To be fully transparent, the phrase living your best life used to make me cringe.
I used to stick my nose up at people who talked about living their best, fullest life. About doing the things that scared them. About taking up space, living bravely and boldly.
This should’ve been a big ole red flag to me at the time. A “hey girl, maybe you should dig deeper into that thought?”. But I didn’t.
Because at the time, I was SO convinced that the life that I was living was the best version possible.
It might not come as a surprise that I stayed stuck there for years.
Now that I am living, and actively pursuing my best life abroad, I’ve learned that these seven things hold people back from living their best life abroad, from truly loving living abroad!
Let’s jump right into it!
Striving to be perfect
Perfectionism really is the enemy of growth. And growth is the inevitable partner of success. I spent years striving to be perfect. Striving to get rid of my accent when speaking in Spanish. Striving to not make any mistakes at work, or in my relationships.
All of that time spent trying to get things perfect translated into avoiding any possibility of failing. This not only makes you feel miserable, and goes along with the limiting belief of not being good enough – but it is literally impossible to grow, to try new things, and to not fail or make mistakes.
I’m still working on this one, because I’m human at the end of the day, but when I strive for growth over perfection, amazing things happen.
Enforcing rigid timelines on yourself
This sounds like the voice in your head saying, you’re 33, you should have kids already, you should have found your life partner already, you should own a home already.
And the list goes on and on…
The more that you enforce rigid timelines of “you should have done X by now” on yourself, the less room there is to actually LIVE your life. If you’re a woman in your late 20s to 30s, this one is especially hard, as society has outdated timelines of where we “should” be by this time in our lives.
Letting them go often involves grieving what we thought our life would look like but actually never happened. This is the first step to letting go of those rigid timelines, so you can open up to living your life as it is right now.
A fixed mindset
A fixed mindset tells you lies like you should do it perfectly on the first try. It shouldn’t take this long. It shouldn’t be this hard.
A fixed mindset expects results without a lot of effort, and certainly not a lot of a failure. I really saw the difference that adopting a growth mindset, the opposite of a fixed mindset, can make when I used to teach English as a second language.
It was truly incredible seeing how much my student’s English abilities improved when they adopted a mindset that was all about growing, getting better, and learning from their mistakes instead of trying to avoid making them.
When it comes to something as difficult as language learning, a fixed mindset will get you nowhere, so it’s all about adopting a growth mindset.
Comparing yourself to friends & family back home
When you live abroad, it’s likely that compared to friends and family back home, you are the one that is taking an off the beaten path type of road.
Taking this type of life path is adventurous, fun, and involves so much personal growth and learning. This can be a beautiful and fulfilling experience, but what really bursts this potential happiness bubble is comparing yourself to others, especially your peers back home.
Maybe your highschool friend just bought a house, or your bestie from college just got promoted to a senior position or bought their first home. When you compare your unique life path to your peers who stay back home, you’ll always feel like a failure.
When you start over in another country, you are starting fresh. Expecting yourself to grow at the same pace as people back home who aren’t starting over isn’t fair, and just makes you feel like crap. Trust me, I’ve been there!
People-pleasing
This is one of those behaviors that may feel better in the short-term, by avoiding conflict and uncomfortable conversations, but over time will lead you to living a life that isn’t true to you.
This is the type of behavior that leads to mid-life crisis, and general “what the f have I done with my life” moments. Not fun.
As you move towards living your best life abroad, there WILL be people in your life who don’t approve of this new path you’re taking.
The more you try to please them, the more you are choosing their approval over your own happiness.
The opposite of this is embracing your authentic self, and living a life built on YOUR own values. It can feel scary, but in the long-run it’s SO worth it.
Giving in to self-doubt before you try
Here’s the thing about making your dreams happen: they WILL scare the shit out of you. You WILL have to face self-doubt, and it won’t always be a cozy ride.
The one-of-a-kind Mel Robbins put it perfectly when she said “Doubting yourself is normal. Letting it stop you is a choice”.
This is so true because the moment you start taking action towards your dreams, the voice of fear and self-doubt will flood your brain.
Ugh, like being human isn’t hard enough sometimes!? This is a wave that you have to ride out if you want to live your best life abroad.
Letting the voice of self-doubt stop you before you even give it a try will crush more of your dreams than falling flat on your face trying ever will.
Avoiding rejection
Rejection is something that is uncomfortable, and not really something we aspire to experience often. Yet, rejection is a necessary part of success.
The more you avoid it, the more you are avoiding putting yourself out there. This can look like not even applying for that job you’ve had your eye on because you are telling yourself you “won’t get it anyways”.
Or, avoiding inviting someone out on a coffee date out of fear of them saying no. The no hurts, and it’s okay if it does. But what hurts more, is living a life avoiding potential nos, and not getting any yeses.
As someone who spent years avoiding rejection, and now as an entrepreneur gets rejected aaalll the time, I can confirm that it hurts more to avoid rejection than to experience it.
TLDR
Living your best life is possible, but things like perfectionism, people-pleasing, comparing yourself to others, a fixed mindset, avoiding rejection, and enforcing rigid timelines on yourself are majorly holding you back from making it happen.
If you’re ready to build your best life abroad, schedule a free consultation call to learn more about 1:1 coaching!
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