For the vast majority of people a move overseas is undertaken in order to effect a positive change in their life. Someone might move to find a better paid job for example, someone else might choose to retire to a better climate – in other words, most people want to improve their quality of life by moving abroad, even if the conscious thought that they will achieve a better life isn’t uppermost in their mind.
From better weather to a lower cost of living, access to better paying employment or improved healthcare facilities, the good news is that by moving abroad you can positively affect multiple areas of your current life. If you hadn’t already thought about it from this perspective, allow us to show you just 7 ways in which your life can potentially improve significantly if you choose to live overseas.
If you’re in the mood for a change and you just need a little weight behind your idea to start a new life abroad, allow us to furnish you with 7 positive reasons to make the move. You can use them to persuade a reluctant partner to go with you, or you can use them to just give you the final impetus required to finally pack your bags and begin your adventurous new life.
1) Enforced ‘separation’ from your former ‘every day life’ will give you greater perspective.
- We all get caught up in the minutiae of our every day lives, and the stress we feel as we rush to get the kids to school or as we’re forced to run for the train in the morning can cause a cloud that restricts our daily life. From worrying about the shopping list to stressing about noisy neighbours, living with this level of ‘rubbish’ in our lives eats up our positivity and really restricts our happiness – however, it is an inevitable path that we all follow.
By moving abroad and physically uprooting yourself from the everyday aspects of your current life you will almost immediately gain huge perspective and be able to see how much rubbish was weighing you down. Every day will be an adventure, and even situations which challenge you will teach you new skills. You will gain a deeper understanding and sense of what’s really important in life.
2) Greater perspective will allow you to see what’s truly important to you.
- By stripping back the layers and weeding out a lot of unnecessary stress from your life you will be able to see which aspects of your former and current life are important, worthwhile worrying about or focusing on and who in your life you want to have around you.
By stepping away from some people in the act of moving you may find they are very important to your life, and at the same time you will see who in your former life was perhaps not worth all the time you invested in them. What’s more, you will see others in your new country leading their life, and perhaps you will be able to see how they have discovered what’s truly worthwhile doing and focusing on and learn from them.
3) When you know what’s really important you can refocus your life.
- Perhaps your greater sense of perspective will allow you to see how certain people in your life are more important to you than others and you will now work to spend more time with them. Maybe you will realise that certain aspects of your job or career are worth pursuing more aggressively as they are what give you joy or personal fulfilment. Ultimately, if you know what is important to you, you can focus on that and concentrate on tuning out to all the other unnecessary distractions in your life.
4) Knowing what you want from life is a huge step on the road to personal fulfilment and happiness.
- Most people don’t have time to set goals because their life takes over and they just function day to day – by taking a step away from your former life and giving yourself the time and freedom to see the wood in amongst the trees you can become one of the lucky ones who actually knows what they want from life – even if it is as simple a goal as having more time off to spend with your children.
5) Knowing what you want from life will allow you to focus and therefore achieve your goals.
- Only by knowing what you want out of life can you ever hope to achieve it! So, in gaining perspective and reaching important decisions about what you want and where you would like to go in life you are immediately armed with the vision you need to inspire your actions.
6) When you start a ‘new life’ abroad you are not restricted by the perspectives and preconceptions of others around you which immediately gives you greater freedom.
- In your ‘former life’ your friends, family, neighbours, colleagues, acquaintances and people in your community all knew something about you and had an idea of what you were capable of – however, unconsciously their lack of deep and insightful knowledge could have restricted you. If you are known as a carpenter but in your spare time you harbour a passion for oil painting, ‘reinventing’ yourself in many people’s eyes will be difficult. If you move abroad and straight away begin exhibiting and selling your paintings, you will be seen as a painter!
As basic as that sounds, it can be far easier to really start afresh by changing your surroundings and entering into a new world with new people and no one around you who prejudges you and labels you.
7) Different societies and different cultures have different values and these can positively influence you, and because your mind is already open and you are no longer restricted, you can choose to follow the paths and adopt the values that you discover are important to you.
- Many, many expatriates find an enhanced sense of the world from the time they spend living abroad. All sorts of surveys and tests have been done on expats and they have discovered facts such as that expatriate children adapt in new social situations far better and that expatriate adults have a very high degree of problem solving ability, and so on. What’s also true is that expats can adopt and adapt and absorb so much from their experiences around the world and what they learn can enhance their lives.
If we remain in one place all our lives we will learn very little other than what is directly in front of us. By putting ourselves out there in the world we can see how others love their lives, we can see where people go wrong of course – but far more interestingly and importantly we can see where we have been going wrong and we can enhance our lives by learning more about other people’s lives. We can only do this if we go abroad and see the world.
