2 Things To Consider About Your Life Before Moving Abroad
Life will always go on, wherever you are
Living and working in Japan had always been a dream of mine. For a long time I’d wanted to do more than just travel to the country, I wanted to really immerse myself in an experience there.
After three years of applying and working on my skills, I took up a contract to teach English and jumped on a plane to Japan in August 2018. Two brilliant years later, I then returned to the UK in September 2020.
It truly was amazing.
However, before I went, I’d put a lot of pressure on myself to achieve this dream of living abroad. I made myself feel like it was my only option to be happy. This is an article for anyone considering moving abroad but who is also staking their self-esteem on making it happen. But it’s really also for anyone who is staking their self-esteem on the achievement of any goal.
Success doesn’t equal fulfillment
When I was looking for ways to live and work in Japan, I made it the be all and end all. I was telling myself that it was all I wanted and that if I didn’t get to live there, I wouldn’t allow myself to move on. I was literally telling myself that the rest of my life depended on it.
Still in the UK, I had to learn to let go of this potential opportunity in order to be content in the present and then actually enjoy it once I was there. It wasn’t until the night before the successful interview that I finally did. I felt like I’d liberated myself from this self-created pressure and was finally open to approach the opportunity for what it was; a fun and meaningful experience with wonderful people, but not the impossible Holy Grail I’d made it out to be.
While it can be helpful to never compromise on our dreams, it’s no good at all if we attach our sense of worth or future happiness on the condition they’re achieved. Know that, while your time abroad will be a life changing experience, if you have to wait a bit longer to pull it off, that’s fine too.
Find ways to enjoy the time spent in between moving to another country and now. Work on other meaningful goals. Spend time with friends and family and do things together that would be challenging to do after you’ve moved.
Ultimately, no future experience will provide us with peace of mind in the present, we have to choose to create that ourselves. There’s a great quote by Marcus Aurelius in Meditations that sums this up:
‘Everything you’re trying to reach- by taking the long way round- you could have right now, this moment.’
It can be helpful to bear this in mind if you’re putting the experience of living abroad above the value of the rest of your life.
Wherever you go, there you are
You might already know about the honeymoon period of moving to another country. It’s a period of high highs followed by the low lows of the ‘culture shock’ of living in a completely new environment and culture.
I found my time in Japan to be pretty consistent. There were highs and lows and exciting moments and frustrations for sure. But I didn’t experience a big trough as in the classic graphs of culture shock.
What I will say is-and this ties in with my previous point- that after you’ve gotten used to the new country you’re living in, the cognitive energy that was previously dedicated to settling in and taking in the novelty will start to drift elsewhere back to your own very unique aspirations, preoccupations and concerns.
The human mind is excellent at getting bored after it gets what it wants and then trying to create new problems to solve or looking to old ones to fill the space.
Unresolved problems you might have hoped had been solved by living abroad come knocking on the door once more, as it was never about the location but more about your relationship with your current situation and who you want to be. Learn how to make peace with the present and you create perspective.
This is something to consider before moving. If you have any significant unresolved problems before moving abroad, I recommend addressing them before you go. They will still need facing and it might be more challenging to do so in a different country.
Conclusion
Despite all these previous points, it was never my intention with this article to paint living abroad in a negative light. Living in Japan was 2 of the best years of my life so far and was full of brilliant experiences, relationships and memories I wouldn’t trade for anything at all.
Instead, I wanted to write this to offer perspective to anyone who feels they need the chance to live abroad in order to be happy. You might convince yourself that being in your home country is the problem instead of looking to recognise and solve a problem you’re creating internally.
Nonetheless, if you really want to spend part of your life in another country, I would encourage you to absolutely go for it. 100%. It really is invaluable and you’ll learn so much about yourself.
But you’ll likely also find that, if you let go of the need for it, you’ll enjoy your experience abroad much more when you’re there and create a more enjoyable time in the run up to it too. Life will always go on.
