I've lived in 8 places, and here's what I learned

lived in eight places in my life so far soon that's going to be place number nine and place number 10 but I wanted to hop on here and talk about it everything that I've learned as a person that's kind of lived her whole life moving from place to [Music] place if you don't know me hi I'm Anna Udin I'm an author and Dr Clinical Psychology so on this channel I talk about books and cozy things on my other channel I talk about psychology if this sounds like your cup of tea feel free to stay but first let me just run through the places where I've lived and if you have any specific questions about any of those places in the comments let me know I'll try to answer them and then I'll go into what my lessons are so I was born in Bucharest Romania I do love Romania I love my home country I think it's one of the most beautiful places in the world Buist is not my favorite though I think if you want to see the beauty of Romania go to other places go to Transylvania go to Northern Romania I don't love the south of Romania quite as much and then when I was a young child I moved to danur Connecticut with my parents I don't remember much about it there all I remember is really not speaking English finding it difficult to communicate with people and having that be a scary experience but from what I can recall it was a very like Gilmore Girls type town you know just small town cute not much to say about it a couple years later I moved to Cleveland Ohio which I actually really loved I think that Cleveland is a great place to raise a family and especially in I guess You' maybe call it like a suburb you know it's like a middle class suburb that we lived in um a lot of kids a a great Community feeling but again I never quite felt like I fit in after that I moved to Atlanta Georgia which I did not like I know that a lot of people love Atlanta because of the music scene good food the hot weather I hate anything that has hot weather I hated how pocketed it was it felt like an Inferno to me it was a challenging move for me socially so I don't have great things to say about Atlanta I spent one summer in Spain specifically in seevilla and Salam monka and I loved it it was wonderful people were very welcoming it was such a good time such a relaxed mindset the language is beautiful the culture is amazing can't say enough great things about it but I would never live there because of the climate I also spent a semester in St Andrews Scotland which was absolutely where my heart was the most content I don't know if any of you guys have experienced this when you go to a place and it just feels like coming home it feels like I somehow lived there in a past life and had to leave it prematurely or something even before I went there I knew that I was going to love it I was just so obsessed with Scotland and I would still move back in a heartbeat if it weren't for brexit when brexit happened it really broke my heart cuz I had always wanted to go back and live there and it made it virtually impossible to do so and I also did spend a summer in dundy which is about half an hour outside of St Andrews then I moved to Chicago for grad school I loved it there I think it's a great place to spend your early 20s great City great food lot of culture um the only issue is that it there's nothing really outside of it there's no nature and I was starting to really yearn for more of that so I was very prepared for when I moved to Seattle Washington and Seattle has I think the most beautiful nature in the entire United States I mean truly the mountain mountains here the bodies of water the Lakes Evergreens it's just I think it's unparalleled in the US but I'm moving away from here because the cost of living is just too high there's no way to save up money for a house and for raising a family here and culturally things are getting really weird people are very very extreme in their viewpoints here so here are the lessons that I've learned the first lesson that I learned is that sometimes in life you go to a place and it just feels like this is where I'm supposed to be that's absolutely how I felt with Scotland and it is one of the biggest tragedies in life that not everyone gets to go there because of things like immigration policy because of things like not having a job to sponsor you in a specific place or not having the means to or having a family that's already established somewhere else I think it is one of the saddest things in life that not everyone gets to live in the place where their heart truly desires to be and I feel that grief I feel it all the time and when I went back to Scotland I would just walk through the city and just cry because of how beautiful it was and how much I loved it there and I wanted to stay there but it was imposs and so sometimes in life you know it is what it is you get the next best thing the second thing that I learned from all these moves is non-attachment and the fact that change is always incoming you have to embrace it you have to get out of your comfort zone you have to see as many places as possible learn about different cultures immerse yourself in them I do think that I've learned a lot about you know different places of the world and after living for a few years in different places I love being able to know you know this neighborhood represents this or this neighborhood is there um this is what it's like to live there it feels like I've experienced so much because of these different cultures that I've been a part of I think this has impacted how I travel as well I'm a person who when I travel I like to go from place to place I never stay in a place more than like 2 3 days I like to always have a New Horizon before me always have a full list of things to do I mean for my honeymoon we saw like five countries and it wasn't even a very long honeymoon it was like just over a week I want to say I do think there's something a little bit manic about it like always needing to be stimulated and not being able to just live in the present and slow down but I also think that I've learned a lot about different cultures and different people and that's really valuable you know when I get into an Uber for instance and the Uber driver is a foreigner there are a lot of things that we end up talking about and there are a lot of common knowledge that we share and I think that's really valuable there is a dark side of this like there is with anything and the dark Dark Side of being so nonattached is that you're never quite grounded you don't really have a home base you don't really have a place where all of your loved ones are found my friends are scattered all over the world my family the vast majority of them are in Romania and then you know my parents are in a different place in the US my in-laws are in a different place in the US it can be very tricky to constantly be trying to juggle these different moving Parts trying to prioritize everyone see all your loved ones sometimes you do kind of feel like you're just floating through life and lately I've been kind of envying people that just have always