The Myth of Starting Over: Why Reinvention Isn’t the Goal
The fantasy of starting fresh
The day is there. The day that no amount of prep time would have been sufficient for. You realise it when you close the door for the last time, have the last cup of coffee with your parents or when you go up the escalator at the airport. It is the day that you’re hitting the road or sky, to make the move and live in another place. You have fantasized for a while now how you were going to start over, on a blank slate. You will leave all the bad stuff behind, and will double down on all the things that work well for you. This mindset feels so powerful. Everything is possible. Everything will be great. Right? RIGHT?!
The Blank Slate Fantasy Feels Good — Until It Doesn’t
The blank slate fantasy works great in theory, but the problem is: where you go, there you are. I remember going on a holiday to France with my parents as an adolescent. My year so far wasn’t that great. Failing my classes, even turning up drunk at a school volleyball tournament. I thought that these bad feelings would go away as soon as we would be on our way to France. To summarize, I was just as depressed in France as I was at home and I still feel sorry for my parents who had to drag me along. Again. Where you go, there you are. Starting fresh neglects that you have a deeper identity that will stay around wherever you go.
You may think that you want to start fresh and become ‘one of the locals’ as fast as possible. When I moved to Australia, I tried to continue my life as if nothing had changed. Within a week I was exhausted from being “on” all the time.
You’ll try to pick up your new life as fast as possible, over indulging yourself into activities that will ensure that you will have a good group of friends within the next five days. Basically a crash course of being a [insert country name]. Although these strategies carry great life lessons, by day 5 you may find yourself tearing up on the couch because you don’t have any deep connections and unable to move because you underestimated the physical effects of this new life. Indeed, there is such thing as novelty overload, which can affect your body by sleep, emotions, and even digestion problems.
The real work
Reinvention vs. Reintegration. What is happening here? You were expecting to ease into it as you reinvent yourself in a new place - to erase and replace. Sooner or later, however, you will find out that this is not the goal. Instead, you need to reintegrate yourself by staying close to yourself, but adapting what matters and by discarding what doesn’t matter.
What you keep vs. What you adapt
Some things you simply can’t change, while some things you don’t want to change. Think about who you are as a person, your sense of humor, your habits such as diet, sport, and sleeping, and more general values. So, bottom line for you is to think about what you value in life, which habits you want to continue and which you want to leave behind. Try to intentionally keep a few pieces of your ‘home self’ intact. For example, as a Dutch guy, people hold against me that I am direct in my communication. I choose to be maintain my “directness” as I think it is important to get to the point quickly without being rude.
At the same time, some adaptation is healthy and necessary. Make sure to give yourself enough time to do so, it is a process that takes a while.
Back to my being direct. Living in Australia for a while, I have learned a thing or two about how Australians communicate - they can beat around the bush. However, they are generally speaking very friendly and much more chatty on the street compared to Dutch people. Even in professional email traffic, I feel like Australian people are way more supportive to each other. Whereas an email in the Netherlands could be: “Please finish the analysis by 5 pm today, cheers”, in Australia it would be “Hi, hope you’re doing well. Hope it is not too much to ask, but could you please have a look at the analysis today? Please let me know if you have any questions or need any further information. Thanks so much in advance, warmest”.
Although this was just one example, there are so many shifts. Dinner times, weekend hobbies, traffic rules, how outdoors people are, grocery prices, and free water in restaurants and free public toilets everywhere (I hope the Dutch government is reading along). You need to understand that there are countless things that will be slightly different from what you are used to. Some of them are fine, but some of them will be frustrating. You can find them, acknowledge them and change yourself gradually over time. No need to force it.
Have you lost your mojo?
No. You haven’t lost your mojo or your value to the world and others, and you will also be able to tap into your confidence again that you carefully built up over the last years living in your country of origin. You don’t have proof, yet. The confident parts of you are simply not mirrored yet in your new reality. There will be times where you doubt yourself whether they ever come back. And then you will remember what I’m telling you now: feeling disoriented and being emotionally vulnerable are part of the deal. Do not resist it. Moving abroad is an emotional rollercoaster that you will need to ride and learn how to lean into it to make it the best ride of your life.
Conclusion
To recap, you are not starting as a new person. You will still be you and you will add to it over time. You did not move to become someone else. You moved to find out how much more of yourself you can become. What is one piece of your old life that you refuse to let go of? For me, it was doing a daily morning yoga practice, called Mysore. Did that in The Netherlands, continued here in Melbourne. What values, habits, or rituals are you not willing to change in your new place? Write it in the comments, let’s build from there!
