Think You Don't Have The BALLS to Move Abroad? Think Again.
Be honest. How many times have you thought to yourself or even said to yourself, “I could never move to another country.”
“I don't have the balls. That's just too big, too scary, not realistic. Not in the cards for me. No way.”
But what if I were to tell you that your greatest obstacle in relocating to a different country is actually you, the person staring back at yourself in the mirror every day.
First, let's talk about the fear that's keeping you stuck. Fear, F-E-A-R. Forget everything and run. False evidence appearing real.
Whatever it is, fear shows up in our everyday lives. Now, in the context of moving to a different country, you're probably thinking, What if I can't find a job despite my best efforts at trying to assimilate and network?
Or, you might be worried that you're going to miss your family and friends a bit too much. You miss your old life back home. What if I just plain don't fit in my new home, despite trying my best to learn the local language? These are all rational and honest fears, of course, but you have to consider the source.
Where are these fears coming from in the first place? Is it coming from a rational and informed place, or something else? The truth is, though, you're a single parent, either by divorce or some other circumstance, and you handled yourself just fine. Maybe you were petrified of becoming a parent to begin with?
Were you ever truly 100 percent ready to become a parent? No, of course not. You're never really 100 percent ready for anything. You just gotta get yourself to a threshold level. Now, so if you could be a single parent and do the job successfully, you've raised at least one kid. They're grown up, and they're on their own.
That's a feather in your cap. That's an asset. If you were able to do the single parenting thing, think about all the challenges you faced. Short-term challenges, long-term challenges, everything from child care arrangements to religious agreements. Settling on a religion to raise your child under, picking a school, dealing with parental conflicts that occur.
You've handled all of those things with flying colors, of course. I think it's a foregone conclusion that you could move to a different country. What do you have right now? What you're dealing with is an informational problem. You don't know where to get started. You may not have a passport yet or not even know how to get one.
Did you know that there are already people doing this, living abroad already? They're less qualified than you are. We have teenagers who are backpacking across Europe.
People in their 20s and 30s are getting remote jobs, or starting their own businesses in a foreign country, and earning money in a location independent fashion.
If you're like me, you're over 40, maybe 50. You have one or more kids who are grown up and moved out of the house. You have the advantage of life experience, decades of it.
You have the ability to overcome and adapt and pivot. So these are great skills and assets that you can take with you when you move abroad, when you're ready.
An old friend of mine, I've known him over 30 years, we went to college together. And I told him about my summer vacay. I went to Guadalajara, Mexico for five weeks. I was there eight weeks, but five weeks as a student, three more weeks as a vacation.
He told me that it takes balls doing what I did, spending a summer in a different country to go to school and get certified as an English teacher. He said, “That took balls. I don't think I have it in me.” I said, “Well, you've got a wife and kid.” And he said, “Even if I didn't have a spouse or a child, I don't think I have it in me to do what you did. That took balls. I wish the greatest success for you.”
That was very nice of him. And what surprised me though, this is a guy I've known for a long time. He said when he was a kid he went to a boarding school in Singapore for like five or six years, and he lived in China with his family for a period of time.
Hearing him tell me that it took balls to spend a summer in Mexico, I was surprised to hear that. Yet, I understand the United States doesn't do the greatest job of preparing its citizens for life in a different country. The U.S. government wants you here, spending your money here and paying taxes locally.
If my old buddy were here, I would say, yeah, I was afraid to do this, but I took the leap anyway. There's a great book called Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway by Dr. Susan Jeffers.
Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway. You know, it always takes just the first step. Getting that passport if you don't already have one. That's where the balls came from, just I had a bit of fear and decided to act on it anyway. In 2015, I made my first trip to a foreign country by plane. I took off from Phoenix, Arizona in September 2015 at the age of 40.
And I spent eight days in the country of Belize, which used to be known as British Honduras. It's an English-speaking country, which made it easier. But eight days there on my own in a Third World country, or developing country, I almost chickened out of it. A couple of weeks prior to my trip, I had a voice in my head.
It was my former college roommate telling me, dude, dude, dude, you're crazy to be going to this foreign Third World country all by yourself. This is crazy. You should cancel this trip and not go. And I went, no, Mr. Miyagi wax on. I said, no, we're going on this trip. And I'm glad I did. It was life changing, although not 180 degrees night and day life changing, but still taking a solo trip aboard abroad for your first time changes you as a person in big and little ways.
The moral of the story is, small action leads to confidence. Competence breeds confidence, which breeds more confidence, which breeds even more competence. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy, but in a good way. The hardest thing of all this that I'm talking about in moving to a different country, whether it's part-time or full-time, temporary or permanent.
The hardest part is deciding to do this in the first place. It's so easy to psych yourself out, talk yourself out of taking action. But take the smallest of baby steps, getting that passport, or looking around your house or your apartment and saying, do I really need all this stuff?
The Pareto Principle, you might have heard of it. 80 percent of your successes come from 20 percent of your inputs. So, in the context of a cluttered home, you're using 20 percent of your stuff 80 percent of the time. I believe that's how it works. Using 20 percent of your things 80 percent of the time, which means 80 percent of your stuff, you're only using it 20 percent of the time.
So why not start there? Declutter. Get rid of the 80 percent of the things you're only using 20 percent of the time anyway. And once you do start to do this, once you've decided to move abroad, and you start the process, i.e., getting your passport, starting decluttering, getting rid of your stuff, you don't need a perfect plan. You just require a framework to work on daily or weekly.
What's your greatest challenge in relocating abroad? Whether it be Mexico or Canada or someplace else. Write down in the comments what you think is holding you back. Time, or is it money, or is it something else? I'm interested in hearing from you.
