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Away We Go We Go follows the journey of Sophie & Jordan Epton, an American couple who moved to France with their 10-month old twins, and the crazy adventure that follows. We dive deep into what it's really like moving and living abroad as expats, interview others who have taken the road less traveled, provide travel tips, discuss how you can do hard things to change your own life, and everything in between.
A year and a half ago, we risked it all and moved to France. We'll
be sharing about our life abroad, how people could do hard things to transform
their own lives and everything in between. This is Sophie and
Jordan Epton. Welcome to the Away We Go, We Go podcast.
And welcome back to another episode of Away We
Go, We Go. Running a solo mission
today relieved Sophie of her efforts.
This is round two. This is round two of this episode.
So I first and foremost want to
sincerely apologize for not getting this
recording out last week.
I'm gonna not take accountability for this one. I'm gonna blame it
on French wifi. Just screwed me last week and
it's kind of funny. And I'm gonna, I'm gonna touch on this because this is
kind of very much related to the episode today. But
before we get into all that, just wanted to say sorry we couldn't get something
out to you last week. We were very excited to and,
you know, nature was stronger than what we were able to deal with,
so couldn't make it happen. So. Happy to be back with you.
Couple little updates. Let's see. Last
weekend, got a chance to get the twins outside
to the park to celebrate birthday of some friends, some
older kids. They had a blast. They kind of had some life of the party
vibes going on because technically this wasn't really for little
kids. We slipped in under the radar and
the older kids got to do their older kid playing, but also were
very into the twins. And the twins were running
around like crazy people and had a good time just kind of being let loose,
running around where they saw it was okay to run around with some other big
kids. So it was really fun, had a really good time.
I also have been hit pretty, pretty aggressively with some
allergies, probably because I was out of the park. So thanks for
nothing. Nature kind of worked
me. Have only had about 75 coughing
attacks in the last two days and
working on getting over that, but I don't think that's any different from when
we were living in Austin. I never had allergies ever
till I moved to Austin and people were telling me that you're going to get
allergies. I'm like, I don't even know what that means. Don't know what it feels
like. And then I got knocked on my ass. And so now here
in the land of mold, amongst other things,
just been kicking my ass. But we're back
at it and it's okay. Made it through this weekend, this
last weekend. Since it's now Sunday night,
Sophie And I had a nice little weekend away. Got to
explore a new part of Provence that we haven't
explored before. It's about an hour east of Aix, a little over
an hour. If you kind of go slightly
northwest from where Saint Tropez is, that's where we were kind
of in the hills. Beautiful,
beautiful area. We got to check out some beautiful new places.
And so that was fun. And now we're back for one more week
before another travel stint coming up, which I'm sure
Sophie will be sharing plenty on
the Instagram account TikTok or wherever she
uploads that stuff. And, yeah, very
excited for the upcoming travel. Excited for a very
fun hang week with the twins before we're kind of gone for almost
two weeks. And
it'll. It'll be really fun and we're going to try
to keep our momentum with all of this going on. But I
think the whole recording failure from
last week and just kind of where we're at is
very relevant to what I was hoping to tackle today,
which I think it's talked about a decent
amount. We talk about it again, not from any expert
positioning, but I wanted to just share
about some of the things that we do to level
out our mental state specific to
moving abroad.
I got to call them hacks. I don't know. I'm not hack
culture. I like hacks. I like learning about hacks. I don't know if I'm
capable of providing any, but I do think that
there have been some things that
Sophie and I have kind of done and addressed throughout our
experience here over the last couple years that can really help.
I think it's really easy to romanticize the idea
of starting fresh in another country.
Sunshine and wine and cute markets, at least where we are. But
maybe you're going to somewhere more islandy
or more somewhere in Costa Rica or
Bali. I don't know. But either way,
it sounds very romantic when you want to do it. And
at the same time, underneath all that, you are away
from what's familiar and you're juggling
new language, a new financial system,
just trying to actually live in a place
sometimes where most people
from, where you are from are vacationing.
So this isn't meant to be gimmicky mind hacks
or anything. These are realistic, personal things.
