Maybe it’s time to change the environment? Take the plunge, move over. Pick another neighborhood, another town or even another country. Like all the good stuff, it might be pretty difficult in the beginning, but you can bet it would shake everything really good!
And shaking everything around is most of time all you need to start over. And start better. Will get to know new places. Will meet new people. Will make new friends. Will enjoy life more.
Moving out is often misunderstood and taken as a form of surrender. I’ll take it as a form of exploration. After a while, your environment, as rich as it may be, could dry out.
Don’t be afraid to find another one. The mere act of deciding this will make your life better.
How To Move To Another Town – The Lazy People Version
I will start this by telling that I’m really afraid of moving out. Once I settle somewhere, I’d rather let my roots grow up to the point no one could ever uproot me. I’m not lazy (but I heard that if you put fancy adjectives in the subtitles of your blog post it helps with search engine optimization), I’m just pretty hard to move around. During college I lived alone in a student hostel. I guess I rather enjoy being alone and not fussing around that much.
And yet, I lived like a digital nomad for years, I traveled around the world and did all sort of crazy experiments. For instance, last year alone, I moved twice.
They say moving out is the second biggest stress after the death of someone close to you. I can subscribe to this. It’s stressful. It shakes the entire structure of your life, your habits, your daily routine, your social circle, everything. And yet, it has a tremendous therapeutic effect.
Let me explain how this works.
Recently I stumbled upon an article about running (as you may know already, running is one of the things I love to do) and in that article the entire process of how we get fitter was very nicely explained. Many people start from the assumption that running will make you fitter. That exercise will strengthen you. Hence, they strive to run more or to train more.
Well, it’s not the exercise that makes you fitter. As a matter of fact, the exercise is depleting you of resources. You consume a lot of energy when you run, far more than your normal consumption.
So, if it’s not the exercise, what is it?
To my surprise, it was the recovery part. Or, to be even more precise, the “supra compensation” stage. It goes like this: first you go out and run a lot and spend like 2000 calories. Your body hurts. You get home and start to rest. While you resting, the body starts to recover. You eat (hopefully, you will eat the right things) and get enough sleep and relax. You put back those 2000 calories.
And after a while, after the recovery phase, a new phase will be started: that of the “supracompensation”. Given the fact that the body was so heavily abused, it will prepare itself for the next one. It will assume that you will keep exposing it to the same level of effort, hence, it will start building endurance. And voila: next time you run, you will run much easier, because of this stage of supracompensation. Your body had the time to make extra energy storage.
It’s the same when you move out. The actual moving will be stressful, just like running 10k will be stressful in the beginning. But as you settle in, as you try to readapt to the new surroundings, you will recover. And then, after the recovery, the supracompensation will begin as well.
You will start building “life endurance”. For instance, you will get better at meeting and engaging with new people. You will become a better negotiator (how much is the rent, you asked? Oh, are you sure?). You will get better even at things like your orientation in space (you have to get used to new surroundings) or your survival skills (where do I have to get food from this evening?).
In the end, you will get better at organizing your entire life.
further reading
The Anatomy Of A Lifestyle Change
