5 Lessons I Learned by Moving to a New City Alone

[Music] so when I first moved to Seattle I didn't have a place to live or a job or any friends so my first priority was to find a place to an affordable place to sleep and behind me you can see the hostel that I actually stayed at it's called the green tortoise it's right in the heart of Pike Place Market the lesson I really learned from staying in a hostel for a few weeks is the same lesson that a lot of people learn when they go on their first backpacking trip and it's simply you just don't need your stuff you really don't I was living out of a 46 liter backpack for those few weeks I found all I really needed was a few sets of clothes a book a journal in my laptop to search for work and to find a more sustainable living situation so what you find when you're kind of forced to forced into minimalism is that it empowers you with a sense of independence and self-efficacy that you couldn't have found any other way [Music] all right so after my first two weeks in the hostel downtown I found a room in this house behind me on Craigslist there were five roommates which to me was kind of intense I'm an introvert I like my space but rent was 500 bucks which is incredibly cheap for the city and they had an old twin mattress that I could sleep on so I pulled the trigger and this house is where I feel like I kind of found my footing in Seattle and it kind of felt like my journey was starting to begin I had a place to stay at least for a few months but with that external stability I found it created some space for some emotional and mental chaos to come to the surface some of my personal and my mental issues were no longer clouded by the volatility of traveling and living in a hostel and all all the chaos that comes along with moving to a new city so with this space I found some issues came up right and there were two main parts of my well-being that I knew I had to tackle in order for me to actually create a life out here in Seattle the first was my mental health and my second was my financial health those two things were in steady decline and I knew I needed to to solve those problems as quickly as possible so I'm gonna talk a little bit about how I tackled both of those issues but really this lesson comes down to one simple thing and that's to ask for help so like I mentioned the the first step to really increase my well-being was to tackle some mental health issues I was having I went to Google I looked for therapists who worked with people with my particular disposition and I found one I really liked her name is Nancy I've been working with Nancy for about three and a half years every single week every Monday I meet with Nancy regardless of the situation or how I'm feeling or what I have going on I just treat it as something that you just do kind of like brushing your teeth I just go to therapy and without Nancy's help and without the arduous work that I did for three and a half years I would not be where I'm at today it would not be even close if you are in a situation where you need your financial health to be tackled and you're having some mental health issues if it's possible do with the mental health work first okay just save yourself some time maximize your outcome financially by tackling some of the mental health issues that might be holding you back now the other piece of my well-being that I mentioned I needed to focus on was my financial health so my only stream of revenue at the time was freelance writing and editing and that was rewarding work because I I wanted to be a writer but Seattle is an expensive city I just truly wasn't making enough money to live a life that I was comfortable with let alone proud of I ended up going to the self-development seminar that an acquaintance now friend was putting on in the Seattle area and during that seminar there was a lecture on Finance and wealth given by this guy named Lucas Pinto the next day I went on Facebook and I sent Lucas a message I said hey man I was there for your lecture I would love to just buy you a cup of coffee and talk to you a bit more about your journey in Seattle we've got coffee we talked about everything from life we talked about my writing but he also mentioned he can refer me to this startup this tech startup downtown for a sales room and through that referral actually got that that first sales job in my life and that totally transformed my financial life and that's not a powerful enough reason for you to ask someone for help I don't know what is you never know what's gonna happen ask people for help you can change your entire life [Music] so about a week before I started that first sales job I signed a 12-month lease and this apartment building right here and that's where I felt like I really burned the boats so I lied to my landlord about my income my savings and I I kind of put myself in a position where I couldn't fail at this new job for those first six months I allocated all of my attention to the craft and the psychology of selling I found that my riding experience translated really well to sales because I was able to communicate effectively I was able to ask stopple questions and articulate value in a unique way so within the first five months or so I ended up being the top performing sales person at the company and this kind of forced