Maybe some tools that can just help feel grounded while you're figuring
things out, because I think it can creep up
on you and feel a little bit difficult. So let's get into it.
First one, I think this was
something that we were both kind of aware of, but
not aware of how best to do
micro routines are much
better far superior to master plans. I think.
Forget the idea of building a perfect new life on
day one, or week one, or month one,
or may even be so bold as to say year one.
I think that you just start
really small. Start with coffee, start with a
croissant. Regardless, always start with a croissant. It
doesn't matter what you're doing, that's the best. But start with something
small. Anchor yourself with tiny
rituals. The same cafe that you go to, the
same walking path or market stroll,
the same weekly meal that you cook. I think
this can really help, just
maybe not even trick you into stability, but just give
you some sense of. I think for us it just,
it took a while to even find things that felt
like I want to return to that. I think
that was a huge part of it. You've heard us talk about
a couple of our favorite coffee shops that we go to. I'm
not like a massive coffee
enthusiast. I don't know enough about coffee.
I don't chase flavors. I'm kind
of a utility drinker. But I do like
the setting and just the time I'm giving myself for that.
Sometimes, even if I'm taking it to go, I take it to go and I
go and go for a little walk or do a couple things.
But the culture here is
to sit down and have a coffee. Even for the people that I see are
literally popping in to grab an espresso that takes them
seven seconds to drink before they actually go to work. They're still coming
in. They're spending, I don't know, five, seven, ten minutes
just sitting, maybe reading something, scrolling whatever they're doing.
And I think things like that that you find
again, if it's like there's a specific market or a specific
area of the town that you're exploring or have just
discovered that you kind of go and just take a 15
minute walk and hit the same path and it's just like
your little mindless recharge.
I think once you get a little bit
of rhythm, some of the other mental stresses that do
creep in can really
kind of ground you a bit. So
I think that's the first one. Micro routines
find the little small things that are totally worth
finding a little joy. And again, for me, whether it's coffee or I go to
the boulangerie, either on the way to dropping the twins
off or afterwards, oftentimes afterwards, because if I go before,
I got to give them a bunch of stuff. They're all hyped up. I'll do
it sometimes. Sometimes it's a me thing. And I will go get that
pound Swiss. That's the like
patisserie version of like a Long John donut, but so
much better. It's like that laminated
perfect dough with chocolate chips and like a cream that
it kind of mixes in with it. And it's. Oh, it's heavenly. Heavenly.
That, my friends, is a micro routine
that makes me so happy. And even if it's like a
crazy morning or I know something is upcoming, I have
that. It's so nice. So think
about those. But again, moving into the next
one, I'll try to keep this moving, not hover too long on anything. I
think money is just inevitable
to kind of creep up on you. And it's a massive mental stress.
Especially when you're moving abroad. It doesn't really matter if
you've come up with a plan,
allocated specific money, budgeted in a certain
way to say I'm going to budget to
live in this certain level of comfort for
six months for a year before I have to really crack down.
I'm just telling you it creeps up. Things come up, you get excited
about something, you get motivated and your money will
disappear faster than a croissant at
9am if you're not paying close attention.
