Why And How I Moved To 3 Foreign Countries Until I Turned 24
People tend to think that moving overseas multiple times on your own is incredibly difficult.
They are right, to some degree.
It does require…
… a lot of planning.
… a lot of energy.
… a lot of willpower.
… a lot of creativity.
… a lot of patience.
When I first moved abroad, I went to Indonesia for a year working as a voluntary English teacher on a scholarship by AFS Intercultural Program. I didn’t really have any costs, as the NGO provided for almost all expenses, plus a little monthly extra budget.
At the time, I already had a hunch that I wanted to stay overseas for a longer period of time. When I first came to Indonesia, I arrived there with the mindset of “let’s make the world a better place by supporting people in third-world countries”.
Well, I was a naive, fresh graduate of high school.
I thought that this was my calling, and that I could make a real difference if I stayed in the field of development aid.
Like most people with a similar mindset, I quickly realized that this is simply not a realistic thing to do. At best, you can help those few people around you. But even that is a difficult thing to do. Plus, it definitely won’t make any systematic changes in your host country at all.
So when my program ended, instead of moving to the University of Vienna to take a program in development aid as I originally had planned, I actually decided to stay in Indonesia more in order to get to know the culture better.
What I did was that I enrolled in a joint-degree program between a local Indonesian university and an Australian university.
Ironically, I suddenly found myself to be the poorest student in class. This was a program that only upper class Indonesian families could afford. After all, it involved self-funded study at an Australian university for $13.000 per semester plus living costs. And there was no such thing as a student loan.
This may surprise you, but the academic program in Indonesia was also one of the best one’s that I have been in so far in my life. Because the University of Indonesia is the most prestigious university of the country, a large percentage of the lecturers are not academics at all.
Rather, they are the top practitioners in their field, who are teaching at this particular University in their spare time for prestige purposes.
So the time came that I had to move to Australia, and I struggled my way through the program with financial support of my parents and a lot of odd jobs on the side.
The one I remember best was my job as a door-to-door solar energy salesman. It was good fun, because you were walking outside at 35 degrees Celsius for at least 8 hours every single day.
You were knocking on people’s doors who had already talked to at least 10 people before you, and who were trying to sell them pretty much the same product. These customers certainly weren’t happy to see you, knocking at the door of their private homes.
Besides a lot of threats of physical violence, the memory that is most vividly in my mind is the guy that actually sent his dog running after me.
Well, the best part about it was that there was a pretty good chance that at the end of every week, you were going to make hardly any money at all.
Because the payment was based on commission, and you needed to close at least 7 leads per week, the chance was quite high that you were left only with the minimum pay of $300 at the end of the week. And, if you have ever lived in Australia, you know that $300 is nothing considering Australian living costs.
It was also during my time in Australia that I got excited about being involved in the start-up sphere. I got a desk at a co-working space, and tried to build my own start-up for a while.
With that going nowhere, I eventually ended up joining another start-up for a while, hoping that it was going to make me enough money to finance the beginning of my stay in Iran.
That didn’t happen. Frankly, I made no money at all during my time of working at this start-up.
But it did leave me with a lot of valuable experiences. As the sales and marketing manager, it was my role to drive to all sorts of five star hotels on the Gold Coast and to close deals for selling their services as part of our tour packages.
Another thing that happened during the time at this start-up was that I got introduced to the Iranian culture. The owner of the company was an Iranian, and I was working closely with him during every steps of the client-acquisition process.
It was basically on the basis of this experience that I decided that my next destination to move to was going to be Iran.
You may want to argue that it is a very strange idea to move to Iran simply based on the fact that your boss was an Iranian. And you are right. But I think that is the reality of what digital nomads are like — they are strange people who make big life decisions on the basis of nothing but their intuition.
At the time, the nuclear deal between Iran and the United States had just happened.
My thought process was that it would be a good opportunity for me to start a company in Iran that would facilitate business between the European companies trying to enter the Iranian market, and local Iranian companies.
That never happened, either.
Why it didn’t work out is a story for another time. But at the end of the day, this is my reality now. I moved to Iran close to one and a half years ago, and I am still here. Alive and happy.
“That sounds like a pretty bad experience. Why should I even want to do something like this?”
