Moving abroad alone | What the first year of living abroad taught me | Living alone in Amsterdam

hello everyone in this video I'm going to talk about my experience of moving abroad by myself and some lessons that I learned during my first year living alone in Amsterdam for me the first year living alone in another country turned out to be the year that I developed the most towards the person that I want to become but I only took one step further in my personal growth Journey because I had to overcome by myself obstacles that at the end turned out to be some of the lessons that I'm about to share with you so let's start homesickness and guilt feeling are real I had to learn to live with a constant feeling of missing my family of missing my friends missing the Portuguese food the routines that I had back in Portugal to see familiar faces on the street and how I'm greeted when I enter in cafes for example the technology helps but it will never be the same you will not watch the little ones from your family to grow up and every time you come to visit them they will not remember who you are at least until a certain age you will not be part of the the day-to-day lives of your closest ones and your family and your friends will call you with the best and the worst news and you will not be there to hug them and every time you go back to your home country it will be another reminder that your parents and your grandparents are getting older and you are not there to enjoy the very limited time and valuable time that you have with them and this actually fools an incredible guilt feeling that you are not there to help them and to support them another big lesson that I learned was what to do or how to deal with the feeling of not feeling at home anywhere it is a weird feeling because you feel like you are splitted between two places especially when you move abroad you are splitted between two countries but at the same time you feel like that you don't belong anywhere anymore there are several factors that contribute for a person to feel at home such as the physical environment for example the house that I was renting in Amsterdam was not decorated at my taste it did not create a sense of familiarity for me another factor that makes a person feel at home is having a strong sense of belonging within a community and a social network such as having strong relationships and being part of traditional activities and when you move abroad alone your pillar relationships stay behind in your home country and you will miss a lot of Life events such as birthdays and celebrations the other factor that I missed quite a lot was the emotional attachment that you only have when you share memories and experiences in a place and of course at the beginning you still do not know the new place where you moved in so it's very difficult to create this emotional attachment to be very honest it took me about two years and maybe a little bit more for me to start feeling at home in the Netherlands and I cannot point a single moment where I start feeling at home I think this was a process that happened very gradually but I do know that I started feeling at home when I had my group of friends in the Netherlands when I moved to another house where I had a saying in how the environment of the house had to be set up in order to bring me a sense of familiarity and I also started feeling at home when I started to create my own routines so for sure this is a process that it takes time to happen another lesson that can also explain why you don't feel at home is that the new place would change you you will not be the same person anymore and it's interesting because when I moved to the Netherlands I experienced cultural shocks that I mentioned in one of my previous videos and now when I go back to Portugal I experience reverse cultural shocks and I know longer enjoy some of the things that before I used to enjoy for example for me now it's a struggle to have dinner at eight or at 8 30 while in the Netherlands I'm used to have dinner around 6 p.m and I think this happens because when you move abroad you will be very much exposed to other cultures to other mindsets and you will start having a much better understanding of people who are not like you and it will quite change your perspective on how you used to see how you used to feel about places about situations and even about people versus the place from where you are coming from the reality is that I lived in a certain way for 25 years and when you move to a new country you adapt to how things are done in that Country and this can be a huge Awakening that there are different ways all of them can be correct to do the same thing another lesson was that making friends as an adult is hard before I never thought about the process of making friends because I think for me it was something that came very naturally I have long lasting relationships that started in kindergarten started in school in high school in the team sports that I played in University and also in my first job and the reason why I think it was a natural process is that it was very easy at this period of my life to come across people who shared the same interests and goals for example in kindergarten the kids only want to play when you go to high school you have the shared goal to go to university and also to have some fun and even in my first job I started my career with a huge group of people who were just coming out from University just like me we were all similar ages we were all going through the same stage of our lives together so it was very easy to find people around you with who you related with when I moved to Amsterdam however it was quite different the only people that I knew in the city was a couple friend of mine from University also Portuguese and eventually my colleagues from work but they were all very much settled in the country with their own lives going on and frankly it was quite difficult for me to have a social life outside work I was really missing a group of friends outside work with who I could share the same experiences with who I could explore the city and the country basically who were in a similar stage of my life and shared the same interests my experience is that as adults it is much more difficult to rely on the spontaneity to make new friends you really have to make the initiative and the effort to find a group of people that you enjoy being with I believe there is an extra effort required to start and maintain friendships especially when you have less time to invest in these relationships because of the increase of responsibilities in your life proceeding with the topic of friendships moving away teaches you that not everyone is meant to be in your life this was a very hard lesson to learn and the time but now I'm at peace with it I always say that moving abroad is a great friendship filter only the friends that are supposed to remain in your life will be the ones who check on you will be the ones who send a text to see if everything is okay or call you or will make the time even just 10 minutes for a coffee when you go back to your home country these friends will make sure that they are part of your life and they will include you in theirs and this is not to dismiss the friends that eventually got out of your life I still believe that these friends were very important for a specific time in your life but for some reason now it's required much more effort to maintain these relationships and maybe what made you beat in each other's life no longer exists for example lifestyle choices May diverge significantly now moving abroad and living alone will teach you how to enjoy your own company for me it took me about five to six months to have a new group of friends and to have my social life back to