There's so many just new things that you don't expect that
pop up. Sometimes it's the fun shit. You're like, I'm here,
I want to explore stuff. And then it costs money to
book something or register for something or buy a
ticket for something. But then there's other shit that comes up like
hidden bank fee costs, groceries being
a different cost than you had expected, or subscriptions that
you didn't think you were going to need. Sophie and I are
some weeks really good at this and then some weeks really
shitty at this. And whether it's because we're just
focusing on other stuff or we forget or we just really don't want to
and we don't track like
to the, to the level of detail that we should,
it just really does creep up on you and it's, it's something
that I think can add a ton of stress. And if you just
even give yourself like a 60 to 90 day
expense tracking, I think that can kill a
ton of anxiety because there's, there's so many unknowns, there's so much
changing that the financial burden and
stress that you could carry around, if you can mitigate that,
I think that's a good one. So just recognize
that there are, like, before the move,
you can only budget so far. You just don't know. Like, there's going to be
so many variables. And even when you're just getting settled, it takes
some time to, like, do something wrong where you're like,
I've been doing that for three months. That's so dumb. I just met somebody and
they told me about this, and holy shit, I'm spending way too much
on this one thing. So just be
mindful about that. But that being
said, the whole mistake thing, I think this kind of leads
into my next point, which, again, we've
talked about this a ton. You're going to make mistakes because
you don't know what you don't know. But I think
from a mindset standpoint, I don't know
where I heard this. I heard this from somebody else, but they had said,
treat your mistakes as tuition. I
fucking love that. Completely reframes the idea of
I'm going to fuck up and I'm going to feel like shit about it and/or
be embarrassed about it. Like, mistakes
are just part of the deal, and it's
okay because you're going to have awkward moments. But those
awkward moments don't have to just be failures. They can be your
tuition, they can be your investment. Think of
every misstep as a down payment toward more
fluency, more competence. Reframe it
as learning. The other day I
went into the grocery store, just one of the little markets next to
me, and there's a guy that works there that's
like a super extroverted guy. He's, like, really goofy,
just fun, nice guy. Speaks so
goddamn fast that I went in there and it was like, I just dropped the
twins off. I had to grab a couple things. Brain was
not into, hey, let's have a conversation,
especially in French. And I saw him and I walked up to him.
He's in this corner of the store where I was going. And so I extended
my hand. He extended his hand. Mine was going for a fist bump. He went
to shake my hand, then we swapped, and then he started cracking all
these jokes, and I couldn't understand a fucking thing that he said. And
he's saying them really fast and then laughing, then being
super silly. And I'm just like, yeah, no fucking clue what
you're saying, man. And just wanted to get some fruit packs for the
twins and some crackers and get the fuck out of here. And it was just
really funny because I just did that thing where I'M just
kind of laughing because he's laughing. And then try to change my
face to just mirror whatever he was doing just so he wouldn't
realize that I didn't know what he was talking about. And there was a split
second where I'm just like, oh, my God, dude, this is so awkward. I don't
know what you're saying. And then I was just like, gives a shit. Literally, who
gives a shit? And sometimes I have
the wherewithal to be in that moment and say,
doesn't even matter from understanding what they're saying. Just pick out words, just identify words.
Identify that I understand that word and then that word and then that
word. And is it enough for me to walk out of here
and try to put that sentence together? Because that's like, that's 1%
better type shit. So forget about
the mistakes being a problem and just look at them as
part of your investment. Again, treat the mistakes as tuition.
I don't know where I heard that, but I fucking love it. And I think
it's a great thing to be aware of.
One of the things that can really help with that leading into my next point,
number four is it can really help
if you can lean on somebody
and not just like an anybody thing, but
an anchor person, somebody who is local,
somebody who understands
where you're at to a degree, what you're going through, has the patience for
you. I think that that's huge because
those mistakes feel way less like
mistakes. Obviously, being social, building community
is awesome. I'm not going to lie and say that it's really
easy to do because based on your
circumstances, you'll find that it's easy to meet certain types of people.
We have young kids going to school. I spend a shit ton of time there.
That's where it's going to be easiest for me right now. When I was living
in Argentina and I was single, I could go to a salsa class, I can
go play soccer, I could go party, do whatever, and I
can meet people regularly doing that.
So, it just depends on, again,
your circumstance and what you're able to do. But
I don't think that you need immediately to
try to get this massive group of friends
again. I'm not saying that you shouldn't do that. I'm just saying
don't get overwhelmed if you building
out friendships is slow. You only need
a couple people to start. And I think having
again, at least one anchor person, a local, a
neighbor, somebody at the coffee shop or at the, the
bakery or where, whatever it is that you kind of frequent
find if it's a coworker, whoever it is,
just find somebody that like you see on the regular, they start to
recognize like, oh, you're here, I see you a lot, we're
interacting a lot. And you build that relationship, you build
that rapport. It can be so helpful. You can ask them
questions. I, I joke, you know, in French,
teacher is professor. So I always say merci
professor. Whenever one of my friends says, oh no, no, this is the word
for that, or say it like this or when they correct
me, just like a stupid, stupid joke. But
it's just reflecting on the relationship I have with
that person that they're willing to teach me stuff they're willing to.
