Hi Lizzie,

You might get some mental clarity if you tried to see all these things as separate from each other and not one big mess. Often when one thing starts to become overwhelming, then the capabilities to handle all the other stuff becomes impaired.

Also, when you look at things, there is the reality and then there is your perception of reality along with your attitude towards it.

As an example, you say that you have a job that you hate. If you wake up every morning thinking “I so do not want to go there”, it’s only going to make things that much more harder for you (that’s the attitude part). Sometimes you just have to do what you have to do, and fighting against it will only add to the difficulty. In reality, there might not even be any difficulty if you looked at things from a different angle. But as long as you wish that the reality was something that it’s not, you’re going to feel miserable and anxious.

So, if you could try to entangle these things one by one, without thinking about the other parts, you might have a clearer picture of what it is that you truly want. Moving abroad to get away from a situation that seems overwhelming isn’t going to solve the situation. You would start a new life without solving the past issues, and that would leak over to the next phase as well. Your view of reality and your attitude towards it is going to follow you everywhere.

Part of the attitude can be letting go. It doesn’t have to mean ending things with a boyfriend or thinking that you’ll never travel abroad again. Letting go does not equal accepting some perpetual state, rather it allows the things to move towards where they ought to be moving. Now you’re kind of stuck, not wanting things and wishing for something else, but you’re still holding onto everything. When you mentally let go and allow things to be as they are and progress as they naturally would, you might find yourself exactly where you need to be. It’s scary to do that, because the future is unknown. Right now you might feel that you would never want to live without your boyfriend, but there is no saying that next year you wouldn’t be living with someone else and you’d think “wow, I never saw that coming”. Or, you decide to stay and you have a child together and you look back and think “wow, if I would’ve left I wouldn’t have all this right now”. Hindsight 20/20, but the point is that by letting go, you might get to where you truly want to be, even if you don’t know it yet. Right now you are seeing all the threats, but not the opportunities. It makes sense that you’d feel like that, but that’s not the whole truth.

I know that doesn’t exactly answer your question, but try to look at each thing as a separate entity and refine your attitude towards it by allowing it to be what it is. Not fighting against it.

I’m actually someone who dreads the idea that she’d have to live in one place for the rest of her life 🙂 I have a rather adventurous spirit and I love travelling. I adore airports and the feeling of going somewhere. I also have a curious mind.

If I would try to be something else and deny that part of me, it would cause me to become depressive. So I do honour that side of me, and embrace it.

That doesn’t mean though that I would have to be able to travel. You can honour the adventurous spirit with other ways as well. Life in general is one big adventure! There is so much to be seen and learned, even just at home, that it’s just amazing.

Finding happiness in being your authentic self does not have to be tied to external circumstances. Like your job. If you hate it because you feel like you can’t express yourself in it or it doesn’t speak to you in a particular way, then stop expecting it to 🙂 You need to adapt to your surroundings and express yourself the way you are able to in your current situation. That is not to say that you would have to stay in your current job. You don’t. But like with everything else, finding happiness comes from within and being too tied with the circumstances gives all that power away.

You can shine as an adventurous spirit even if you had to work a 9 to 5 job as a cashier in a local supermarket. You can also be completely lost and miserable even if you were able to travel anywhere you wanted to on a whim.

Hey Lizzie,

I think if you make the decision you will have to realize at first you will miss your boyfriend but you can’t regret your decision. I taught english in Korea and my initial plan was stay for one year and almost five years later I finally left. If this is something you want you should do it, you don’t resent your boyfriend foo holding you back, which you might unconsciously do in the future. You need to do it for yourself and fate has a way of working itself out, i promise!

Here is a blog post I wrote about teaching English in Korea that might help. Good luck!

http://www.globedriftertours.com/teaching-english-korea/

Hi I know its 2 years later but im in a similar situation and wanted to know how it worked out for you Lizzie???