Your long distance engagement has led to a decision to move to a new city for your new spouse.
While it’s certainly exciting, it’s also a little scary because you’re diving head first into the unknown.
Yes, you’re doing it with an open mind and an open heart, but you’re also leaving behind your family, friends, and hometown conveniences, routines, and comforts.
Only too often people fear the unknown without pausing to consider that with risk come rewards, and moving to a new place where you only know one person is an opportunity for personal growth.
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7 Opportunities for Personal Growth
Here are at least 7 wonderful discoveries awaiting you:
1. You’ll make new friends.
In a new city, you’ll meet people refreshingly different from the people you now know. They’ll have different ideas, perspectives, and experiences from your own, and by meeting them you’ll enrich your own view of life.
2. You’ll be free of your family’s expectations.
The new people you’ll meet will know nothing about you, and it will be like starting over with a clean slate. If you’re normally shy, for example, you can practice being extroverted. Can you change your personality?
Yes and no. You may not be able to change everything, but you have some leeway when it comes to changing your self-beliefs and your habits.
3. You’ll be exposed to different social patterns.
With new places to go and new people to meet, you’ll find new way to stretch and stimulate you.
4. You’ll have a chance to try out a new lifestyle.
If the city is in a different state or you’re a country person exposed to life in the big city, you’ll find new adventures, new perspectives, and new ways of having fun.
5. You’ll have a chance to reinvent your work.
If you have to work, you may find a new field to interest you, or to go back to school to learn new work skills. You might even be able to try things that you were not able to do before, like start an Internet Marketing business working from home because now you won’t be the only income earner in the household.
When trying to reinvent yourself, value investor Guy Spiers suggest that you should learn from the best, associate with all the right people, and stay honest with yourself and others. Although he was mainly talking about business success, these rules apply to almost everything in life.
In your new environment, you may come across all three of these opportunities.
6. You’ll learn new things.
Your new spouse will probably want to interest you in things that you’ve never tried before—new sports, new hobbies, and new books and courses.
7. You’ll have a chance to drop things that didn’t work.
You’ll have an opportunity to leave behind those aspects of your life that didn’t work too well—cranky friends who complained about everything, dominant bosses who expected too much from you, and even bad habits encouraged by your circle of friends that no longer serve you.
You can bring out hidden or repressed parts of yourself, contemplate your ideals self, and work to become the person that you always wanted to be. This can include improving how you handle relationships, finances, and a lot of other things.
7 Practical Steps to Take
While your new spouse may be able to help you with settling in, you’ll probably have to take many practical steps to make the move.
Here are some things that you will probably want to consider:
1. Get rid of years of clutter.
Deciding what you want to take, leave behind with family, put in storage, sell at a garage sale, post for sale on eBay, donate to a local thrift store, or simply throw away.
Now is a good time for purging old things that you have let clutter your life—from old clothes to things that you haven’t used in years.
2. Sort out your financial affairs.
They may be many things to reconsider and new decisions to make—ranging from loans and leases to banking and insurance.
3. Review your organizational activities.
Close out memberships or transfer memberships in groups or organizations that you’re now participating in.
4. Get help with packing and shipping.
Arrange for long distance movers to help you get all your stuff to your new home.
5. Depart gracefully and cordially.
Start saying goodbye to family and friends early so that you don’t hurt anybody’s feelings by simply packing your bags and disappearing.
6. Learn new skills.
If you’ve lived at home, you may need to learn new domestic skills like how to do laundry, cook meals, or sew.
7. Organize change of address.
You will have to direct all your current mail to your new address.
Conclusion
You’re in for a complete change in your life—a new city, a new spouse, and a new way of living. It can be both exciting and terrifying.
If you take this as an opportunity to grow, adapt, and learn, as well as take care of things before you leave, it will be a wonderful opportunity for you to create a whole new life for yourself.
Moving is stressful as is getting married, and when you combine the two together, expect radical change.
This post was contributed by guest writer Christine Michaels.
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