And again, not just language related, but just life
stuff, how things work here, how to make things easier, things to
go and do that aren't super costly, that can be really fun
that them and their friends might be doing if they're working and
they're not on vacation. It's hard
to know what things aren't going to break the bank if you try to do
them all the time. But you can still have fun, et cetera. So find an
anchor person and, and invest in them.
Bring them a little treat, show gratitude.
I have a couple friends here that I try to take care of with
just little stuff here and there. Ask them if they need something or bring them,
if I know it's a busy day, I'll bring them a snack or something like
that. And it's just friendship type shit.
But I know that it's helpful for them, it means something to them
and in return they're so much more patient with me when
I'm acting the fool. So definitely an anchor
person can be very useful and just
good for your overall mood. But going into the next point,
speaking about the vacation life, I think it's normal
that I grew up in Chicago, I was living in Austin for a little bit.
If I'm going to move somewhere, I'm not moving somewhere that's a Cleveland
in another country. Like nothing against Cleveland, but
I wouldn't ever move to Cleveland myself. I don't have a reason to. I
wanted to move to the south of France. To me, that had some allure. But
this is a place where a lot of people vacation. So again, like I mentioned
earlier, if you're, you know, maybe you move to a beach town or a St.
Lucia or somewhere in Costa Rica or Bali. A place that people
are vacationing. Vacation is not real life. You
can live where people vacation, but you can't live
like you're on vacation. So
just it seems a little bit obvious, but
I just think it was relevant to call out, like, balance the
treats with the grounding choices and
just remember that like, if you
moved where you moved to live,
like you're going to have a lot of phone calls with people back home. Oh
my God, tell me what it's like, what have you been doing, where you've been
eating, where you've been going and exploring and adventuring and
you might have like a month where you ain't doing shit.
Maybe you're saving money for like a really cool bigger excursion. Or
maybe you just rented an apartment that you
had to furnish and kind of put you out for a little bit and you
got to be really tight because you needed to get this whole thing set up.
But it was worth it. So you're not going to be doing crazy
activities for a while. And I have those conversations all the time where
it's like, hey, what updates do you have for me, Jordan? And it's
like, don't just kind of been grinding and working and
taking the kids to school and doing all the things. I mean, have some updates.
But then people get really disappointed. It's like, I'm not on vacation.
I'm not going out every day and doing all these crazy things.
I have life shit to do and that's okay. But
the vacation stuff type stuff that I want to do
is very accessible and so I can still balance some of
those things. Like I said this last weekend, Sophie and I got to explore
a new part of Provence that we haven't been to. And that feels like that
exploration and adventure and checking new things out.
But going back to point two about money creeping up
on you, you can't live like you're on vacation when you're doing
real life shit. And if you want to keep your
sanity intact and your wallet intact,
just pace yourself.
You're moving abroad, if that's the thing that we're talking about.
And it's not
just to vacation even. I've met friends
in the last two plus years here. I've met multiple people
that have become friends that are doing a sabbatical where it's a temporary
visit. Some people are extending longer. Some people,
that's their time and they go back and they're trying to take
advantage while they can. But at the same time, week in and week
out, they're still working and they're still doing other stuff. Other people who've been
less in the work sabbatical are taking advantage and
doing a bunch of cool stuff. But again, also still just having
to live. They're not retired where they're like, I got
unlimited funds because I've spent my life working for this and budgeted for this
and I can do whatever I want. Which I don't know if anybody's doing that
anyways. But again, I think it just. It's totally
okay to not feel like you're doing something crazy
every day or every week. Just try to balance it a little
bit. Know that it's totally fine if you just hermit yourself
for a long time to just kind of get in the mode
of where you're living. I think that
the balancing act of everything from
money to mindset to vacation versus real
life stuff, there are some other
things that can be kind of heavy. And language
fatigue is a huge one. Obviously relevant
if you're moving to a country where it's not your native language,
not actually speaking to learning
the new language, but actually protecting your native
language time as well. Language fatigue is real,
not just mental, but physical. Physical. I remember my
experience with learning French is different than what it
was. Learning Spanish in Buenos Aires when I was living there,
that was super intense for me. When I
was in Argentina, I was taking
Spanish classes three hours a day, four days a week
for four months straight. Then I moved into the residencia,
which had 30 Argentinians, two
Colombians and me. And when I was
really immersing myself, I was
trying all day, every day to speak as much Spanish as I
possibly could. And I had the means to be able to do it
again. Right now I have young twins, we speak mostly English at home.
