8 Ways Living Abroad Changes You (2024)

Not only can living abroad help you further your career prospects or learn a new language, but it can also fundamentally change who you are as a person. By fully immersing yourself in a new way of life and detaching yourself from your routine, you are forced to discover and experience new things about your surroundings and yourself.

Become Miss Independent

You’ll never truly understand what it means to be alone until your entire support system is on the other side of the world. By moving abroad on your own, you are forced to figure things out by yourself and make your own decisions. Of course you can always pick up a phone and call your mom or best friend at home, but at the end of the day, you have to live your new life abroad in your own way.

As political theorist Hannah Arendt put it, “Loving life is easy when you are abroad. Where no one knows you and you hold your life in your hands all alone, you are more a master of yourself than at any other time.”

A good way to build a support system from scratch is joining the social network InterNations, which can help you meet new people, find interesting things to do, and explore the new city you’re now living in.

Discover your own strength

You will never know how strong you are until you reach your breaking point. Life abroad can be very stressful and you will be faced with unforeseen challenges, but you will realize you can overcome these bumps in the road. Whether you doubted if you could be away from your partner for that long, or felt like you would never be able to master those tricky verb tenses, you will find that you are able to withstand and accomplish more because you pushed yourself by living abroad.

Reevaluate your worldview

The sense of feeling like a foreigner will allow you to open your mind to new things, and re-define your comfort zone.

“When I was abroad, I was confronted with stereotypes and prejudices about Germans. This experience made me aware that my view of the world is heavily influenced by my origins/background. I have learnt to question what I had always considered as “matters of fact”; experiencing other cultures and perspectives enabled me to broaden my horizons,” says German native Christa Fellner.

You may not even be aware of the impact that where you are from has had on how you see and experience things until a new outlook is thrust upon you. You also may not notice how much this has changed until you return home and realize that you view the world through a slightly different lens than those around you.

Find out who your real friends are

It is not easy to stay in touch with everyone back home when you live abroad. You will soon realize who will be there when you want to share your big accomplishment at work, who doesn’t mind that you drunk texted them from the club because your boyfriend broke up with you, and who will be waiting at the airport with a big welcome sign when you visit home. Friendships change while you are abroad, but ultimately this will show you who you can count on, even when it isn’t convenient for them.

It works the other way as well. The distance makes maintaining friendships much harder and you will soon come to realize who is worth the effort. It sounds harsh, but the reality is that people grow apart and balancing your new friendships with those back at home will take some prioritizing on your part.

Develop tolerance and empathy

It’s very easy to idealize another country and its culture. Be wary of your assumptions and stereotypes when you go abroad because what you find may surprise you!

Living abroad will open your eyes to a whole new world and give you a better insight into the lives of others. This will give you a better understanding about how people from another walk of life communicate, what their motives are, and how they think. As a result, you will become more tolerant to different thoughts and opinions in general, and have an easier time putting yourself in someone else’s shoes.

“I learnt what it feels like to be foreigner in a new country. There were situations where I felt helpless, made mistakes or got lost — all things that usually don’t happen to you in your familiar environment. That made me feel more empathic for the difficulties people who are new to Germany are experiencing here. Everyone’s a foreigner somewhere and I think it’s important to help each other out.” — Sandra Gemsjäger

Expect the unexpected

By living abroad, you will learn to expect the unexpected. This will help build your confidence so when you are faced with unexpected challenges, you know that you are capable of tackling them head on. You won’t find yourself caught off guard as easily after your adventures in a foreign land.

Be flexible and relax

Sometimes things don’t go according to plan, especially when you are getting used to living in a new culture. By living abroad, you may learn this the hard way, but in the end you will likely become more flexible and able to go with the flow.

Appreciate the little things

You don’t know a good thing until it’s gone. You’ll find that the things you miss most from home are things you never expected, such as a comfort food or your favorite spot in the park. While you miss these little things from home, remember that when you return, you will also miss the little things from abroad so it’s best to take it all in while you can.

Victoria Borisch is originally from the great state of Wisconsin, but she has spent the past three years exploring the untamed beauty of the Republic of Georgia, becoming a whisky drinker in Scotland, practicing a new language in Russia, eating her weight’s worth of Langos in Hungary and enjoying the beer gardens in Germany. She is currently based in Munich and works in the public relations department at InterNations.