me into this next lesson of auditing when I claim to value so when I moved to Seattle I had this enthusiastic vision of being a writer but now all of a sudden a year and I'm hardly writing at all and I'm allocating all of my time and attention to the seemingly random sales job so I was kind of confused you know why was I not writing more and I felt shame about that and what that forced me to do to have that dissonance between my desires in my behaviors it forced me to scrutinize what I claimed to value when I first moved here and what I found was it took me about one year to finally admit this to myself but I valued living in Seattle more than I valued being a writer I valued independence whether it be financial physical emotional I value that independence more than I valued any creative endeavor that I had in mind or that I wanted to achieve in the future be open about your priorities and if your behavior is not necessarily in alignment to what you say that you value most scrutinize that a bit and be okay with where your values are currently at the apartment complex that you're seeing on your screen right now I moved into at the very beginning of 2017 and when I think about those apartments I think about comfort stability and wealth I mean I I was settling into and succeeding at my brand-new software sales job and I had moved in with a girlfriend I was seeing at the time so life finally after a couple years was getting easy like there was a sense of ease that I was really enjoying but with that yeast came a little bit of coasting I mean I started to I kind of stopped challenging myself at work a little bit and when you live with a partner it's easy to get stuck in routine and there's nothing inherently wrong with routine or with ease but I kind of got to the point where I stopped prioritizing my needs and at the time I couldn't even understand it it just felt like everything was fine everything's just going well I'm just coasting but what I found and what I've continued to find is that when you stop engaging when you stop growing the universe will force you to and so that's what had to happen to me so my girlfriend and I we kind of abruptly broke up I moved out a couple days later I was it was Christmas Day all of a sudden and I'm sleeping on this air mattress by myself in this apartment I didn't plan on living in and I realized deeply in those moments that like this is what I needed I wasn't engaged and the universe had to tell me to engage by making me learn some lessons and go through some experiences so the lesson I really learned from from that apartment was was this it's create comfort like that's awesome we should all live comfortable lives but as you build that comfort make sure to remain engaged don't check out find ways to challenge yourself if you're with a partner find ways to delve even deeper into your relationship and challenge each other because if you don't the universe will force you to and that's often times a lot less fun than just doing ears after abruptly moving into this apartment at the very end of 2017 I knew I would have to spend 2018 kind of uncovering the lessons that I learned in integrating those into my life in a really deep profound way most of those lessons and things that I needed to work on revolved around identifying and prioritizing my own needs and setting boundaries at the beginning of this year 2019 and I had two really profound opportunities to set boundaries both in work and in relationship and by understanding my needs and setting boundaries with for example my work and saying hey I don't see this serving me in a way that I need to be served in my work and I'm going to do something else now which is the travel and then also in relationship to be with someone that you love and to maybe you have different needs and certain aspects of your relationship and to set a boundary there and say hey I love you and I'm going to go my own way by knowing my needs and setting boundaries in ways that I hadn't in years previously I'm able to set myself up set my future self up in a way where I can live in alignment to my values and I can give I can give to people but I can give with very loving unrelenting boundaries and protect myself when I think about this apartment I think about uncovering needs prioritizing those setting boundaries when things don't serve those needs and then lastly letting go of attack I don't know it's kind of hard to pinpoint the main lesson from this space because I'm still in it and looking back it'll make more sense all of the things that I learned and how it unfolded but if I had to pinpoint it discover your needs and set loving unrelenting boundaries thank you so much for tuning into this video I know it was long but these stories were just not something that I could shorten if you did stick around for the whole thing thank you I hope I hope you found it useful and I'll catch you on the next one take care

Channel: Tyler Keenan

Views: 46,466

Rating: 4.9281564 out of 5

Keywords: seattle, trave, Tyler keenan, mental health, moving to a new city, new city, moving, alone, solo move, Seattle WA, therapy, boundaries, self-love, Fremont Seattle, financial health, asking for help, self-development, growth

Id: QYVNsZra4ng

Length: 13min 2sec (782 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 20 2019