Good question. Honestly, I sometimes ask myself the same thing.
Sometimes, I imagine what it would have been like if I had just stayed back in Germany. Or if I had returned to Germany after my first year in Indonesia.
At first, all these good thoughts come up.
I would have had much more time to spend with my family. I would have had a lot of time to relax, socialize and enjoy my life. I would have never had to worry about financial issues at all.
If I had been smart, I would have invested the same amount of money that I spent during my time overseas and now would be the proud owner of four apartments or something like that.
But then, I start remembering how boring and free of any excitement my life would have been. And how little I would have grown.
Struggle means growth.
You can’t imagine how much struggle I went through during my time abroad.
All the dealing with foreign governments, that would rather see you leave than stay. All the dealing with financial issues, to the point where I almost got kicked out of my apartments quite a few times because I simply couldn’t pay the bills. All the problems of juggling multiple responsibilities (university, language learning, paid jobs + work on my own projects) at the same time.
I was constantly busy. I hardly ever had any chance of sitting back and simply enjoy my life. Whenever I had just started to get settled in any country, it became time for me to move.
Serial expats develop a unique identity.
Frankly, I believe that serial expats are much more “themselves” than people who have lived in one single culture for their whole lives.
We are constantly exposed to different cultures that force us to question the beliefs that have been ingrained into us by the society we grew up in. Therefore, we are making our own choices about what beliefs to adapt, and which one’s to reject.
You may argue that this is something that everybody does. And perhaps you are right.
But I think somebody needs to make this experience for themselves before they can really understand how different it is to be surrounded by a completely different belief system than your own.
You have to remember that by living in another country, you are exposed to that different belief system every single day. You simply can not escape it.
This is completely different than living in, for example, a multicultural society like Australia. In those countries, you are meeting people from different cultures on a regular basis.
But it is only a superficial exposure to those cultures, because you are simply not obliged to adjust yourself to it. Rather, society as a whole is congregating towards this “culture of multiculturalism”. This means that everybody is adapting to a small degree, to the point that they are able to interact with one another successfully.
By living in a culture completely different than your own, you are forced to rethink every single belief that you have been exposed to from your childhood onwards.
There is unlimited wisdom to be found in every single culture in the world.
Cultures are the collective wisdom that hundreds of generations of people have been passing on from one generation to the next.
They differ from another because the people in various different regions were exposed to completely different living conditions, which required completely different strategies of survival.
Gurnek Bains has written an amazing book on this subject titled “Cultural DNA”, in which he describes the psychologically differences that have developed among people from different cultures around the world as a result of the environmental conditions they found themselves in.
Because all these different cultures have also internalized completely different lessons about life, by exposing yourself
to new cultural environments, you get to learn a completely different perspective about life that you would have never been exposed to otherwise.
This means that living in another cultural environment allows you to learn an incredible amount by simply living your day-to-day life just like everybody else. This learning process happens automatically as you are exposed to the different belief systems out of the sheer necessity to live your life.
6 lessons I have learned about moving abroad
1. Allow your intuition to guide you
Your intuition will tell you which places really make you passionate. For example, moving to Iran was a completely arbitrary decision, besides the fact that my business partner was from there.
Regardless of where you decide to go, you will find your way.
But if you end up in a place that doesn’t make you passionate, you may start resenting your life abroad. Take the advice of other people, but don’t let it influence your final decision about where to go.
The most important aspect of moving to another culture is the cultural learning opportunities this provides you with. But in order to take full advantage of that, you will have to enjoy the process.
2. Be creative about opportunities for funding
Pretty much an endless amount of opportunities for funding exist out there in the world. You only have to be creative and patient enough to look for them.
For example, one of the easiest ways of getting a visa and getting your funding sorted is taking a language course. A lot of countries are interested in finding foreigners who want to learn their language and therefore create business opportunities between the two countries.
I understand that doing a language course is probably not the way you were imagining to spend your time abroad, but you will have to learn the language either way if you want to stay there for a longer period of time.
So go online, find some countries that offer scholarships for doing a language course, and then simply go for it. You can always find a job at a local company when you are there, and then switch your visa to a working visa.
Another option is the typical “English- or whatever other language teacher thing”.
