My family and myself just moved into a house from a two bedroom apartment. This is definitely an upgrade and we're super happy. That said, moving takes a lot out of you. It's no wonder I haven't had an opportunity to blog.
Regardless, I'd like to share a few thoughts on moving. This blog will cover the first and I'll follow it up with a couple more blogs in the coming days. The three thoughts are:
Considering a move
Looking for a new home
The actual move
Let's look at the first:
Considering a move
Everyone wants to live in their dream home in their dream neighborhood in their dream city in their dream country. Yet, how many of us consider the possibility of actually achieving such a dream status, at any of those four levels?
This begs the question we must ask ourselves: Are we currently living in that dream house / neighborhood / city / country?
The above, of course, is embedded in an assumption -- that these are the determining factors. There are other determining factors for sure. We move for jobs, move for love (I did!), move for financial reasons, move for family, etc. However, those reasons are mostly outside of one's consideration. What I mean is, if you're moving for, say, to be near family, then you're not considering the move as a preference, the move is something which you feel is a necessity. And, in a similar way, if you are moving from your current city to be near family in another city, that other city would then be your dream city; your dream is to live near family more so than to be around some specific location.
All that set aside, I'm basically coming from an angle of leveling up. As I said, my family and I (my pregnant wife, my teenage stepdaughter, and myself) were living in a two bedroom apartment and we desired more space. We could have stayed in that two bedroom apartment forever and made it work, but we wanted more space. We made the decision to pursue a house.
Here's the thing: considering a move is easy. It doesn't take anything to wish to live in a better environment. But are we serious about it? Getting serious about it pushes us outside of our comfort zone and exposes us to things we don't want to admit about ourselves, mainly our penchant for the status quo. In addition, we also may realize that we have not fully fleshed out our desires. Too many of us don't like where we are at in life but don't have a vision as to where we want to be. That can be difficult to envision as we are surrounded by our current existence.
You may already be living where you want to be. If so, awesome! If not, I challenge you to look at your life and environment objectively and ask that tough question, "If I could live in my dream house / neighborhood / city / country?" This will make us ask ourselves which of the above matters most (e.g., is living in a dream neighborhood more important than living in a dream house?).
This should be a fun exercise but, be warned, if you get serious about it, you may find yourself in the next step (which I'll go over another post). And if you start the process, you may just find yourself movin' on up!