Bringing Fear to the Planning Table

 

I’ve started deleting things from my life—not dramatically, just ruthlessly. If it doesn’t serve the plan—retire and slow travel with my kids—it doesn’t get time. That shift has been weirdly exhilarating. And it comes with a hard truth: we’ve got about six years. That’s not “someday.” That’s now. If this is real, I need all six years to build the logistics and the learning system that can survive life on the road. The new focus and realness of it all has made me start second-guessing myself and letting fear creep into the planning. 

“Fear is a planning input, not a stop sign”

I keep noticing how much of parenting—and especially education decisions—is governed by fear.

Not the healthy kind of fear that keeps you from doing something stupid. The institutional kind. The kind that whispers: “If you step off the approved path, you can ruin your kids.”

School systems (and the culture around them) lean on that fear. It’s subtle, but it’s everywhere: the idea that professionals must be in charge, that deviation is dangerous, and that parents are one mistake away from wrecking a child’s future.

But here’s the blunt truth I’m working with:

If you love your kids, you’re present, and you’re not abusive or chaotic, the “worst case” of doing something different usually isn’t catastrophic. It might be imperfect. It might be messy. It might require a pivot. But it’s rarely the apocalypse people imagine.

So what do you do with fear?

You don’t ignore it. You don’t let it drive. You use it as an input.

My current rule: Turn fear into a prediction.

• “If we do X, what exactly am I afraid will happen?”

• “How likely is that, really?”

• “If it happened, what would we do next?”

• “What small guardrail reduces the risk without turning life into school?”

The bigger realization for me is that it’s not enough to run away from something. You have to run toward something.

For us, that “something” is LifeEducation: building floor-complete humans with maximum optionality—kids who can run their own lives, learn what they need next, navigate real systems, and finish meaningful projects.

Fear still shows up. But it no longer gets a veto.

It gets a seat at the table—and a job: help us plan, not freeze.