normal until then I went through some stages of loneliness for example I was feeling so alone that I was dressing the weekends and now I cannot believe that I'm saying this and that I felt that way at the time but it was the reality I really did not want to weaken to come and when I was leaving in the weekend I just wanted Monday to come as soon as possible so I could go to work and I could have conversations with my colleagues but I could not live like this forever I had to face the weekends and I had to change on how I was feeling about the weekend and turning into a positive experience and to do so I started to create my weekend routine which involved doing the groceries which involved doing sports and no matter what on the weekend I always had to leave the house and go explore Amsterdam go to a different street or to a different neighborhood go to visit a new Museum or exhibition or just go to a different Cafe by myself before I moved to the Netherlands I cannot remember going to a Terrace and read a a book by myself I cannot remember going to a museum or exhibition by myself if I did not have company I would not go even though I really wanted to see the museum and I cannot understand why because after getting out of my comfort zone and after starting to do these activities by myself I realized that I quite enjoy my own company and I started to feel much more confident and independent about myself for sure because I started to do these activities alone I started to feel much more comfortable with myself and much less reliant on others for validation and support connected with the previous learning the alarm time will allow you to learn so much more about yourself when you are alone and not on social media or watching TV you are much more aware of your line of thoughts you understand your thoughts better and your emotions better which can lead to personal growth I also felt a huge increase in creativity because being alone blocks the distractions opinions and influences of others it was during this alone time that I came up with several ideas for projects that I did not even realize that I wanted to initiate them or that they were missing in my life and actually a lot of these projects are running at this moment it was during this alone time that I really have the time to do a self-refaction And to clarify on the person that I would like to become one day so you actually do not need to move to another country to have this alone time I always recommend for people who are struggling on what to do with their lives where they should start with is be alone forward that I will go on for a weekend no social media no phones just you just some books and just a pen and a paper and write down everything that comes across your mind the following two learnings are for me the most important ones because they provided me with the tools in order to overcome the adversities that I mentioned previously in the video I categorize them as actions and or beliefs that one one can have in order to overcome more challenging times such as moving abroad the first one is that only you can create the life that you want I feel like that a lot of people who are faced with hardships when they moved abroad they do not give enough time and they do not put enough work in order to create the life that they idealize you really have to make an effort to adapt you really have to get out of your comfort zone and stop feeling sorry for yourself because you're missing your home because you're missing your friends or because it feels like everyone is having fun back home except you you have to remind yourself that you are the one who wanted to move no one forced you to move to another country and you wanted to move for specific reasons and for sure those reasons are still valid today your most important accomplishments will require effort sacrifice persistence and getting out of your comfort zone for example I was really not comfortable to go to a museum or go to cafes alone but I knew that was necessary to do to to get out of my comfort zone in order to get to know the city know my surroundings feel more familiar with the new environment and to adapt another example was how I was able to make a new group of friends with who I shared the same interests and who are in the same life stage as me the way that I was able to do it was to download an app which is called the Meetup app and I found a group of girls in this app that were expats living in Amsterdam and I just took the initiative and I organized a very small gathering with girls that I never met until this point I never had done something similar to this and ended up being one of the best decisions of that year it completely transformed my experience of living alone in a different country for me this actually reminds me something that author Susan Jeff first mentions in her book fear the fear and do it anyway is that the only way to get rid of the fear of doing something is to go out and do it which will lead to a sense of accomplishment because you start doing things on your own and you start feeling better about yourself I truly believe that you will start seeing improvements in your life if you follow very determinate attitudes to improve your situation but these improvements will not happen overnight it will take a long long time until you start seeing results but you have to accept that everything in life has its price when I move to the Netherlands my life improved but at the cost of missing my friends and family back in Portugal I have been much more at peace with my decision to move abroad when I started accepting that in order to achieve your goals you will have to sacrifice other aspects of your life finally the last learning is that walking back I realized that you are capable of much more than you thought the first year living alone in Amsterdam wrote at me so many challenges that I eventually could overcome only because I took action I was persistent and I was patient until I started seeing some results and very important I did not allow the negative thoughts to overwhelm my mind you truly have to believe that you can do it and that you can achieve whatever you want and you don't need to move abroad in order to learn this lesson just look back at your life you are standing here today watching this video only because you could overcome all your past challenges and if you could do that you can also overcome the present challenges that you are facing and the future ones as well and you truly did not come so far to only come so far and the fact that I'm recording this video and sharing what is now my very positive experience of moving abroad for me it's just another example that whatever challenges are coming my way I know that I'll be able to face them for who is thinking about moving to a new country I hope that my experience prepares you on what are some of the possible challenges that you might have to overcome and the good news is that it only depends on you if you will be able to overcome those challenges and improve your situation and be happier with your life in a new country or not and for who is watching just for fun or interest I think some of these learnings can also apply to other contexts in your lives to other challenges that you might be facing and I think an important message is that just because someone moved abroad on their own willing or took an action on their own willing it does not mean that they are not struggling so I think it's important to be more compassionate towards everyone thank you so much for watching and I see you in the next video

Channel: Mafalda Boers

Views: 2,168

Keywords: living alone, moving abroad, moving abroad alone

Id: s6lK1hJIEPU

Length: 15min 8sec (908 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 01 2023