Moving Abroad Should Be A Wise Mind Decision
When I got serious about my plan to move abroad, I decided to go on a scouting trip in Spain to figure out exactly where I wanted to live.
I started off in Madrid with a notebook and a ranking system for everything I could possibly care about in my new home. I explored different neighborhoods and dutifully recorded my impressions of the transportation systems, the grocery stores, the parks, the cafés and bookstores. I looked up statistics and demographics, and talked to other immigrants about their experiences. By the time I moved on, I had a favorable impression of the city; it had many of the qualities of a city I would like to live in.
Next up was Valencia. Stepping out of the train station, I was immediately hit with the vibes. After the late Fall chill in Madrid, Valencia felt like a breath of fresh air. The sun was shining, the sky was blue. There were palm trees and colorful murals outside. When a short taxi ride took me to my accommodations, people were outside on terraces, drinking cañas and relaxing with friends. It felt warm, welcoming, and the palm trees and sun reminded me of what I most liked about life in California. Without meaning to, I threw my ranking system out the window. Valencia just felt like a good place to make a home.
When I got back to the US, I realized how far I had strayed from my original plan to come back with a spreadsheet of notes and ratings to make my decision. And I was struggling to share my experience with the people back home. Why, exactly, did I want to move to Valencia? What made it a place I actually wanted to live versus a lovely vacation spot? Not being able to articulate that made me uneasy. I went back to my spreadsheet to reconsider the practical questions once more.
Tapping Into Wise Mind for Big Life Decisions
In psychology, we sometimes speak of the Wise Mind—that intersection where our rational mind and our emotional mind converge. It comes from Dialectical Behavior Therapy (which itself draws very heavily from Eastern philosophy and Buddhism).
The rational mind is great with objective facts and dispassionate analysis. It loves pros and cons lists, and a good Likert scale ranking system. Emotion mind, on the other hand, is where our heart weighs in. It's concerned with how something feels, not whether it makes sense.
In Western societies, we often associate good decision making with the rational mind. At the same time, we see our emotional mind as fickle and unreliable. However, we absolutely need both logic and emotion to weigh in when we're making big life decisions—like a move abroad.
I started off my Spain trip with the intention of applying a very rational lens to my decision making process, which made sense when I was in Madrid. But then I got swept away by emotion mind in Valencia. Sunny weather and a small snapshot of daily life did some heavy lifting of convincing me it would make a great home. It wasn't until I got some distance that I was able to integrate the facts with the feelings to make a wise mind decision.
When it comes to your move abroad, are you leading with your head or your heart?
So why does it actually matter that we use our wise mind for decision making? After all, my emotion mind was right in the end about Valencia; it's been a great home. Did it matter that I made myself go back and do a second pass with my logic brain?
Well, one reason is a significant percentage of moves abroad unfortunately end unhappily. If you're leading with emotion—whether it's desperation to get out of a bad situation or a romanticized fantasy of endless vacation—you may not be paying attention to important details. Things like: Will I be able to afford the cost of living here? How hard will it be to get and maintain a visa here? What will my taxes look like? Am I being realistic about job opportunities?
On the other hand, if you're leaning into what's reasonable without paying attention to how you're feeling, you're also missing important information. You may end up choosing something that looks good on paper, but isn't sustainable for the long haul. For example, living far out from the city center may be the best financial decision. But if you're feeling burned out by a long commute, or isolated and lonely in your new home, it's probably not one that will work in the long term.
So for those of you considering a move abroad, I encourage you to check in with yourself. Have you been leading with your heart or your head in the decision making process? You might tend to lean one way or another, generally, or there may be something about this process pulling you in one direction.
A decision as big as moving abroad deserves our full wise mind capacity, with our rational and emotional sides in alignment. That doesn't mean that there are never trade offs, of course. Sometimes it makes sense to choose something that will make us happy even when there are practical costs, or reasons to defer something we really want for the longer-term good. What it does mean is that we're respecting and listening to our head and our heart in the process.
Want support to talk through your move abroad decisions? Coaching can help. Book a free consultation with Dr. Maya to learn more.
