Feeling the fear (and doing it anyway)

What it means to be a badass

I have some exciting (and terrifying) news to share.

Two things, actually, that are equally exciting and terrifying.

First—I am planning to get back on the road for the winter, hopefully leaving this weekend!

The little exclamation point at the end of that sentence feels forced, because I am honestly more terrified than excited.

My heart aches at the thought of leaving my husband behind, and my friends and family, just before the holidays. My palms sweat at the thought of frantically driving south and west for thousands of miles, chased by storms and freezing temperatures, before I can relax. My chest constricts when I think of all the things that could go wrong with my 26-year-old van, so far from home. I had more than my share of headaches on my way to Baja and back last winter.

The fear consumes me every time I kiss Seth on the lips and count down in my mind to the last kiss on the morning I leave. It wakes me up before sunrise remembering one more thing I need to order on Amazon while I still have an address. It nags at me to stay up late getting everything ready so I can make it far enough south before the next polar vortex hits.

My fear is trying to keep me safe. The hyper-vigilant parts of me are flashing red warning lights of everything that could go wrong because it would be safer for me to stay home and hibernate all winter than drive 10,000 miles and live alone in a van with my dogs.

Yet I know that despite my body’s very visceral protests, I will pull out of my driveway in a few days with tears in my eyes and wave goodbye to my life in New Hampshire for the next six months.

I know this because the pain of staying feels greater than the pain of leaving.

Beneath the fear of leaving is an even greater fear of staying put. Of stagnating. Of spending all winter sitting in my bedroom staring out the window instead of waking up in some of the most beautiful places on earth to watch the sunrise, and falling asleep beneath a sea of stars.

It’s the fear of letting fear run my life; of letting my scared parts keep me safe and small. Because once I give in to it, I stop truly living.

The pull of the unknown is only slightly greater than my fear of it, but it is enough for me to feel the fear and do it anyway.

Which brings me to my second scary thing.

Some of you know that I’m certified as a life coach, and I’ve been working since 2018 to help other people work through their fears and mindset blocks so they can follow their dreams. Many of my clients have been aspiring entrepreneurs who successfully launched their own businesses doing work they love.

I haven’t offered a new program in a couple of years because I’ve been on the road to Alaska and Baja without internet, and when I wasn’t on the road, I was home trying to start a family, and navigating the grief of that not working out.

But all along I’ve had this idea in my head that I just couldn’t shake.

I wanted to create a program that would integrate all of the coaching tools I’ve learned—Positive Intelligence, Internal Family Systems, and the Enneagram—to support people for a full year in designing and building their dream life.

Because I know we all have these same kinds of big dreams, and the same kinds of fears that hold us back—that we will fail, that we don’t deserve it, that we are safer just staying where we are.

We will start by evaluating all areas of our lives—financial, career, health, relationships, personal growth, and leisure—to figure out what feels out of balance. Then we will powerfully visualize what we want our lives to look like in each of those areas, and set goals to work towards, with weekly support.

Try it for yourself right now: Write down those categories and rate each one on a scale of 1-10 based on your life today. Then think about what you want the score to be in each category, and visualize what life will look like when you achieve that. (Let me know in the comments what you come up with!)

What would it feel like to wake up every morning with that new life?

The beauty of this new program lies in doing this work in community with other people who are experiencing the same fears and excitement of the unknown, and being guided by a trained, certified coach (me!) who understands the tricks our brains use to try to keep us safe, and how to work with the afraid parts and tap into our badass parts to expand what’s possible in our lives.

I’m calling it the Badass Academy.

Because what’s more badass than following your dreams?

Two and a half years ago, I bought a 1999 Roadtrek camper van and drove 5,000 miles to Alaska alone with my dogs, because I couldn’t shake this pull to explore real wilderness and sleep next to a different glacier every night.

One year ago, I overcame some massive fears and took my van to Mexico alone to spend ten weeks exploring the Baja peninsula, waking every morning to watch the sun rise over the Sea of Cortez as pods of dolphins swam by and whales breached offshore.

In between, I’ve visited dozens of national parks in the U.S. and Canada, dangling my legs over the rim of the Grand Canyon, sitting under the spray of Old Faithful, and wrapping my arms around giant sequoias.

To embark on all of those adventures, I’ve had to dig deep.

Being a Badass does not mean being fearless. It means feeling the fear and yet finding the courage to go for it anyway, knowing it will be worth it.

Telling you about the Badass Academy is scary for me because how dare I sell something to my readers and what if you unsubscribe? Or worse, what if nobody signs up?

I still have these fears, even though I’ve successfully enrolled coaching clients for years and seen our work together change their lives.

But I’m sharing it anyway because I know that this program will find the people who need it and will transform them in ways none of us can yet imagine.

I can’t wait to meet this cohort of Badasses, and see how empowered and fulfilled they will feel a year from now!

I’m going to email you on Monday with all the details about the program, because I don’t want it to get lost in the chaos of Thanksgiving and Black Friday.

If you’re interested, you can take a sneak peek at my Badass Academy enrollment letter in Google Docs, and be the first to book a FREE Badass Breakthrough call with me to learn more.

The program will start in January, and on Wednesdays we’ll Zoom together from a beach in Baja, or a campground in Joshua Tree, or wherever I end up, and we will build your badass life together.

I would be grateful if you’d take a minute and think of someone you can share this program with. Talk to your siblings about it at Thanksgiving. Gift it to your granddaughter for Christmas. Forward them this letter, and the one I’ll send on Monday (or send them to my glorious Google Doc). Share it to Substack Notes!

Trust me when I say that I hate the salesy part of coaching, and I would love for this program to fill organically, through word of mouth.

If you are a past coaching client of mine, please share in the comments about our work together, what you’ve learned and how you’ve grown! And please consider joining me again, to refresh your goals and take them to the next level.

I’m hopeful that I can integrate my coaching and my writing worlds in this space without losing my loyal subscribers, because I want to share the tools that have helped me build a life of adventure and work through my fears of the unknown.

So please stick around and join me as I pursue my dream of living a nomadic life!

The next time you hear from me, hopefully I’ll be sitting under a saguaro cactus. Keep your fingers crossed that the Dream Catcher can make it back to the desert, so I can keep bringing you stories of life on the road.

Much love, and Happy Thanksgiving!

~ Liz

p.s. If you have any questions about the Badass Academy, please reply to this email or drop a comment on Substack!

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