Conquer Your Fears About Moving Abroad!

Part 2 in the Move Abroad Series!

Photo by Dariusz Sankowski on Unsplash

Click here if you want to listen to this article read by the author.

—If you haven’t read the first article which covers, “how to get excited about moving abroad”, you can find it here.

Now let’s examine your fears around making this change.

In order to move past them, it’s helpful to know them. Some can be assuaged, others debunked and the rest, you may have to ignore—for now.

Sometimes we just feel an overall sense of dread or anxiety but we don’t know why. Or we may feel overwhelmed at the thought of packing up our home, figuring out where to go, navigating our relationships and all of that is bundled into one big knot of tension.

In order to unpack your fears, it helps to list them and name them. 

Grab a piece of paper and a pencil or open up a blank note on your computer and start writing down everything you’re afraid of. 

Include everything that feels big, overwhelming, unsurmountable. But also include the things that seem mundane. Feelings, ideas, plans—all of it. Include both the fears you have and the fears others have put on you. 

Once you have your list, step away from it. Change gears and focus on something else for awhile. Don’t look at your list for at least a few hours, a day or even longer. What I don’t want you to do is decide they’re too overwhelming, put them in a drawer and forget about them for a year so let’s add a time limit. Max, one week. If you’re avoiding this part of the process, add a reminder to your calendar.

When you do go back to your list, I just want you to read it through once.

Hopefully you’ll have a little more perspective and will feel slightly detached from it. Know that you don’t have to solve all your concerns right this second. You couldn’t, even if you wanted to.

Now break up your list into two categories.

If my headings don’t work for you, find ones that do. And if you need more than two categories, go for it, but try to keep this part at a bigger picture level and don’t add more than three or four categories at the most.

Here are a few examples to help you get started. 

Mental/Emotional Fears—I’m scared about… 

• What other people in my life will think.

• Leaving my ailing mother.

• Leaving my community, even the guy at the corner store who chats with me every day.

• Leaving my comfort zone.

• Telling my partner/best friend/boss.

Physical Fears—I’m scared to:

• Learn a new language.

• Navigate a new city/country.

• Drive in a new country.

• Leave my rent controlled apartment.

• Sell my house.

• Pack/get rid of all my belongings.

• Travel with my dog/cat/bird/turtle, etc.

After you’ve organized your list into two (or three) categories start with the physical category.

I know this may seem counterintuitive but most often it’s our mental/emotional blocks that are more difficult to overcome.

• Start with the fear that feels the least “scary”.

• Number them in order from the least scary to the most scary. 

My list would then look like this: Backwards Numbering: #1 is the least overwhelming for me. (Maybe you need to number things the opposite way where number one is the most overwhelming so you do what works for you).

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Physical Fears—I’m scared to:

1. Learn a new language. = 2

2. Navigate a new city/country. = 3

3. Drive in a new country. = 1 (least scary)

4. Leave my rent controlled apartment/Sell my house. = 4

5. Pack/get rid of all my belongings. = 6 (most scary)

6. Traveling with my dog/cat/bird/turtle, etc. = 5

You can either put these in order on the page or you can just write a number next to each one, which I prefer because… notice how the first three items on the list immediately became the least scary? And yet they were the first things I thought of, the fears that were the most forefront in my mind.

At the beginning stages, the reason that these are the least scary is because they are things that come later, after numbers 4-7. 

Now I can tell myself, “it’s okay to worry about those later” and set those particular fears aside. There’s absolutely nothing I can do right this minute about fears number two or three. 

Regarding fear number one; I could start studying a new language right this instant but unless you’ve decided which country to move to, addressed all your fears first or are super excited to learn a new language; I advise against that at this stage. It will just add to your anxiety and honestly, you can wait on this step. 

I wrote an article on language learning, which you can find here. I’ve done it. I moved to a country where I didn’t speak the language and I agonized over it and started studying a year before I moved—but I knew where I was going and had already gotten rid of most of my belongings. 

While there are pluses and minuses to the approach I took, at the beginning stages, especially if you’re paralyzed by fear, it’s best not to add anything else to your plate.

Now, looking at the rest of my list…

Backwards Numbering: #1 is the least overwhelming for me.

1. Leave my rent controlled apartment/Sell my house = 4 (least scary)

2. Pack/get rid of all my belongings. = 6 (most scary)

3. Traveling with my dog/cat/bird/turtle, etc. = 5

Next, ask yourself, what can I tackle right this second?

If I look back at the list (which you need to keep doing), number two, which is packing up all my belongings remains the most overwhelming to me but the other two have switched places—so I’m going to re-order them. Remember: if my numbering system doesn’t work for you, do what does. 

Backwards Numbering: #1 is the least overwhelming for me.

1. Leave my rent controlled apartment/Sell my house. = 2 (medium scary)

2. Pack/get rid of all my belongings. = 3 (most scary)

3. Traveling with my dog/cat/bird/turtle, etc. = 1 (least scary)

Right this second I could research how to travel with my animal. Or if this feels too overwhelming, I can shove this to the back burner knowing that regardless, I will be bringing him or her with me. 

I did travel across the world with my aging dog. For me, this was non-negotiable. But the thought of researching “how” was too overwhelming at the beginning so instead I researched the size of the crate he would have to be in on the plane, bought one and began crate training him. 

Getting rid of my apartment was a given. I listed that as the hardest in one example above because for many people, it often is. But I knew that in order to live elsewhere, I couldn’t stay where I was. 

A Good Way to Get into the Mindset of Leaving your Home

Whenever I reach the step of knowing I have to leave my current home I make a list, even in my head, of all the things I won’t miss. And as I go throughout my day, anytime anything, even something insignificant annoys me, I say aloud: “I won’t miss XYZ”. 

I’ve found this to be incredibly helpful. 

For example (and these are all real life examples):

• I’m brushing my teeth and glance up at the bathroom mirror, which I’ve always despised but couldn’t change and I say aloud “I will not miss this bathroom mirror.”

• I take a shower and my tub fills up with water and doesn’t drain. (Throughout the eleven years I lived in my last apartment I had countless plumbers who could never solve that issue) and I say “I won’t miss standing in a foot of lukewarm water while showering.” Or simply, “I won’t miss this.”

• I am meditating in front of my sliding glass doors and look up to see a cute rat standing on its hind legs, looking at me through the window. (I love rats but having them running around on my patio was not my favorite). And I say, “I won’t miss the rats.”

You get the picture.

Of course if you own your home there are more steps to take like contacting a real estate agent and selling your house. Or maybe you’ve decided to keep it and rent it out for passive income. In this case you may research management companies or enlist a friend. You may designate an area, like your garage, to store your belongings.

I talk more about overall mindset and how to get excited about your move abroad in the first article in this series, here.

So now, looking at the list, I can see the final fear is getting rid of my/your stuff which is often the biggest hurdle for most people.

This must be broken down into smaller, more manageable chunks. I will go over some of this in a future post, but I also have a full module dedicated to this step in my upcoming class—How to Move Abroad on a Budget!

For the emotional fears, I cover these in the class as well.

You can find the next article in the series: Minimizing Mistakes and Solutions here.

But an important thing to know about all these fears is it’s okay to be afraid. It’s okay to be worried and anxious. You can have all of these concerns and all of them are completely valid.

But at the end of the day, or week, or month, or year—you can move forward regardless. Maybe you won’t “overcome” some of them until after you move but do not let your fears stop you from doing it. 

I hope I provided you with enough first steps to get started because I’m super excited about your new adventure!

—Discover the rest of my articles here!—

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