What Being At Home Anywhere Actually Means (and 3 ways to do it now)
You define what your happiness is.
When I was drafting my book, over and over I asked myself:
If the person reading only got ONE point from this, what is it?
It helped that my publisher asked me to summarize my pitch in one sentence. Reminds me of my college days when the summary of interview prep was to nail my ‘elevator pitch.’ I never got that right.
I want to share how to navigate the transition of moving, feel secure within yourself, and enjoy the journey of venturing across oceans more than you dread it. It sounds airy-fairy and easier said than done.
But it boiled down to 5 words:
Happiness includes the hard parts.
Enjoying the journey means remembering we are alive to LIVE. Experiencing all of what life’s offering to us, not just the parts where we feel joyful and totally in love.
In the first few months of my move, after what I call the “Vacation Period” wore off, I felt guilty for being depressed. Here I was living in a beautiful and abundant place with a man I loved and never thought I would find, hating it and believing I was lost.
Back in Canada before the move, I had finally reached a place where I felt so connected and happy with myself. What gives? I craved that feeling in my new home immensely, fearing it would never come. Of course it did, eventually. Once I realized:
Being At Home Anywhere means you have found a way to feel home within yourself and you carry that with you when you move or travel.
That you trust yourself to figure things out and you know at least a few foundational tools to use when you’re feeling stuck, lost, and even depressed.
Here are 3 ways you can reconnect with your trust in yourself, and the feeling of home inside you right now:
1. Give someone the brutally honest version of how you’re feeling about where you live or how you’re feeling today.
Are you sugar coating how you feel like I was? You will actually save yourself time by getting to the truth now, and letting it be heard by someone else. It’s also possible that you’re totally loving your life and have no concerns. Maybe you’re afraid to share that because you don’t know what people will think of you!
Either way, spill it.
2. Get Present by stating immediate things about your surroundings.
A quick way to get present is to state the obvious about where you are and what you’re doing. Not necessarily about how you’re feeling, but acknowledging the most basic things.
For example: Right now, I’m typing this for you on my laptop at my desk. I’m sitting on a blue chair I bought at IKEA, and across from me is a brown lounger. There are a bunch of things on my desk in my peripheral vision but let’s ignore them because it makes me want to clean and that’s boring. My husband is in the room next to me on his own computer.
Going through that right now made me realize we are safe and everything is okay even though there are some stressful aspects to our life right now. This second, we are okay.
Try it for yourself.
Calling out the obvious things like a child yells, “BIRD!” when one flies by will take you out of anxious thinking and open up a space for a new, safer feeling thought to come in.
3. Journal around the idea that happiness includes going through the hard parts.
A lot of times, appreciating the hard stuff is only something we remember to do during a more “up” period of life. When we’re feeling pretty good it’s easier to see the lessons, appreciate the heartache, or whatever it is we went through.
What if happiness was getting to be sad sometimes so we could experience that emotion and know what other people meant by it when they talk to us? What if happiness included getting angry so we could recognize the times we weren’t angry at all?
What reasons work for you?
There is much to this, and I dive into the more emotional aspects in my book (Out in November 2019!) and in my free “Be Happy Anywhere” guide that you’ve gone through, but...
You’re just getting started. It’s okay to be frustrated with where you live one day and then find something you appreciate about it the next. Even if you’ve been there for years.
There’s no one magic location on the planet that will make everything in your life okay.
But YOU can make things in your life feel okay, even if it's one day at a time.