Set a date, stop dreaming and start planning

Back when we dreamt about traveling full time we were flying. It is a great dream. Dreaming about places and beaches and freedom and believing, packing, meeting people. It is easy to dream, you can make all sorts of stories inside your head and emotionally it feels great.

Whereas planning is confronting. You will have to choose. You will have to solve problems. You will have to let go.

Moving from the dream stage to planning is key if you want to make your dreams come true. It is true almost anything is possible, but we have to move from dreaming to planning, we have to move into the stage, where there are tasks, and dates, and budgets.

This step is less fun than dreaming. This step can be boring, even discouraging. This step is hard inner work.

I had a big photo of the bus on my wall in the kitchen in one of the last phases of our preparation, and it was so confronting. I was almost scared of it. We purchased the bus 6 months before we started converting it, still living in our house and having no clue as to how we would do the conversion. I had to work with emotions every day.

Now I live in the bus. Recently I re-converted the sitting area a bit, coworking with my now 15yo son. I am enjoying the Catalan sunrise as I write. I am grateful for my tiny house and I have learned so much from the bus, I am currently writing a book about it. It has been amazing 2,5 years of bus living.

And we only have the bus and the adventure because we moved from dreaming to planning. I can tell you exactly when it happened, and where. At a beach, at La Palma, we met a family, who had been living full-time traveling in an auto camper for 2 years. They are now great friends of ours. Among the many things we shared that wonderful and beautiful afternoon, Manu said this one game-changing thing:

“Set a date”, he said.

This will get you going.

It was key. Setting a date for our departure converted dreaming into planning. Everything changed. 1 month later we bought a bus, 6 months later we left our house, 9 months later we left the country. And here we are. Now established digital worldschooling nomads, ready for new dreams, new goals, new stuff to convert to plans.