Moving to a New City in Your Early Twenties

Photo by Handiwork NYC on Unsplash

I have always been told that change is the best thing that you can do. That with change, you are allowing yourself to evolve and grow into a different and more soul-aligned version of you.

But, I have found, as someone in my twenties, we are constantly tugged in two directions.

We could stay in the same place that we grew up in. Or we can choose to move ourselves somewhere new and battle with the unknown.

Staying near home offers the biggest comfort known to man. By doing this, we are able to stay near our families and longtime friends. We know what our days are going to consist of. We know who is going to be there on the weekends and the menu of the place that we will plan to go out to eat at later. We get to know that we are spending time with the people that we love as they get older and have the opportunity to put down roots in a place that we know is safe and secure and loving.

Or, we could choose to move to a new place and put ourselves in the most uncomfortable position as we struggle to figure it out. It is a lonely and isolating process. It means that you are forced to sit with yourself. You have to learn to be okay with the ins and outs of your mind because that is going to be the only person that you have as you make this change.

Luckily, we live in a time and a place with cell phones and we can call or message the people that we love. And trust me, I do this often. It means that we have to choose a life separate or different than we have always known. It means logging onto social media and seeing life go on with your hometown friends and family without you. But, it also means that you have the opportunity to grow big and wide. You are able to reinvent the expectations that we gave to you from a small age to become the person that you want to be.

When I was 22, I found myself moving back to my hometown with my parents. I saw my life progressing back into the days before I had gone off to college. It was hard and a change for all of us. But, it was extremely comfortable. I found myself sleeping in, taking naps, and falling backward into a version of myself that I no longer was or wanted to be.

I knew that moving out was my only option to break the cycle that was consuming me. But, I still wanted to move out near my parents. In a place where nothing would change. I would still be living with the same comfort of the home that I have always known being ten minutes away. I think that the universe was looking out for me because I was immediately finding that the cost of moving out in my hometown was pretty close to what it would cost for me to live in my dream city, San Diego CA. From here, the dream exploded. I quickly went on Facebook groups and found my current roommates. We moved within a couple of months of me making this realization. I did not give myself much time to think about it.

And that is because moving is scary. But, people are onto something when they say that change is the best thing for you. It is because you are forced to evolve as a person. And with this, you can become a more aligned version of yourself. When you move, you are surrounded by new people and no one knows who you are or what to expect from you. I believe that it was the best thing that I could have done for myself.

I moved away from the unconscious limiting beliefs that I held for myself and the people around me. As I was deciding to make the jump to calling myself a writer, I made a move that allowed me to step into an identity I was craving. I knew that the people in my hometown saw me in a way that was different than the goal version of myself, and I am personally, not strong enough to break free of the projections that were constantly coming my way.

It has been amazing to re-evaluate myself and my life while enjoying a beautiful new city. I think that gratitude is the key to life, but many times it can be really hard to think through the things that you are grateful for. By moving to your dream city, it gives you a few more things that you can be thankful for constantly. I always find myself looking into the beautiful sky on my drive home, or staring off at the beach on a random Tuesday, and think to myself how grateful I am to be able to be in that place at that moment, all because I choose to completely up-root and change my life.

With all of this being said, if you even have a small inkling of a desire to try out a new city, I can only advise you to go for it. If it is something that you catch yourself daydreaming about - that means that if you don’t do it, it will be one of the things that you regret later on in life.

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