Moving to another country is an eye-opener, it isn't easy, but you get a lot out of it. So here are 13 ways of living abroad changes you.
1. YOU’LL DISCOVER YOUR STRENGTH
It will take time and you won’t realize it at first, but you definitely will change. You will face many obstacles and setbacks that you will come close to giving up than you ever have in your life. But you will overcome them all on your own. You will learn to rely on yourself and trust your instinct more. Eventually, you will start doing many things alone and you will become less afraid of the unknown.
2. IMPROVE YOUR SELF ESTEEM & CONFIDENCE
You will grow and become more self-confident and your personality will start to shine more and more and all of it will show. You will know your self-worth and you will know what you truly are capable of. You will be so content with yourself, that nothing will face you.
3. FRIENDSHIP INTENSIFY
Friendships change when you are abroad and you will lose some friends. Moving abroad is probably the biggest friendship tester. Even with so much technology nowadays, it’s not entirely easy to stay in touch with everyone back home when you are living abroad due to time conflicts, busy schedules, and everyone just moving on with their lives just as you are. Sooner or later, you will come to the realization of who your true friends are, who you can count on no matter when or where you are. The distance makes maintaining friendships much harder, but it also shows you who is worth the effort, and who isn't. You will also realize how blessed you are to have close friends that you have.
4. YOU MAY NOT BE AS OPEN MINDED TOWARDS OTHER CULTURES AS YOU THINK YOU WILL BE
I wrote this as a tip in my THE ULTIMATE GUIDE FOR FIRST TIME SOLO FEMALE TRAVELERS blog, but I’m bringing this back up because this one is crucial. As much as we all want to be culturally respectable, that's not always the case. Sometimes you will find yourself disagreeing with certain cultures. At times, it gets hard to understand or respect other cultures when it interferes with your own beliefs. Certain behaviors you see or laws you come to learn about will piss you off. You may feel that they are inhumane or go against people's rights, but you need to keep in mind that people around the world don't follow and live by the same laws and not everyone's culture is as pretty as it seems. This lesson took me a while to learn, but remember you learn and you grow. So don’t beat yourself over it if you feel like you not as open to a new culture, it will take your time.
5. YOU WILL BECOME FINANCIALLY LITERATE
You will become financially literate. Living abroad means working abroad, chances are you will be getting paid more than your coworker and the average person there. However, with money comes a lot of responsibilities and you will get a taste of that eventually. If you are someone that loves to blow your money with friends you will find yourself in hardship in a foreign country really quickly. I’m not saying you can't have fun, it just needs to be done in moderation. You have to be smart with your money because you can’t afford to be broke in a foreign country. You never know what can happen. You will quickly learn, how to take care of yourself financially, and you will also start applying the needs vs wants concept on a daily basis. You may also find yourself giving more to others. It’s hard to look the other way when you make what locals make in a year in a month. This will also make you wiser with your money. You might even start learning about investment and start investing your money into something that’s worth it and beneficial to you such as traveling. You will gain so much experience from traveling. Traveling means planning ahead, organizing, and understanding money management. You will become a genius at budgeting. If you love to travel, you will find ways to travel on a budget, and you will find so many cheap deals and loopholes.
6. TRAVELING MAKES YOU HUMBLE AND WILL HURT YOU AT THE SAME TIME
Way before I started my journey, I once read a quote that said “traveling makes you humble” it stuck with me, but I didn’t fully understand it until I experienced it. When you are traveling alone you learn to trust and you realize how little you know about this world and other people, and how much you underestimated this world, and what a tiny place you occupy in this world. When you are traveling you will see some amazing things that will leave a mark on you, but you will also see a lot of hurt breaking things that will leave you hurt, but that's life.
7. YOUR VALUES & PRIORITIES WILL CHANGE
Your values and priorities will change, I guarantee you that. Unfortunately, I can’t go into details here because there are many factors that will be the cause of this such as your background, your character, how open you are to new challenges and changes, as well as your location and experience.
FAMILY - everyone has a different family story, but I believe that you will start to truly understand the meaning of family when you are away from your family. You will begin to value family time and every holiday more. Things you hated doing with your family before, you will start to appreciate. When you return, you will try to spend more time with your parents, siblings, pets, and etc. you will truly begin to appreciate your family more than you ever have. You may or may not catch yourself creating new family traditions.
8. YOU WILL BE WISER WITH YOUR TIME
You will be wiser with your time because now you know your values, your priories, your goals, so you know who and what’s worth your time and worth the effort. You won’t waste your time on things that aren’t important to you anymore. You will become very selfish with your time.
9. YOU WILL BECOME OPEN-MINDED, MORE EASY GOING AND GO WITH THE FLOW ALL THE TIME
You have to be open-minded to survive abroad. You will experience culture shock and instead of judging things you see that are different than what you are used to, think about how interesting they are and what you can learn from them. It’s all about perception.
You will also become more open-minded when you are traveling alone because you need to make new friends. And making new friends as a traveler is way easier than making friends in school. Plus, it’s so much fun when you have other travelers to kick it with. It’s hard to relax and just go with the flow when you are new in a new country, you don't know anyone and you don’t know everything. However, sooner or later you will learn to just relax and let things sort themselves out. You will learn to just relax and go with the flow.
10. YOU WILL GAIN AMAZING SKILLS
You will become an intuitive listener, a really good conversationalist, and a great public speaker. You will meet so many people who will share so many stories, and because of the language barrier, you will be forced many times to listen a lot which is a great thing. Talking to strangers will become a regular thing, you will get over the fear of talking to a stranger and you will make new friends easily. You will learn how to speak to people from different cultures and backgrounds. Because you have faced so many challenges abroad alone, you won't be afraid of public speaking anymore.
11. THE WORLD IS SO MUCH BIGGER THAN YOU THINK
We as human beings are a lot similar than you think, and you will notice that when you are traveling. We are just divided by race, language, and country borders, but we are also brought together through food, culture, tourism, and music. The world is huge and it has so a lot to offer, but you have to go out there and see it for yourself.
12. LEARN TO APPRECIATE THE SMALLEST THING IN THE WORLD
Enjoy everything, take the time to enjoy the smallest things, and take it all in. We all heard the saying "you don’t know what you got till it’s gone" right? Well going abroad will make you miss and appreciate the smallest thing from back home, but you will also miss the little things from abroad when you return, so appreciate the smallest thing while you are there.
13. CAN'T SETTLE DOWN WON'T SETTLE DOWN
Chances are when you do, well if you do return home, you will miss the road, you will miss all the crazy adventures, you will miss your life abroad, and you will most likely be planning your next journey as I am. It’s hard to settle down or just stay in one place once you have been exposed to what this world has to offer, so I say don’t. Don’t settle down and give the heart what it wants. So whatever it is you decide to do, I say follow your instinct.
Now, everyone's experience is different, and personally, this is what I got out of living abroad for over a year. I know some people experience similar things while others have a totally different experience. The only advice I can give anyone who is thinking about moving abroad is to just do it! I know it sounds scary, and it won't always be fun and easy, but it's totally worth it!