How To Overcome Your Fear Of Moving Abroad

(originally appeared on etramping.com on September 25, 2014)

“When you get into a tight place and everything goes against you, till it seems as though you could not hang on a minute longer, never give up then, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn.” – Harriet Beecher Stowe

For anyone who embarks on a journey of long-term travel, of self-discovery, many realize that we can be our own worst enemy by sabotaging ourselves in subtle ways. Moving abroad or starting a long-term adventure is a big decision and it is easy to imagine all the ways it can go wrong.

Many of us tend to run the same inner commentary over and over again. For example, many of us say, “I am a failure” like a broken record until one day we feel we have had enough and say, “Today I will be a success, today I will change my life…” but we don’t really believe it, it even looks silly to us. Our past conditionings have so much momentum behind them that we can’t totally convince ourselves of a new conviction. We always blame something outside of ourselves for our shortcomings and failures. We don’t see how we can possibly be part of the problem. We are unconsciously negatively conditioning ourselves. A silent current of negativity directs our behavior and we set ourselves up for failure without even knowing it.

I have many friends who say that they would like to move abroad or travel long-term, but each time I speak to them they say they still aren’t ready. They still have a lot of things to prepare to have all their ducks in a row. For some it’s that they own too much stuff, they don’t have enough money, they are afraid of finding a new job, etc. Essentially they are afraid of failure.

We think we are smart when we spend an excessive amount of time thinking of how to prepare for failure, but we need to realize that we will never be ready for failure because failure always comes from an unexpected dimension. Uncertainty is the essence of life, each moment is new and anything can happen.

Through some of our life experiences, we develop certain definite expectations towards failure, with negativity as the foundation. All our expectations towards failure are not just taking precautions, as we may think on some level, these expectations won’t help us in any way. We cleverly convince ourselves and justify our behaviors because we don’t want to be surprised when failure comes. We keep planning for the rainy day that never comes.

Most of our failures come as a result of a self-fulfilling prophecy, so most failures will not manifest themselves as soon as we quit indulging in this form of thinking. Secondly, even if they come we have the full capacity to face anything that may come our way.

When I started day trading, so many people were yelling that the sky was going to fall. No doubt that financially things were (are) not good, but whatever happens we can handle it. Worst case scenario, I would lose all my money. I did. I survived, I learned some very important lessons, and it was not as bad as I had Imagined.

We constantly use the idea, that goes something like, “I will not be able to face the fear if failure comes surprisingly” – this is the only logic we constantly use to create negative patterns within ourselves. If my wife leaves me unexpectedly I won’t be able to survive.

Failure will come and you “will” face it. This played itself out in my younger days when I tried to approach a woman I was attracted to. It wasn’t until I realized that most of my failures were my own psychological creation, and if I got turned down I would be able to deal with it because in reality, it wasn’t a big deal anyway. As soon as I began to live it, I had fewer rejections from women I wanted to date. I got more confidence, and that in turn turned into its own virtuous circle. I was soon a social butterfly who exuded confidence.

All the negative beliefs and conditioning we have given ourselves, we need to learn to drop them. In dropping them we complete them, and we can longer use them to justify our planning to fail.

This single belief is the only reason we go on visualizing, imagining different possibilities, and giving negative conditioning to ourselves.

If you know in your heart that this is something you really want to do, you need to drop fantasizing, visualizing, and imagining about failing. When you drop the idea, you start to experience the space of positivity, because you have removed the reasons you gave yourself negative conditioning.

Not that you are trying to be positive you simply allow it to happen because it is intrinsic to our nature. Negativity is something we learn to pick up from our environment. If you always had a hard time with a woman, maybe you justified yourself by saying, “Why should I go talk to her, she is probably a bitch anyway…or they don’t understand me…etc.” Once you drop this idea and experience being positive, being open, you will see your failures had less to do with the woman you wanted to date, and more with yourself. But of course, many of us don’t like to see this, it is easier to blame and complain. Clearly seeing your faults will start the process of healing.

Having the clarity by “seeing” how you condition yourself negatively allows you to be in the space to drop deeper layers of negativity.

Just bring your whole heart (integrity) and decide to not bring negativity as a thinking pattern, to not lead a lifestyle of negativity.

Really think about how much time we waste feeding these “self-fulfilling” prophecies of “I cannot face unexpected failure” instead of taking action. An example from my life, is the first time I moved to South Korea, I had never taught at a public school (orphanage), I didn’t speak Korean, and somehow on the first day of school, I was going to teach something I had never taught. Not to mention I have never been fond of public speaking. Was this a scary situation? Of course, it was, I could have fantasized hundreds of ways I was going to fail, but deep down I know that I can handle anything life throws at me and that somehow I will figure it out if I put my heart into it and just take action. Guess what? The sky didn’t fall, but I did need to dodge a few paper airplanes that zoomed my way. Somehow I figured it out. With your back against a wall, we all have the ability to become incredibly resourceful if we don’t give in to these negative thinking patterns.

