Sleeping in a Prius, Dreaming Bigger

Leticia Francis Author

From living in a Prius to launching a wellness brand, Jonathan proves survival mode is temporary when you choose awareness, mindset, and reinvention.

Most people look at survival mode as a cage. Jonathan looked at it as a classroom.

When his food venture collapsed during the pandemic, he packed up his 2006 Prius, drove north, and spent four months living out of his car while running a business at farmer’s markets. No apartment. No comfort. Just a commercial kitchen, a storage unit, a gym membership for showers, and an iron-clad determination to make it work.

It was grueling—four hours of sleep, long drives between markets, loneliness, and the weight of financial collapse. Yet Jonathan refused to collapse with it. What he discovered in that season is what I call the three phases of exiting survival mode: Self-Awareness, Reprogramming, and Reinvention.

Phase 1: Self-Awareness – Owning the Reality

Jonathan could’ve drowned in shame. At 35, living in a car wasn’t the story he imagined. But instead of comparing himself to others, he owned the reality: this is where I am, but it’s not who I am.

He chose to see survival mode for what it was—a temporary season, not a permanent identity. By leaning into gratitude for small things (coffee from Starbucks, conversations with strangers, a safe parking lot) he stopped spiraling in shame and started collecting clarity.

Lesson for you: Stop judging yourself for being in survival mode. Awareness isn’t about blame. It’s about honesty. Until you see the truth, you can’t change it.

Phase 2: Reprogramming – Shifting the Mindset

Jonathan could’ve treated his car like a prison. Instead, he turned it into a system. A rolled-up bed. A bin for laundry. Windows blacked out. A routine that gave him control in the uncontrollable.

He leaned into mindset practices—choosing gratitude, laughing at his own situation, reminding himself it was temporary. He lived Viktor Frankl’s truth: even when circumstances strip everything, we still hold the power to choose our response.

Lesson for you: Reprogramming means shifting from panic mode to possibility mode. Your nervous system doesn’t know the difference between a thought and reality. Feed it possibility, and possibility grows.

Phase 3: Reinvention – Building Beyond Survival

When the food venture ended, Jonathan didn’t call himself a failure. He called it feedback. He pivoted back into fitness, embraced his passion for transformation, and launched New Exist—a holistic wellness brand built on everything survival mode taught him.

Now, instead of chasing society’s conveyor belt of “success,” he’s building a life aligned with his values: health, impact, and freedom. He’s helping others create the wellness foundation he had to build in the hardest way possible.

Lesson for you: Reinvention requires letting go of who you had to be to survive. That person got you through, but she isn’t the one who will help you thrive.

Why His Story Matters

Jonathan’s journey reminds us that survival mode is not the end of the story. It’s the messy, uncomfortable middle—the place where your resilience is tested and your true self is revealed.

Living out of a car didn’t break him. It built him. Because he chose awareness, he chose to reprogram his thinking, and he chose reinvention.

And so can you.

You were not built to break. But you damn sure were not built to just survive.

Categories: : Podcast