WHAT MOVING TO ANOTHER COUNTRY TAUGHT ME ABOUT !!
Many of us have moved at least once in our lifetime. But while some of us have moved houses within the same city, others have made huge transitions to new countries, cultures, and languages. Moving anywhere away from your home creates a mixture of excitement and fear.
When you live in the comfort of your home country, living around the people you’ve known all your life, you can sometimes be stuck and never really realize it. Moving away showed me just how stuck in life I was and opened my eyes to a bigger picture. Adapting to a new lifestyle showed me a different side to life.
1.Whatever Happens, You Can Handle It
Moving your whole life to another country so you can start a completely new one requires a good deal of resilience and bravery, but fear is usually the first emotion that creeps in. There are so many things that can go wrong, and there are always hundreds of unanswered questions that plague your mind. Worry never helped me before, and it certainly won't help now. I have learned to put my inner perfectionist aside and be flexible so that when gale-force winds blow, I bend—not break—and adjust to cope with the situation. It’s amazing how resilient you become and this confidence transfers into everything else in your life.
2.You Learn to Roll With Constant Change
For most people, change can be pretty scary, and I admit the idea of moving away from everything I know, trust, and love was terrifying, but the idea of settling and becoming stagnant scared me more.
Moving overseas has shown me that change isn’t something we should ever be afraid of. It has made me more adaptable and stronger. I’ve become so accustomed to change now that the prospect of staying still scares me, rather than the other way around.
3 If You Embrace Imperfection, You Learn to Love It
When you move your life to the other side of the world, don’t expect anything to go as planned. I’ve had to learn to embrace imperfection and find stability in chaos. Things don’t always work out the way you want them to, but that’s OK. Perfection is overrated anyway.
4. It’s okay to be sad
Feeling homesick is normal. Missing family and friends is normal. Feeling left out or missing events back home is normal. Even experiencing culture shock is normal. Leaving everything you know behind isn’t easy and some days you will be sad and that is okay. Sit in those feelings then look around and reflect on why you left and what you’ve gained (no matter how small) since you’ve arrived.
5.Moving Abroad Truly Changes Youπ
You have experienced a new culture, a new way of life and you have built a life for yourself.
Believe me, it won’t be a perfect life, as no life is, and as any other life it will have its ups and downs but you did it and you’ll notice that you have changed, grown, experienced so many new things and learnt quite a bit about yourself along the way.
Being able to call a city beyond the borders of your country "home" is an amazing feeling.π