We're always Meant to go Somewhere and here's Why.
🇬🇧 So while I'm sipping my last cup of tea and munching on a biscuit in England, I surrender.
I accept and welcome the change with open arms because I know it so intimately, after all.
🇮🇹 I greet it with a smile and a full heart. Bye, London for now. Ciao Italy.
Five years ago, I arrived in London with a suitcase and a bruised heart. There was nothing particular about London that attracted me here: no Big Ben, no Buckingham palace, not its queen.
But I felt with all my heart that I'd been called to come here despite the unknown logical reasons.
I choose not to question the Universe and trust that my intuition knows more than I ever could.
Five years later, here I am again– leaving because something else is calling my heart. That something is still a mystery wrapped in excitement and possibility of what's yet to come.
My heart is nervously beating because I'm moving again. The funny part is that I just wrote a book about stepping into my zone of discomfort as often as possible is why I lead the most truthful and authentic life. And while I've done it so many times in the past, it doesn't get easier. Because now, for the first time in my life, I've planted my roots. I domesticated. I've acquired furniture and gave life to babies. It is no longer me, my thoughts, and a suitcase. It's a whole more of us with our own dreams and destinies on the line, which is why it feels so much harder.
While, of course, I'm excited about new beginnings - I always am, I'm also sad of what I'm leaving behind because I'm human - vulnerable and sensitive, just like the rest of us.
I don't seem to end a chapter of my life with a baby's birth or moving houses. I do mark my life's chapters with moving countries. Those are my seasons. Those are my endings and beginnings. Because as one season ends, the next immediately begins. I do not know what to expect, but there is this familiar feeling impatiently calling and pulling a rag underneath my feet, telling it's time to go. But above all, it's my mind, soul, and heart unitedly voting for me to let go. Let go of everything that no longer serves me.
Because I no longer want the same things. I now want greater things. I've become a giver, no longer taker.
A giver is responsible for the energy she brings to the world. She can't give if her energy jar is empty or flooded with old ideas, behaviors, ways of life, and outdated beliefs that drag her down. On the contrary, her energy jar must be filled with light and love so she can bring more of this into the world. This world is thirsty for love, and it's our responsibility to give more of it.
To give, we have to have the capacity to receive. To receive, we need to swirl freely in a flow of life. And we can't be in a flow of life if we are struggling, fighting, resisting life to flood through us. We need to trust life's divine guidance wherever it may bring us. We need to begin listening carefully to what our heart is trying to say. Because it's always saying something, it's always telling what needs to be done. It suffers when we're trying hard to cling onto the wrong things.
Perhaps those things aren't ours to keep because it shouldn't be a struggle to keep if they were. Living for over thirty years on this planet, I've learned something. Change is inventible if living is what we're after, not pure existing in a warm cocoon-like climate. Change comes into our lives with a never-ending invitation to transform everything on its way, including you. It is reminding that there is a deadline, after all, almost to everything. It is flashing out everything that you no longer need. All you can do is trust the process and believe that it's guiding you towards the exact place you're meant to be at.
Because the future is always calling. Whether you're ready or not.
We change, mature, and evolve, which is why we shouldn't be afraid of change and transformation because every now and then, there is a unique path being forged to be walked by no one but you. When we trust our hearts, we receive cosmic, divine, bountiful energy to start new things. We are fuelled with purpose. We are truly in the moment. And as we do that, we sync back with nature's natural rhythms and connect to life's heartbeat. And just like that, we step into the flow of life. There we are unstoppable.
While reliving all the emotions when faced with change, I'm also feeling peaceful because I'm at home in my mind, body, and soul. And when you have that– you'll never be lost, wherever life may bring you.
I'm ready to step into a new path that is larger, deeper, and more connected to the larger whole. I trust what's to come is greater than me; therefore, I'm pulled to leave the life I built. So while I'm sipping my last cup of tea and munching on a biscuit in England, I surrender. I accept and welcome the change with open arms because I know it so intimately, after all. I greet it with a smile and a full heart.
Bye, London for now. Ciao Italy.
8 Key Things No One Tells You About Living Abroad
There isn't a piece of land where you could land your feet, and in an instant feel at home. The truth is, you'll never be the next Columbus, and you'll never find this place- because it doesn't exist.
Here's what I did for my twenties, rather than following a traditional path, I've done things that don't fit in the "conventional" sense. I spent more than a decade in five vibrantly contrasting countries on two opposite continents that taught me a little bit of something.
