Especially with the current economic turmoil most millennials and Gen X-ers are experiencing right now, it can be truly tempting to move back home. After all, the familiar taste of home offers comfort. Not to mention, you could save up on rent, utilities, and even groceries.
However, as often repeated in countless books, articles, and other resources, moving out of your hometown is the best decision you will ever make. You could share a dorm room or an apartment with some work colleagues or live in your own house.
Along the way, you can pick up plenty of valuable lessons that might have sheltered you in your hometown. From looking for apartments for rent and investing in furniture pieces to career choices and relationships to keep, living on your own has a boatload to offer.
This said, here are some of the best insights gathered why moving out of your hometown is the best decision you will ever make.
Why Moving Out of Your Hometown is the Best Decision You’ll Ever Make
1. Enjoy a New Level of Freedom
The world is your oyster, they say — and this holds true. Once you expand your horizon beyond your hometown, you will open yourself to endless possibilities. It can be scary, but overall it is exciting.
2. Widen Your Comfort Zone
Life is boring without any challenges. Once you live on your own, every step of the way offers you new feats to overcome. Moving to a new place exposes you to so much newness. You get to meet new people, immerse in new cultures, and learn a new way of living. All these forces you to step outside of your comfort zone.
Since you will get to meet people with different perspectives, try new things, and take on more responsibilities, you learn to gain more confidence. Fear of the unknown does not hold you back anymore.
3. Become Resourceful and Responsible
Since now you will be living on your own, it forces you to take on the not-so-fun parts of adulthood. This means paying bills, making rent, and doing basic household chores. But all of these make you more resourceful and more responsible.
Rather than view it as something scary, imagine how rewarding it is to trust yourself more in making major life decisions. When you become self-reliant, experiencing hiccups along the way would not bother you so much.
4. Expand Network
Whether you agree with me or not on this one, most opportunities and jobs come from referrals. When you move out of your hometown, you are essentially expanding your network with all the new people you meet and the new connections you build.
It can be challenging when you think of it. But once you put yourself out there and meet new people, it becomes less scary. The more you strive to be more confident in introducing yourself, the more likely you will find new friends and meet new contacts with diverse backgrounds.
5. Hear Different Perspective
Staying in one place throughout your life exposes you to just one cultural experience. But venturing out into a new world opens up your mind to different perspectives from people coming from diverse backgrounds.
It helps break prejudices and stereotypes. It opens up your mind to new philosophies. It allows you to become more empathetic of people having totally different backgrounds from yours.
In today’s more globalized world, having a multicultural perspective goes a long way, career-wise and relationship-wise.
6. Appreciate Your Loved Ones Back Home
It is true what they say about absence making the heart grow fonder when you leave your hometown. As you spend more days, weeks, months, and years away from your family and the familiar comforts that you know, the more you will learn to appreciate even the littlest of things back home.
Leaving your hometown entails some sacrifices like missing birthdays, holidays, and other important milestones. But since you become well-aware of how limited the time you will spend when visiting home, you learn to appreciate it more.
7. Satisfy Your Desire to Travel
You only get to live one life, so why be stuck in the same place and the same routine? Get out there and explore the world. Take the leap. It does not matter if you are in your 20s, 30s, 40s, or even 50s right now. Take a chance; you are in charge of your destiny.
You don’t always have to be in the same place your entire life. Go out and explore; you can learn a lot from experiencing something different.
