So you think you might actually want to do the tiny house thing. What next?
For a lot of people, including myself, there are a whole lot of mental barriers to break through before you can even consider doing anything physical. As I said in my last post, I spent a whole lot of my life being complacent, even scared, about making moves on my own. In my adult life I’ve pretty clearly started to recognize this as what I call my “twin complex”. My whole life, from before birth even, I had someone with me. A friend. A partner in everything I did. As an adult, when my life started to diverge from my sister’s, I found it very hard to be outside of that comfort zone. I was always looking for someone to replace her. Someone to help me make choices that seemed too big to make alone. Luckily just before I turned thirty it hit me like a ton of bricks - If I don’t start pushing myself, no one will.
So what does it feel like to make a decision that sets you down the path to a lifestyle that not many people see as reasonable? Welp, you guessed it, it’s HARD! Common questions were “Why would you want to do that?!”, “Where will you put all of your stuff?!” Or statements like “I could NEVER...” You certainly get people that think it’s cool, but 95% of those supporters wouldn’t dream of actually attempting it themselves.
But for a very few of us, this seems like the perfect answer, maybe even the only answer, so I say, who GIVES A S*** what other people think?
I recently got a comment on one of my Instagram posts from a follower named Rachel. Her words really stuck with me. Here’s what she said: “I think a tiny house is what I would like to do, it’s just so unorthodox that most people don’t understand WHY I would want that and it gets me down sometimes.”
My response to her was this: “It’s not for them to understand!”
The fact of the matter is, that unless someone else is going to live with you in your tiny house, no one else’s opinion matters. There’s no right choice when it comes to doing what you think will be right for you. There will always be someone questioning your decisions. But here’s the beautiful part - When you finally start acting for yourself, and doing something with your life that you’re truly passionate about, the right people will just show up for you. It’s like magic. They’ll see what you’re doing, they’ll dig it, and they’ll show up. You don’t have to trust me, but trust yourself. It's up to you to tell people what's right for you, not the other way around.
There are tons and tons of resources out there right now for people that are just like you! (And I’m one of them!). You’ll very quickly start to realize that a crap ton of people want to live the tiny house lifestyle and plan to jump right in with absolutely no experience. That was me 4 years ago so I’m fully aware just how daunting it is. The good news? It CAN be done. I still don’t know how I did it, but I did and it’s rad.
If you’re worried that you’re going in the wrong direction, the first thing you’ll need to do is some serious research. Stay tuned for my next post to see how I got started and convinced myself that this might not be the worst idea ever.