And I'm working and I speak a lot of English for work.
So I don't have the same opportunity and exposure
for speaking French all day like I did. So when I was
learning Spanish, I would come home from
like a day of work where I was still teaching English, but they were like
hour long sessions. But the rest of the time it was full on
Spanish, going to class. I would come home at like
6pm Something like that. I would be fucking
torched. Like my body would be dead because my
mind was in overdrive. And it is just really
exhausting and uncomfortable a lot of the time.
And I think the whole point of this is
it's totally okay to just binge Netflix series in
your own language and be guilt free
about it. You know, use of your native tongue is
actually brain recovery. It's not regression
like exercising and working out. You can take a rest day,
maybe A rest week, maybe you work out seven weeks straight and you
take a week off. Again, not a fitness trainer. So I don't know
what's good or bad for you, but I do know that rest is essential
and it's okay to recharge and then come back
and feel stronger, be stronger. And I think from a language
perspective, it's the same thing. Put effort into learning the language, but
then don't feel guilty when you want to
call friends from home or have an
expat outing where you can speak your native language.
I think that that's really important. And there's no
full on black or white where you move to the new country and you can
only speak that language forever. Otherwise you're a piece of
shit. It's just not the case. Right?
It's totally fine to meet friends
that speak your language and just have those experiences.
So I think it's important to protect while you're putting in
the effort to learn the language of country that you're living in,
if it's different than your native tongue. I think
going into my next point, all
of these things kind of like tie into this and lead up
to it coming out of the language. Talk here.
It can be really frustrating. And I think it's really important
to have a frustration exit strategy.
This is like when you're seeing
red or you're getting a headache,
or you're overly embarrassed and just exhausted from that
feeling, or things just aren't working. It's
really good to have an exit strategy.
Talk about frustrating. There's just so many things that
come up that are frustrating. And if you're like,
eyes are blaring red or you're just like so exhausted or
you just fucking cry because you're like, I don't even know what
else to do. I don't know what emotion to feel right now.
And I just like can't deal with this.
Have some outlets, some
exit strategies for your stress and your frustration
where you can just totally
reset and recharge yourself. I think
it's so important to have that. Call home,
call family, call friends, go on a
walk. This might come as a shock to you, but I might
suggest going and getting a croissant because that pretty much solves
everything. Nearly everything in the world can be solved by a
croissant. But the point is, don't let
a single frustration wreck your whole day.
This is obviously not just for living abroad,
this is for anything that you're doing that is hard if you're
starting a new business or new company or a new job
or a new relationship or whatever it is.
Don't let one thing completely derail you.
Have some rituals that can be
a guilt free exit
strategy and outlet for you.
Again, for me, whether it's coffee, whether it's playing music,
calling friends from home, stealing away
Sophie for a quick date night, something like that, just something to
look forward to. Something that's like, I need to have this
around weekly at my fingertips, whether it's
scheduled or not. I need to be ready for this because I'm
running into a bunch of shit. And if it just totally
derails you mentally, that can
last for way longer than you'll want it to. So I think having
these little outlets can be super beneficial.
I want to tie the next point. I don't have a savvy
fucking transition into this. But I want to go back to the social
kind of outlook. I think I'm going to double
down on go slow. Go slow for the social
side of things. There can be this like feeling
of like being on the hunt for instant
besties. And it's really easy to do a lot
if you even put in minimal effort because you're
going to meet people that are in a similar situation as you and
that can really warrant a really
healthy interaction and you can make friends really quickly.
