What's Holding You Back?

Fear of Starting Van Life — or Excitement?

A few weeks ago, I posted a video on Instagram showing me finishing the hardwood floors in my living room. I talked about how your journey into van life or RV life begins long before you ever hit the road.

And that's true.

At least, that's what I've been telling myself I'm doing.

I'm getting my house ready to put on the market. I'm researching vans. I'm thinking about the perfect layout. I'm cleaning out closets and deciding what stays and what goes. I'm figuring out solar panels and batteries and where I'm going to sleep and how I'm going to fit everything I need into a ridiculously small space.

I wouldn't have said I had a fear of starting van life. After all, starting van life was exactly what I had been working toward.

I've been busy.

I've been preparing.

I've been moving forward.

And then one day I looked around and realized something.

It's done.

The floors are done. The house is ready—or at least ready enough. I've done the research. I know what the next step is.

All I have to do is take it.

And I couldn't.

I. Could. Not. Take. The. Next. Step.

So I began wondering, What the heck is going on?

I should be excited! My plan is moving forward. This is what I've been working toward. This is what I say I want.

But instead, I feel stuck.

Maybe even a wee bit paralyzed.

Except for my mind, of course.

My mind is going crazy.

What if I don't like living in a van?

What if I sell my house and discover I've made a terrible mistake?

What if I want to come back?

What if I can't come back?

What if I make this big decision I've dreamed about for so long...

and regret it?

And somewhere underneath all those questions was a much simpler one:

What's holding me back?

So here's what I do when I'm feeling confused and overwhelmed.

I pause.

I don't immediately try to fix it. I don't make another list or research another van or give myself a pep talk about being brave.

I just sit with it for a bit.

And pretty soon, I realized why my mind had been so busy.

I was second-guessing myself.

Was I feeling fear?

Yes.

Was I also excited?

Yes.

And that's when something clicked for me.

Fear and excitement show up in exactly the same place in my body. I feel both of them in my belly—in my solar plexus. There's that fluttering, churning, slightly uncomfortable energy that tells me something is happening here.

Maybe that's why I couldn't figure out what I was feeling.

It was both.

Fear and excitement can feel eerily similar sometimes.

Perhaps they're even expressions of the same kind of energy moving through us, and it's the way we interpret that energy—the story we attach to it—that helps us decide what it means.

I'm scared. Something is wrong. Stop.

Or...

I'm excited. Something is changing. Keep going.

And maybe sometimes the answer isn't one or the other.

Maybe we're scared because we're excited.

Maybe we're excited because we're standing at the edge of something we've never done before.

Maybe that uncomfortable feeling in our belly isn't always a sign that we're making the wrong decision.

Maybe sometimes it's simply what it feels like when the life we've been dreaming about stops being a dream...

and starts becoming real.

Trust Your Intuition

Now, if you've followed me for any length of time, you've probably heard me say this:

Trust your intuition.

And I mean it.

If your body is telling you that you are terrified, listen to it.

Real fear has a purpose in our lives. Fear can tell us when to slow down, when to take caution—and when to run like the wind!

Heck yeah. Sometimes you need to get out of Dodge quickly!

But other times, that uncomfortable feeling we call fear may be our body—and perhaps our very active mind—responding to the anticipation that something big is happening.

We're about to go through a change.

We're standing at a threshold, and we can't quite see what's waiting for us on the other side.

That's uncomfortable.

Fear of the unknown is natural. We're leaving our comfort zone. We're stepping away from the life we know toward a life that, at this point, exists mostly in our imagination.

No wonder our stomach does a few flips.

But here's the good part.

We get to create what we want in our lives.

It's a blank slate.

You have your reasons for wanting something different. You know what isn't working for you right now. Maybe you don't know exactly what you want your future to look like yet—but perhaps you know how you want it to feel.

Freer.

More adventurous.

More peaceful.

More connected.

More alive.

Getting from Point A to Point B takes a little courage.

Not because you have every detail figured out.

Not because you've eliminated every possible risk.

Not because you're no longer afraid.

But because at some point, after you've prepared and planned and listened carefully to yourself, there comes a moment when there isn't anything left to do except...

take the next step.

Step forward anyway.

Trust yourself.

You don't have to know every detail of what it's going to look like when you get there.

You don't have to have the entire road mapped out.

You just have to be willing to take the next step.

And for me?

My next step is to call the Realtor.

Yep. She's coming Friday!

To be continued....

With love for the Journey,

Cindie