and good work, you are rejected for the job. Your plan B could be branching out by starting your own business.
Level up your life and see results
This article gives concrete ideas about how to level up as a woman. With tons of examples, you're sure to better understand how to define your own success and make a plan to achieve it.
Remember that your health, finance, and career matter, and taking care of these things will help you live a full and rewarding life. You are capable of so much, so always look for ways to level up your life and be all you can be!