But I think one of the challenging things when
you make a big move is
already referenced this in this episode, that
it's very transient what we're doing,
right? And so you might meet a
really fucking cool person that is at the tail end of
their experience or they're about to move or
they're just traveling through and you happen to meet them at a time when they
were posting up for a handful of days. And it
can be really awesome to meet people
like that. And then it can be really sad
because you'll meet some awesome people. And then
it's like, oh man, this is a cool experience. But yeah, we're moving
back or we're moving on to the next location
or they're not even living there, they're just traveling through and you
meet them and have good experiences. And it can be really hard because you
feel like you have to continually reset your
social circle and that can be really
taxing on your mental state. And I
think a good way to kind of level that
side of your mental state out is just go slow, join
low pressure groups, language exchanges or
different clubs, different meetups for different
things, go on hikes or walks and be a regular
somewhere. But let friendships build
slowly and naturally again. Depends on your
situation, where you were coming from before a move like this. But
you might have been where home has always been. You
might be where you went to college or
you're really good friends with a lot of people that you work with. And
it's just really easy, it's built in to have these social
circles and multiple social circles that overlap
and you'll still find that. But again, it's just,
it can be different. And I think if you pace yourself
and say, I'm doing this experience for me, so
whether or not I'm being social and checking out a new museum
or going on a hike or hitting this beach up with new
friends, like sometimes you will,
sometimes you won't. But I think that awareness
of the guilt, that
maybe guilt's not even the best thing, but we'll go with that for now. The
guilt that could come along with it can just make you feel
like you're not doing good enough, you're not being social enough.
And I think building friendships
in general is like a really cool experience,
but it just doesn't happen with everyone. So take
your time and
don't hold yourself to some crazy standard that just
because you were crazy social and have a shit ton of friends somewhere that
that's just going to happen immediately. Because it could.
And then it could disappoint you if it's transient or people kind of change and
move on, or best case scenario, it
works really great and you can just write me and tell me to go fuck
myself. Be like, maybe you're a weirdo and it's way easier to
make friends and maintain them than it is for you, Jordan.
So noted. Received. Appreciate the feedback and
the honesty. Don't be a dick. Point.
Let's go to point. Are they points? Bullet number
nine, work. Not everybody's working.
But again, talking about the whole livelihood thing, if you're going to stay for an
extended period of time, you're going to be working. If not, and you're like a
trust fund person, good for you. Props to you.
I am not that we are not that majority of us are
not that we have to work. Got to find your way. However,
work can also be an anchor, not a
burden. I think that your
identity, again, you're moving abroad, right? Or
doing something big and new and scary.
There's some element of that that will be
your identity work. I think people
sometimes have a fear that if they're not, if it's
not their company, if they're not obsessed with their job, that it's a job
and it's not their identity. And they're very, you know, people can be,
I think, general pretty sensitive to
having work be their identity. But I think in
a situation like this, treating work as
structure alongside identity
when everything else feels in flux can give
you a really steady base. I think this is just a perspective thing,
but I think work can be one of those things that again,
maybe the work that you're doing is something brand
new based on your circumstances of moving, but
for a lot of people where it's not that work doesn't have
to be a burden that's taking you away from doing cool shit. It can be
the stability that allows your brain to rest a little bit
while you're focusing on doing the stuff that you know.
I think work gives you structure and it can just be really helpful
to have that, but to stay motivated. And
this is going to be my last point. You also have to celebrate.
Got to celebrate the small victories. Celebrate not
just small victories, but celebrate ordinary wins.
Like celebrate shit that you wouldn't celebrate
back home. Opening up a bank
account, finding that
route to shortcut to get
you to this place you've been going to for weeks on end or months on
end and you finally found the shortcut. Or you opened a bank account or you
got a SIM card for your phone. Little
things that are like, yeah, I have to do this, but
it's so worth it to just celebrate ordinary shit.