All it takes is some months of preparation in terms of doing a certificate as a language teacher, and then some time finding a job through a headhunter.
3. You don’t need to have it all figured out before your arrival
As I have hinted in tip #2, you don’t need to stay on the same job that you were doing when you first arrived at the new country. In fact, all you need is a plan that allows you to survive for the first six months or so.
In fact, it is incredibly foolish to try and plan out what you are going to do during your whole stay in that new country.
Most people are simply never going to be able to find a good job from abroad. Instead, they arrive on whatever opportunity comes up, and then switch to a better job when the chance arises.
4. Uncertainty is your friend
When you are living the lifestyle of a serial expat or a global nomad, you simply can not plan very much in advance.
For example, right now I simply do not know where I will be 8 months later. Perhaps I will still be in Iran. Perhaps I will be in Georgia. Or perhaps I will be in France. It all depends on the opportunities that are coming up.
I guess it is obvious to mention that my life would be completely different depending on which of these journeys I am going to pursue.
For people who have been living in stable living conditions for most of their lives, that uncertainty can be really scary. I have recently been talking with a friend of mine who even went as far as saying that if the money on his savings account isn’t constantly becoming more and more, he is starting to freak out.
I perceive this uncertainty as my friend.
Under those circumstances, I simply ask myself:
“What is the worst thing that can happen to me?”
Quite frankly, the answer is almost always the same. The worst thing that can happen to me is that I would have to move back in with my mother for a few months or so. Perhaps even a year. But then again, how terrible is this really?
I would simply pick myself back up, create some ways of making money, and eventually continue with my life as usual.
Perhaps, I am also a little bit privileged in that regard. I do have a mother who, I am sure, would support me in a situation like this.
But then again, I think that the large majority of people who are reading this article would have at least one family member who would let them stay at their place for a while.
Of course, I also feel the anxiety that the uncertainty of my lifestyle creates, just like everybody else. This anxiety which is a result of the question where I will be a few months later and whether or not I will be able to pay the bills.
But do you know what this anxiety does to me? It pushes me forward.
It makes me work harder. It makes me prepare myself for whatever problem I may face. It makes me excited to take on any challenge that will arise in my life. It makes me rise to the occasion.
5. Have a safe haven that you can always return to.
I have hinted on this in the previous point, but it is always a good idea to have a safe haven that you can always return to. Because the human brain is always craving for stability and security, it is always providing a large degree of comfort if you have somewhere to return to that you can call “home”.
As my friend and leadership coach Daniel Wright has pointed out to me, sometimes when we are moving around for a long period of time, we get to a point where we get tired of moving or around, or where we simply need a break for a while.
Moving to multiple different countries in a row is very demanding on the mind and it can leave a very heavy emotional toll on us.
Our belief system constantly gets challenged, we are constantly exposed to new environments, and we are constantly exposed to second language. All of this together is very difficult to process.
Consequently, having a place that you can always return to when necessary makes a large difference in your life.
6. Always stay mindful of your own needs
Where you move makes a very large difference in terms of your own level of satisfaction.
Sure, I am an advocate of saying that every cultural environment has a lot to offer, and that you can be happy everywhere if you are willing to fully immerse yourself into that culture.
But that is primarily the case on a cultural level.
There are also other, much simpler things. For example, right now I would rather move away from Tehran, simply because of the high levels of pollution. If there is one thing that I am absolutely not willing to sacrifice for the sake of my passion for cultures, then it is my health.
One of the biggest factors in that regard is money, of course. Sometimes, it can be a very good idea to move to a developing country.
Since the costs are low, it is possible to live a reasonably good life even if your income from an online-business or whatever your income stream is, still is too low to cover your living costs in your home country.
Whenever you are making a decision about where to move, keep your own needs in mind. Compare the different options that you have, and see how much they suit you in terms of building the life you desire.
For example, over the last year or so it became very important to me to have easy access to nature. Therefore, when I will make a decision about where to go next, I will consider this factor very strongly.
Call to action:
If you yourself have had experiences in terms of moving abroad, I would love to hear from you. What were the main challenges you faced, and how did you overcome them?
If you have never moved abroad but would like to give it a try, I would love to hear from you as well. Which factors are holding you back from moving?
Let me know in the comments below.
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