Reframing Fear: Stories from a Full-Time Nomad
I permanently live on the road in 84 square feet. Here’s how I’ve learned to reframe my relationship with fear in the face of grizzly bears, drastic downsizing, and job uncertainty.
As the forest ranger took off, leaving a film of dust on our shocked faces, we sprung into action, putting away anything with a scent that could attract a grizzly bear to our campsite. The ranger had just informed my husband and me that the most dangerous type of bear there is — a grizzly female bear (or “sow”) with her cubs, was heading in our direction: we needed to tidy up our site, stay vigilant, and keep bear spray on hand. At that moment, as we nervously ushered our dogs into our camper, I experienced the same feelings that have become so familiar to me since we became nomads — wonder doused with fear.
When we traded our sturdy city apartment for a fiberglass tiny camper, many people said I was “fearless”. While I loved the compliment, I knew it was far from the truth — I feared both the known and unknown, and more than a year later, I still experience fear every day. From the legitimately scary “what if a grizzly bear creeps up on me while walking the dogs?” and “what if we get into a car accident and lose our home?”, to the less threatening, “what if our cell signal stops working in the middle of an important meeting?”, I am constantly navigating life as a full-time nomad experiencing fear. But what I’ve learned through this experience is that I AM fearless because to be “fearless” doesn’t mean you don’t feel fear. Rather, you learn to reframe your relationship with fear so it supports you and doesn’t stop you from moving forward.
How do you reframe a relationship with fear?
According to Psychology Today (2015), the ability to feel fear is part of a normal working brain. In fact, neuroscientists have identified networks in our brains that when stimulated, produce the feeling of fear. So, if fear is part of being human, why does this natural emotion get such a bad rap? It may be because we often fail to appreciate fear, explore fear, and prepare, leading us to become paralyzed with inaction. Deciding to live a life of permanent uncertainty (such as not always knowing where I will sleep) has forced me to transform my relationship with fear through these three reframes:
Appreciate fear.
Hang on to this paradox for just a moment. What if instead of rejecting fear, we learned to befriend it when it serves us? While the mother bear never did show up at our campsite, I was glad to feel fear for the potential protection that it provided my husband, dogs, and me. While we are no longer in that particular campsite, the encounter we had with the ranger inspired us to learn more about bear behavior. We are more watchful when we hike, we carry bear spray more often, and are extra careful about our campsite footprint. Another example of how fear has supported me includes learning how to properly hitch my camper to my vehicle, after hearing stories of terrifying highway accidents caused by detaching campers. There are many examples on and off the road where fear fuels our sense of urgency to learn a new skill, to be watchful of danger, and to protect ourselves and those we love. Learn to befriend fear and take action when you sense it is on your side, telling you something important.
Explore fear.
Is public speaking something that terrifies you? If so, have you ever taken the time to ask yourself why that is, or have you simply let the fear sit there? We oftentimes experience fear when doing something new or even when contemplating the idea of it, yet we don’t often analyze the root cause of that fear. When I was deciding between staying in my comfortable city apartment and moving into a tiny home on wheels, I constantly ruminated from one “what if” to the next:
“What if I can’t learn to drive the camper and I get us into an accident?”
“What if I get fired from my job because I stop going to the office?”
“What if my husband and I start fighting because we can’t handle living in such close quarters?”
The list of “what ifs” goes on and on. The only thing I knew for certain was that I had was a complete lack of experience in this new lifestyle. I didn’t yet have the answers to my doubts, but by exploring where these doubts were coming from (inexperience), I knew that the only way I could overcome these doubts was to gain experience. In this case, my fear stemmed from an unknown future; sometimes our fears can be fueled by an assumption based on past experience. And by exploring how that past experience may or may not apply in the present, we can identify when fear is based on a real threat and when we can let the fear go.
Prepare for what makes you fearful.
In the months leading up to moving into our camper, one of my top three fears was that we wouldn’t be able to downsize from 750 to 84 sq. feet. Over the course of 8 years in the same city, we had accumulated more duplicates of the same item than I care to share. As move-in day approached, I realized that becoming a minimalist wasn’t going to magically happen overnight. We needed a plan! And we needed to take things one step at a time.
As the Management Consultant that I was at the time, I developed an agile process through which I dutifully posted large sheets of paper on our walls to visually track our plan. With columns of “To Do”, “Doing” and “Done”, we closely tracked what needed to happen. We used sticky notes to color-code our belongings, planning what would be sold, donated, and thrown away. Despite this detailed planning, on Day 1 in our new camper, we realized we still had too many things! But because we’d been preparing for this downsizing for so long, we were much more practical and emotionally prepared to make difficult decisions in the moment of most need. So, as you think about the experience that is causing you fear, consider building in time to prepare (maybe even overprepare) in order to boost your confidence and ability to respond when you are faced with the situation you fear.
Sometimes, taking action is the only way to reframe your relationship with fear.
Another fear in my top list was the fear of losing my job. Though I was preparing to live a remote life, I didn’t yet have a remote role. I also didn’t know how my bosses would react to having one of their top consulting leaders be an RV nomad in a world where proximity to major airports for client projects was the norm. My dream was to live on mountaintops (which I now do!) and by the water (which I also do!). But, instead of waiting for this part of the puzzle piece to be perfectly aligned, I decided that by taking action, I’d be forced to figure it out.
I’m happy to share that I did land a remote role and my leads were excited for me once I bravely shared my new lifestyle. The lesson I learned was that sometimes, taking a risk despite the fear and putting yourself in the situation you’re fearing, forces you to figure it out. You may realize (like I did) that you are more resourceful and resilient than you would have been had you waited for the “perfect” time to move forward. After all, “perfect” may never arrive — you simply need to reframe your relationship with fear and go for it!
