The Expat Diaries: Existential Freedom

“You can’t run away from yourself.”

During my previous trips to Europe, first for two weeks in Amsterdam in 2011 and then my 2-month adventure last year, I felt an overwhelming sense of freedom. It was like the near-constant anxiety that I usually grapple with had just fallen away. A couple of weeks before my move I started getting really excited to experience that feeling again.

But, it didn’t happen. Not exactly.

It turns out that moving to another country is a lot more stressful than going there on holiday (who woulda guessed?)

And I have some history in London. Two of the most stressful situations from the past year slapped me in the face almost as soon as I got settled.

My anxiety was crazy high. Like, not sleeping through the night, sweating through my t-shirt, not sure if I could make it without my kitty to cuddle and the shoulders of my friend and parents to cry on kind of anxious.

But I did make it through (though with more than one Skype sob session, I might add).

The freedom of being an expat is not quite the same as being on holiday. But perhaps it’s more valuable.

You can’t move away from home and expect to be an entirely different person. You’re still you, with the same history, the same set of experiences – and thank goodness (you’re awesome)! But even if you left that horrible job or dead-end relationship on the other side of the world, if you’re not careful, you can easily end up creating the same negative patterns.

Yet there truly is a unique existential freedom to being an expat.

When you’ve lived somewhere for a long time, it can feel like your history weighs heavily on your shoulders. Everyone sees you in a certain light and believes they know exactly who you are. Whether we realize it or not, we often think that we have to live up to these expectations and they come to limit the possibilities we see for ourselves.

Moving away from all that can open up a lot of room to dream – to see everything that’s possible and give ourselves permission to be the people we want to be.

That’s not to say that we don’t always have the option to choose differently, to strike out in a new direction. Of course we do. But moving to another country forces you to examine what you want your life to look like (or at least it did me). It would be a shame to make such a bold move and then not make the most of it. Plus, you already know you have what it takes to make daring choices and leap into the unknown. If you can move across the world, a flashy new haircut or change of careers start to seem a bit less scary.

All this to say, if you’re embarking on your own expat adventure, give yourself some room to dream. What do you want to get out of this experience? What do you imagine your days looking like? What old habits do you want to shed and which new ones to you want to cultivate? Without a clear ideas of these things, I think it’s easy to drift through life without fully realizing what we want and without living up to our dreams.

For me, this has meant lots of time spent reading personal development books, writing in my journal, and taking time to be still.

If you’re not sure where to start I recommend Gala Darling’s Dare/Dream/Do e-course and everything Danielle LaPorte has ever written (I’m eagerly anticipating the release of The Desire Map in January).

Even if you’ve got your feet firmly planted where you are, I think these are important things to think about. There’s a great quote by Napoleon Hill that goes, “There is one quality which one must possess to win, and that is definiteness of purpose, the knowledge of what one wants, and a burning desire to possess it.” You can’t get what you want, until you really know what that is.

So tell me, what are you dreaming of becoming? And how are you going to make it happen?