stayed in one place their whole life because they get to have such a close-knit circle and they know where they belong so well so I'm not saying one is better than the other I think both have pros and cons in the end I feel like it kind of evens out something else that I don't know if this is a pro or a con uh maybe some people would say con I tend to lean more towards Pro I'm very good at compartmentalization the reason for this is that I used to go about twice a year back and forth between Romania and the US most of the time that was alone you know I was an unaccompanied minor doing these long trips with layovers and all that stuff and it was very difficult to have to say goodbye to my family at the end of my trip in Romania and I still remember how it feels to sort of Disconnect on the inside and to shut that out shut out that grief and just say here's what I'm looking forward to in the future here's what I'm looking forward to about coming back to the US even if it was like tiny superficial things like uh oh I'm gonna have AC in the US or I'm gonna be able to have international takeout in the US even if it was little superficial things like that I had to really learn to look forward to see the best in the situation to just keep it moving and I think the way that shows up for me today is I'm really able to reframe things in my head even bad things that happen to me I reframe them in a great way I have a very positive outlook and I'm always looking towards the future the shadow side of it is that I have trouble feeling grief sometimes there are things that I should feel grief about that I just don't feel it like when I have to say goodbye to someone if I haven't seen uh my friend in a really long time for instance and we have like a trip together and then at the end of the it we're saying goodbye I don't feel much I'm so good at goodbyes like I'm already thinking about the next thing because I've gotten so good at compartmentalizing the pain something else that I've learned is that moving to a new place is a great time to sort of reset your lifestyle and your perspective and just change things about your life when you move to a new place you have a completely new environment and you don't have those associations with certain habits that you have for instance when I moved from Chicago to Seattle I sat down the first day that I came here and I started journaling all the different lifestyle changes that I want to happen and it was super easy to implement them because I didn't have those old environmental cues for my previous lifestyle habits and now when I'm looking towards moving again I know that I'm going to do this and every time that I move they get sort of more and more high order and I start with little things like I want to focus on Fitness and then you evolve to things like I want to have a healthier lifestyle and for this next move I know that my focus is really going to be on character being aligned with my values fulfilling my highest self it's so easy to do when you don't have those old reminders of your previous LIF style and also when you have a new Social Circle you know when you have the ability to surround yourself with different kinds of people and to curate a new Circle for yourself that will inevitably influence who you become because you know the expression you are your five closest friends essentially and when you embed yourself in a new environment that's really powerful you have a really unique opportunity to change yourself in a big way moving from place to place also teaches you a lot about your values what you like and what you don't like so having lived in all these different places I can pinpoint pretty easily what sort of cultural components mes with me versus which ones I dislike so for instance I've noticed that I really value nature particularly mountains it's challenging for me to live somewhere where there is no nature nearby and it's challenging for me to live somewhere flat I also really value living in a place that's Laden with history it is so challenging to live in the US because the buildings are like a couple hundred years old at most it's just the architecture is so new you know the indigenous history has been all but wiped out and it just feels too modern you know I love when I go back to Europe knowing that the places where I'm walking people have walked hundreds and thousands of years ago and there are remnants of that there's a very rich cultural history I'm a very nostalgic person I romanticize history so having that is important to me I don't like living in a place that doesn't have that also I'm very clear about the fact that I like cool weather I cannot live in a place that has very hot weather I just can't do it and whatever this means for you you know whatever your preferred climate is it has a big impact you know a lot of people they actually prefer things to be very sunny and warm and that's totally fine you know you do you you'll notice that when you're in a climate that challenges that it really stretches you thin it really stretches you outside your comfort zone in a way that kind of exhausts you and most recently I've also realized the people in a place are really important arguably the most important you know you can live in the most incredible City let's say beautiful nature beautiful culture so many things to do amazing food but if you don't have a circle of people there who truly make you feel safe and comfortable who make you feel fulfilled socially all those things get boring after a while there are only so many hikes you can do there are only so many museums you can go to so many restaurants you can go to if you don't have the people there isn't that exciting element because the people you know you could be going to the same Pub every single week with the same group of people but because they're compx Le Lex human beings they're always going to bring New Perspectives new discussions new experiences to the table and that is what makes life so exciting so that's part of the reason why I want to move back closer to family because I was actually expecting it to be pretty easy to make friends in Seattle um I didn't buy into the whole Seattle freeze thing but once I got here I was honestly like you know what I I think I'm good I think I'm good on that so it's really important to be someplace where you mesh with the people I would say those are the main things that I've taken from having lived in eight or so places um soon to be 10 maybe I'll make an updated version when I'm at my 10th place that I've lived um let me know what you think about this topic you know if you've moved around I would love to hear your impressions or if you have any questions about any of the things I mentioned pop those down below I hope you have a wonderful day and see you [Music] soon [Music]

Channel: Book & Hearth

Views: 17,776

Keywords: move, places, country, moving, lived, location, travel, city, cities, seattle, chicago, atlanta, cleveland, romania, bucharest, scotland, spain

Id: fwdfB57qtzg

Length: 13min 12sec (792 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 21 2024