I'll be honest with you, I pat myself on the back all the fucking time
because I'm proud of myself. Also because Sophie is very
high functioning and she's just good at doing shit. So for me, I'm just like,
hey, I did something good too. But
these ordinary wins, these simple wins, these things that
you just kind of figure out new shit, you
ordered lunch or took a phone call. In the language that
you're learning, you've figured out
transit in a good way. These are
milestones and you should document them and you should
celebrate them. I'm not saying you got to call your friends back home and
say, I just did an ordinary thing because they're going to be like,
great. Unless they're super supportive friends and they're like, hey, that's pretty
cool that you did that in a new country where you didn't speak the language
and it's bright, brand new for you and hey, that's great. You're like
figuring shit out again. It sounds silly, but
this is the capital that you want to have
to refer to
when you're feeling really stressed out. You can have a shitty
day and then still be proud of yourself for still pushing and
trying something. So celebrate ordinary wins.
Do these things that again, you would never celebrate for
yourself, but you deserve to celebrate that
because it's a hard thing that you're doing.
So I love the idea of celebrating
having kind of planned out this whole episode. It
just got me excited because whenever I do get
to have personal conversations with other expats,
with people that we've met from this podcast or from the Instagram account
who've moved here or had just reached out, it's
like this kind of stuff comes up all the time. It's
not so much to just complain about the things that are hard, but
hard things happen and leveling
your mindset and your mental state.
It's just so important. So that was my list of 10.
You know, again, it's not about eliminating stress.
It's just about building enough small anchors, routines,
awareness, relationships, resets,
things that you can actually enjoy
the adventure with instead of being
crushed by it. When maybe you have a day where
you made three mistakes, or maybe in one week
you make two really colossal mistakes that force you
to do shit you don't want to do, or pay a
lot of money or whatever it is, just
use these small anchors, whichever ones make the most sense for
you. I'm always open to an upgrade, so if you have suggestions, reach
out. But I think this is a pretty solid list of just
being mentally aware and having permission
to say, yeah, it's okay that I fucked this up
and feels like a really big fuck up, but
I'm going to deal with it, I'm going to get through it, but I'm not
going to let it crush me and completely eat
my day or my week. Moving abroad will
always have its challenges, but I think if you do stack
some of these little habits, you'll find yourself
really doing better than
you ever thought you would. In my brain, I just went
to the whole, you're not just surviving, you're thriving. I think it's played out,
but at the same time it's kind of relevant
because there's a lot of survival in a move like this.
But I think that when you find these little
things, these little routines, and you give yourself the grace to
enjoy them and know that it's
okay to enjoy stuff even if you made
a massive mistake, even if you made a massive mistake that
impacted other people, it's still
okay to just level yourself out so
that you can continue to be the best version of yourself. All right, I. I
feel like I'm in the Sophie saying land the plane
part of this episode. So I'm going to wrap it up by saying
thank you. Thanks for tuning in. Thank you for your patience. Thanks for your
understanding that we missed last week. We've been really
pushing ourselves and and working really hard
to deliver on time and get really
valuable quality information
sharing. Again, I'm hoping that it's coming across that way
that you listener are finding good shit from this to
help. I hope things resonate, but again,
really appreciate the opportunity to even do this
and to hear feedback that we've heard. And
again, thanks for your patience and letting us slip on a week and
and come back if you feel like this would help. Anybody
that you talk to about this kind of stuff, whether it's
mindset stuff, moving abroad stuff, in my case France stuff,
any and all, please share the episode. Please share the
account on Instagram or the podcast in general.
We love the community. We love continuing to build it out. So
if you know somebody who's dreaming right now in
the dreaming stage or struggling with
their own move abroad, please share this and reach out.
Because again, we love the interaction, we love the community,
we love the opportunity for friendships and this has
been super fun. So if you have any suggestions or
better examples of ways to help level mental
state, I'm all ears. Would love to do round two or something similar.
So, thank you. I love you. Have a lovely
day. Thank you so much for listening to today's episode.
Don't forget to subscribe, rate us and leave a review if you love
what you hear and you can follow us on Instagram and TikTok
@Heptons. See you guys soon.