Highlights
- Moving to a place where you know nobody can be a rather intimidating experience.
- Arming yourself with patience is key but it may not be enough to feel OK again.
- Use these 6 tips to survive the initial shock and jump-start your post-relocation adaptation when moving to an unfamiliar place.
Every move to a completely new and unfamiliar place where you don’t know anyone, and no one knows you, can be a rather intimidating experience.
It’s a full step out of your comfort zone, your familiar surroundings, your dear family and close friends, your way of doing things, and the way you physically and emotionally react to the set patterns your daily routine follows.
As daunting as it may seem at first, it takes nothing more than time and effort to adequately adjust to the new environment after the relocation.
Some people handle the adaptation process admirably – they hop on the fast lane of making new friends, engage in tons of exciting activities, and never quite seem to let any depressing thoughts creep into their heads or feel any pangs of loneliness and nostalgia. For them, every new place is a world of opportunities to embark on fresh adventures.
On the other hand, other people have a much harder time coming out of their shells and consequently getting accustomed to their unknown surroundings. If you consider yourself such a person, here are a few great survival moves you can undertake when you relocate to a place where you don’t know anyone.
1. Say Hi to your neighbors
Introducing yourself to your new neighbors is usually the first and arguably one of the most important steps of your post-move acclimatization process.
Go knock on their doors, say Hi, and introduce yourself for no particular reason.
If you feel uneasy doing it, borrowing something or getting some information about the neighborhood is a good excuse to meet the folks next door.
Keep in mind that when you find yourself in a city where everyone is a total stranger to you, befriending your neighbors (or at least trying to) is the smartest thing you can do under the circumstances. Why?
Because they know the way things work in the micro-world you’re now calling your home. And, unlike the majority of strangers you will meet in the streets of your new city, your neighbors will most likely gladly help you with whatever they can and provide you with some invaluable insider tips to jump-start your adaptation.
In a way, it’s like a student-teacher relationship – and who hasn’t enjoyed the process of teaching?
Just like giving somebody a tour around someone’s own house or showing the ropes to a new coworker, it’s this feeling of pure pride, this sense of belongingness to a tiny place in the vast universe that makes most people feel good about themselves.
In other words, your immediate neighbors are the fearsome guards who keep the precious knowledge locked up in a treasure chest.
Luckily for you, you’re holding the skeleton key in your inexperienced hands and all you have to do is summon your courage to go to them, kindly unlock that chest, and get the information you need and seek in the beginning.
In most cases, you won’t even have to fight for that knowledge!
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