Moving Abroad Will Change You
How To Become Accomplished And Fulfilled By Leaving Your Country
It seemed a great adventure: pack your bags, leave everything behind and explore the world. When you’re young, you don’t really ponder your decisions for too long: you only do.
But after a while, you realize that living in a different place for extended periods can change your life, it can change you, and suddenly nothing’s the same ever again. Surprise, surprise — who would’ve thought, right?
My Idea of Success
I feel like everyone who accomplished something in their life already knows this — you don’t need to achieve great things to be happy. The main purpose of your life is figuring out who you are and what’s your passion. If you know what gives you motivation and makes you jump out of bed with excitement and fresh energy every morning, then you’ve already won.
You don’t need to prove to anyone what you’re worth, and it doesn’t matter how much money you make. Improving yourself in what you like to do is one of the most delightful things that life can bring to you.
I truly believe that moving abroad helps you determine who you are as an individual. You’ll discover some astonishing things about yourself that you left behind when you were a child and forgot about them a long time ago. You’ll also find some things about yourself that you didn’t even know existed.
I think moving abroad exposes your own mentality to yourself. Since living in one place can’t give you much of an insight into who you are — because it’s all you know, I think the key to rediscovering yourself is moving to a place you don’t know.
My Perspective
For me, traveling to different countries is a lifestyle that I cannot simply stop. I’m the kind of person who continually speaks about visiting new places and doesn’t handle monotony very well. I always need to have some plan to do new things because I quickly get bored.
Now, I live in the UK. But over the past two years, I lived in Morocco for about two months and took several vacations abroad.
The decision to move to the UK was one of the most impactful decisions in my life, and I’d lie if I said that I regret it. I’ve had amazing adventures that developed me as a person and allowed me to understand myself even more. That is — even though I had to sacrifice many things on the way.
“We all think we’re open-minded until we actually live abroad.”
How Moving Abroad Impacts Your Development
You leave your little world behind, and you enter the immensity
of the real world. Your entire past life doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter how well-recognized you were, how many friends you had, and how people perceived you. Here, you don’t know anyone, and nobody knows you.
You’re entering a foreign land, and it’s as hard to understand you from the locals’ perspective as it is vice versa.
But there is some excellent utility in pushing your boundaries and getting to know other countries — you gain perspective!
And if you don’t know how it could help you, then think about living on a small farm for your whole life, not leaving for any vacations. It’s everything you know — your entire life and the perspective of your own world.
But if you were to leave your small farm, you wouldn’t know what to do or how to behave. Everything would seem new and terrifying. You wouldn’t even imagine the world can be different from your small farm. And that’s what happens when you move abroad. You gain a new perspective.
Hugely successful people like GaryVee — a well-known entrepreneur and author, believe that people fail in life because of a lack of perspective.
By gaining a new perspective on life — you’ll get to develop your character, your confidence, the courage to do new things, and you’ll ground yourself as a world citizen.
Comfort Versus Adventure
Moving abroad will change you, and it’ll be uncomfortable. You’ll face new challenges and problems, but you’ll also deal with your past issues. After some time, your new home starts to blur with your family town, and you forget how it even was before moving to the new place.
Most people won’t travel long distances to a new country — this is just a fact. That’s because most people choose comfort. However, ask yourself, what’s going to be more satisfying when you’re old?
“You can either choose a life of ease and comfort or a life of service and adventure. When you’re 90, you’ll be more proud of the latter.” ~ Jeff Bezos
You’re likely going to sacrifice quite a lot of things moving abroad. You’re going to miss out on your past life and the experiences you would’ve had in your previous home.
But while choosing an adventurous life, you’ll learn to be able to enjoy life no matter where it throws you. That’s the reason why it’s worth at least trying to move abroad. It might change a lot of things for you.
It Changes You — Literally
While it’s also true that you learn a lot of things by moving abroad, it’s also true that it can impact your biology. While discovering a new culture, you learn to adapt yourself to different environments and situations. But science has already proved that being in a new environment changes you — literally.
A famous author and clinical psychologist Jordan Peterson said in one of his lectures:
“You’re full of biological potential that won’t be realised unless you move yourself around in the world into different challenging circumstances, and that’ll turn on different circuits.
By exposing yourself to different environments, you put different physiological demands on yourself all the way down to the genetic level, and that manifests new elements of you.” ~ Jordan Peterson
As you can see, there’s not only information and experience to be gained from such adventures, but also you can literally transform yourself into a slightly improved version of yourself by traveling to new environments.
When I first learned this idea, it blew my mind. I truly believe that staying in one place for your whole life can be harmful to your development. But I didn’t think that it could be this deep.
In any case, moving to a new country can be a life-changing experience, and if you’re not afraid of change, I can’t see any reason why you shouldn’t do it.
New Lifelong Connections
I’ve met a lot of people when moving to a new country. When you’re young and still looking for success in the world, it can be invaluable. Meeting new people helps you gain a new perspective on your old friend circle and will help you evaluate the environment you’ve been in for so long.
After some time, you’ll detach yourself from your past life, and you’ll be able to see your past environment clearly and with a fresh look.
New friends might spark up new interests in you and show you unique ways of living your life that you didn’t know existed.
Throughout my stay in a foreign country, I’ve started learning web development and found my passion for writing. When I look at it now, I know that I wouldn’t be in this place if I didn’t make this decision. This experience shaped me as a person, and I feel much more accomplished — mostly because I know what I want to do in life from now on. Before that, I didn’t really have a clue — but that’s life, right?
The Bottom Line
I think traveling to new places can be more valuable than any material things you can buy with your money. When you’re on your deathbed, looking at your past life with melancholy, you don’t really want to think about what kind of car you bought when you were 24 years old. Come on, nobody cares about that on their deathbed!
What you’re going to remember are the experiences you’ve had, the people you’ve met, the cultures you’ve learned about, and the places you’ve visited.
For me — that is the recipe for authentic success.
