What my first year of leaving my safe harbour has thought me

by Tales of 2Timothy1.7

If I had to describe my first year here in London in one word, I would go for the word Resilience. When you look up the meaning of resilience you will find the description of “ the ability to bend, stretch and compress and still come back to its original form but this time come back much stronger than before. That’s how I would describe my first twelve months here in Great London.

I’m sure some of you may have felt the urge to break free, to take a big step to do something that your entourage can’t fully understand and to be honest you, yourself can’t comprehend it eighther.  You often don’t know why this urge takes such a persistence pressure in your being. You may feel like you might never know complete happiness or ever be fully satisfied unless you break loose of this mother cocoon that has defined you for so many years. Well if you’ve ever had these crunching thoughts, than you might know where I’m coming from and I can proudly say: Yes; been there done that!

So here is what I’ve learned:

When you decide to take this huge giant step in your life of leaving your home cocoon for the unknown you often never realise what it’s going to be like. You kind of discover the journey as it goes. It is a very frightening aspect for many people but I must say there is nothing more rewarding than following your inner self.

I arrived in London one year ago, and started the process of getting everything done in order to start my life on this side of the world. The thing about moving to a new country is, everything you used to know everything you kind of mastered you’ll have to relearn and redo it all over again. So I had to start from scratch, from finding a new home and getting into my new job to finding my way through my new town and country. I had to find out how all the regulations and insurances work down here, had to buy a new car and of course learn how to drive on the left side of the road! (Yes, I know, I’m in that special country where the people drive on the left side of the road).

As if all this isn’t enough, moving to a new country meant getting to know my new colleagues, making new friends and creating a whole new social network. Moving to a new country is much more significant than one could be able to predict. But although all these things may take a lot of your time, energy and emotions, you must know that this is what opens your door to a much greater you than you ever thought you knew. So while building my new life over here, I came across moments, things and events that made me crumble and fall down to pieces. I had to learn to rebuild myself from scratch but this time in a much stronger way. I had to learn that where I would have easily walked away in the past, now in this new chapter in my life I decided to stay and learn from my mistakes and make myself more resilient to those circumstances.

I remember times when this all was way too much for me, a time where I thought I want to go back home, back to what I used to know, back to the safe harbour of family and friends and shops and schools and jobs that I knew. There where I had built a certain level of social knowledge and would be able to get a great job with a management position. I had enough of proving myself, enough of standing tall and alone against the wind, enough of being the odd one out, speaking a language that I wasn’t so familiar with. I was ready to let go of the unknown and have the old back. But when this happens you must realise that when you let go, all the effort that you’ve put in so far has been in vain. Everything you believed in will be spoild if you quit the journey and run to your safe harbour. There was a reason for you to make this big step in your life so you have to hang on, just a little longer in order to recult the benefits of your hard work. So I decided to stay, to bite my tongue and continue to sail to wherever this journey was taking me. Now fast forward I’m starting to understand the pattern. I understood that I wanted to achieve much more than what I’ve seen growing up. So in order to achieve what hasn’t been done before I had to do what has never been done before. Only by breaking the chains of your secure self you’ll be able to reach for that one thing that you used to think was impossible.

Now I’m starting to see progress in my journey. Being resilient pays off. I may not be where I want to be yet, but I’m thankful that I’m no longer where I used to be and I know that I’m going to press through until I get where I want to be.

My point is, if you decide to take the journey, it might be much more than you thought yourself being capable to handle. But don’t let temporary feelings stand in the way of your destiny but march on with bold steps and allow circumstances to bend you, compress and stretch you but don’t let it ever break you into a point of giving up. If you do hold on, I promise you this journey will be the best decision you’ve ever made. You’ll achieve much greater things than you could ever imagine and will become not only what you wanted to be but much more than what your imagination can conceive right now. Enjoy the journey!

 

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