1. Searching For A Place You Belong Is A Delusional Activity.
Like many others, I was in a desperate need to find a place I belonged. Sadly or luckily, it wasn't at home.
It's like I was poking a soapy bubble suspiciously wanting to find out what's on the other side. None of us can know such thing. But I knew for sure; I wasn't afraid to face it. For all I cared, I could have been slapped in the face with a dead fish, got sold into slavery, or lived alone on an inhabited island making necklaces out of the seashells.
Apparently, I wasn't the only one poking. There were the others. They also were in search of something. Home– was a futuristic place they were yet to find. I don't know who on Earth would promise that they'll ever will?
2. You Don’t Go Abroad To Find Home.
There isn't a piece of land where you could land your feet, and in an instant feel at home. The truth is, you'll never be the next Columbus, and you'll never find this place- because it doesn't exist.
You go abroad to open your eyes wide open and learn the things that not in a million years you would have learned back home. There you test your abilities, expand your capacities, quadruple your experiences, and slowly but steadily change your identity.
By doing so, you start building a firmer ground underneath. Without ever having a solid ground, the world will always seem a shaky, scary and fearful place to live. Once that's in place, you build your residence or at least a wobbly nest to start with.
3. You Don't Stop Being A Tourist Overnight Living Abroad.
Keyword there: forever tourist.
You don't just wake up from a bad dream, roll your bed and feel at home in the new country.
It takes time, patience and a willing heart.
You must stop searching, obsessing and looking for evidence that you somehow don't fit in, that you're too foreign, and that others have no clue what price you've paid to get here. Because you will always find that evidence. And strangers don't care what you had to give up to be here.
4. Living Anywhere But Home Isn’t Walking On Marshmallows.
On bad days, you may bruise your delicate ego. It may take some leaps and gambles. You'll question your decisions. You'll feel lonely. You may even want to drop a tear or two. But the world won't end because of that.
Eventually, you wrap your mind around this reality: Your life is much more elastic than you thought it is. You learn who you are and who you aren't. You find out who you want to be and who you no longer need to be.
Every day presents an opportunity to expand your Universe. Every minute spent outside of everything familiar - gives you a fresh perspective, unshakable confidence, and wisdom that you would never acquire if you've chosen the safe, predictable path back home.
5. The World Becomes The Best Tutor That You'll Ever Hire when You Living Abroad.
You can go to the best schools, you can have the most excellent teachers, but no one will ever teach you more than a foreign country will ever do. (Please note that I am not against higher education by any means; I've got one too.)
All I'm saying is that whatever you experience becomes a part of who you are. Whatever you see, do or hear leaves footprints in your life. You become the total sum of your experiences that are beyond the academic education.
6. You No Longer Remain The Same.
And then, a year, two, five go by, and you wake up on a regular day finding yourself a different self. You board the plane and go home 12+ hours away. You land your feet on the ground you once knew so well. The air seems familiar. You could still walk through streets hands and eyes tied up if you had to.
You spend a day there. Then another day. You meet everyone you haven't seen in a while. You pour your heart out and share everything you learned away from home. Feels nice.
Except...something no longer feels right.
For them, life hasn't changed much. Maybe they got a pair of babies you've already seen on Facebook. Perhaps they moved to a bigger home. Maybe a friend of a friend is getting a divorce.
You understand where they're coming from and what they're saying, but you no longer feel like there's anything but past bounding you. But for the most part, you realize that time has a funny quality; it can draw people closer the same way it drives them apart.
7. You'll Have A Chance To Change Your Life For Good.
Like a sponge, you'll suck up vast amounts of cultural information wherever you'll go. Your ways will change. You'll have the power to choose how to live, act, love, talk, eat or spend your money just the way you want to. It doesn't have to be black or white. It doesn't need to be the way you were always taught.
With all due respect and affection to my upbringing, seeing how others live has forever changed my life. And being fortunate enough to experience such things allowed me to designed my life better than I would have ever imagined.
8. You'll Place Your Highest Bet, Your Life On The Table.
Most of all, though, I've seen what's possible when you step out of the bubble. When there are no guarantees, promises or certainty about anything. When the only thing you strongly rely on is your curious heart.
As it turned out, while I was busy doing me, I somehow managed to build a nest I was talking about earlier.
True story.
And at the end of my days, I know I will thank my curiosity, wild heart, and taste for wanderlust for having blessed me with a captivating, stimulating and passionate existence.