Going to living in another country is a series of learning opportunities. The fact of the matter is, you just don’t know what you don’t know. Your ability to learn and pivot and assess options on the fly will be invaluable to your new life abroad. Our family has made a lot of mistakes. Hopefully, you can learn from them and have an even better start to your overseas life. Have you lived in another country and made mistakes you think people should know about? Every journey is so different and it’s fascinating to hear how things go wrong that people never could have anticipated. 🆘🇺🇸 #creatorsearchinsights

or mistakes I made when I first tried to live in a new country so that you don't have to repeat them. The first mistake was I was trying to live like I was still in America, even though I was literally in a different country. I kept the same routine, the same expectations. I would even say things like, "Well in America we did it this way." Like what was I thinking? You're in an entirely different country girl. Get used to it. The mistake number two was I didn't take the time to connect with the locals. It's nice to have the comfort of some expat friends so that you can have that camaraderie of this journey that you came on to go live in this other country. But being amongst the locals is what's going to teach you new things. It's what's going to make you become a new person and that has so much value as somebody who's living abroad. I can't believe I wasted time not doing that earlier. The mistake number three was that I concerned myself too much with what was happening back home. I didn't spend enough time focusing on my life right in front of me and being present. Like I had a swimming pool in my backyard that there would be weeks going by and I never got in it. At some point I realized you're not physically present in this life that you've created for yourself. You're worried about the politics at home. You're worried about what your family is doing at home. You're thinking about your career that's still stuck back at home and none of that stuff mattered as much as what was physically in front of me and I just wasn't spending enough time being present in the moments that I had created and I was ignoring them. The fourth and probably biggest mistake I made and everyone else makes when they're moving abroad is thinking that you have to have it all figured out before you ever leave. The stress of leading makes you feel like you need to have every single thing planned out but in reality when you get to that next place there are people living and thriving there just fine and you can go plug into that system and figure out what they're doing without knowing ahead of time. So many people even when they're just going somewhere on vacation like to have everything planned out every single restaurant every single meal they want to know exactly what they're doing and the reality is the locals are eating so you just don't need to worry about it and stress about it as much as you are. When you get there trust yourself to be able to figure some things out and don't get yourself into a bundle of nerves because you don't have every single detail planned out yet. If you're planning to live in another country expect that there will be failures. There will be flops, there will be messups, there will be mistakes and that is totally okay. It does not mean that you have to go home, it does not mean that you did something wrong, it's just part of life and those learning moments will teach you what you need to know about living in that new country. They are great opportunities to figure out how to coexist in that place even better than if you had just shown up as a know-it-all. If you've never seen me before I'm Veronica and five years ago my family of four left the United States for good and we have made a lot of mistakes. I use this channel to educate Americans on how you can leave the United States. I even do one-on-one exit planning consultations with my clients who want to understand how their individual situations can match with visa opportunities around the world and you can book a one-on-one meeting with me from the link in my bio.