Our mental setups, meaning our usual ways of thinking, set up the foundation for us to justify why we should continue to think negative things. Be an active participant in the creation of your life. The moment you start to drop everything that is false within you, the more integrated you will become. The more integrated you become the more authentic you will be. The more authentic you become the more power you will have to become responsible for every facet of your life. You will have real “will” power to change anything within you that may be holding you back.

Below I will give you some suggestions on how you can take control of your inner life so that you can gain the mental clarity and mastery to be able to drop any false negative ideas that are responsible for your failures. Once you realize how erroneous this belief is, you need to uncover some of your root patterns, your unconscious tendencies that sabotage all your actions. Many of your root patterns can be seen in your attitudes. While our attitudes are easy to spot in our friends and family, they are incredibly hard for us to see.

An attitude is simply a train of thoughts, that has been thought over and over until it becomes crystallized in your brain’s neural pathways. An attitude escapes our casual observation because it is so fast that when someone pushes our buttons, our attitudes simply react instantaneously. If there is any emotional force behind the reaction we will be totally under its power. Our conscious presence is not there to dictate our behavior in the present moment. In a reaction we always blame the outside for our behavior, we never see the other side of the reaction.

The practices I give below are designed to increase your self-awareness. Which is simply learning to recognize your presence intuitively from moment to moment. Being aware of your awareness. In becoming more self-aware you will be able to observe yourself more objectively. In time you will get many mental “snapshots” of how you truly are. Through the mental snapshots, you will get a clear picture of all your reactions under various circumstances. This will help you uncover your root patterns. These sobering pictures will help us dissolve all the illusions we have and will drop away like dead leaves under the ray of consciousness that we let in.

Daily Practice for Mastery of Thoughts:

1. Thought control.

   This is just learning to notice what thoughts you have in your inner space. Learning to watch your mind without judgment. Each time you become identified with a thought, gently bring yourself back to just being a detached silent witness. You will be amazed at the amount and the sheer randomness of all the thoughts that come across your mind’s eye. Pick a quiet place with a comfortable place to sit where you will not be disturbed. Taking 5-10 minutes every day, once in the morning and once in the evening is ideal, but also try to be observant as much as you can throughout your whole day.

2. Thought discipline.

   Once you have learned to notice the content of your mind more objectively, you will start to see its tendencies and reoccurring thought patterns. Now that you have gotten clear on what type of person you want to be, how do your current thinking patterns mesh with that vision? What is in direct opposition to your goals? Now your goal is to identify a specific thought that is sabotaging you and learn to not entertain it. As soon as you catch yourself entertaining counterproductive thoughts, gently place your attention on something else that is positive or at least neutral in nature. An easy thing to do is just to bring your focus to your body. Notice the energy and sensations within and without your body. Then focus on the sensations of your nose from the incoming and outgoing breath. Putting your full attention on your breath will do wonders to put you in a calm state of mind.

3. Mastery of thoughts.

   This practice helps in not letting thoughts overpowering you. At any time you can become silent. Several times throughout your day try to have complete vacancy of mind. Just stopping the total movement of your mind. Most people will only be able to empty, or “stop” their mind for a few seconds before another random thought carries them away. Keep practicing, in time you will be able to achieve 1-3 minutes. Once you can do it for 10 minutes you have gained significant control of your mind.

4. Introspection (Thought Journal).

   Another good idea is to keep a thought journal. At the end of the day rewind your day in your mind and mentally walk through it. Write down any thoughts and themes that occupied your day. Don’t judge your thoughts as being good or bad, this is simply material for your own self-knowledge. Don’t share this with anyone. Once a week, let’s say Sunday, review your journal and then come up with specific trains of thought that you want to nurture in the coming week. Schedule them. You will then have a valuable tool to see if you are being successful in gradually training your mind and seeing the effects that it has on your day. All these exercises start to help you develop a sense of responsibility for the way you think.

Before falling asleep, only the most beneficial and pure thoughts should be entertained and taken along into sleep. Just think about all the times you went to sleep with thoughts of worry and how you woke up the next day. Not fun.

I just want to thank you for reading my article, I sincerely hope it adds some value to your life and that it gives you the mental tools to pursue your dreams of seeing the world. I also want to thank Agness and Cez for giving me the opportunity to contribute to their amazing site.

What do you do to overcome your fear of moving abroad?