Four years ago, my family and I made a radical decision. We gave up our previous successful life, sold our house, cars, and everything else, grabbed our family, and emigrated to Mexico. Our friends and family probably thought we were crazy at the time (maybe that’s even a little true, and it probably helps with emigrating). Still, it was the best decision of our lives, and we’ve never regretted it.
We now have a more fulfilling life, more time for ourselves and our kids, and we can focus on activities we love that bring us true fulfillment.
Midlife is certainly not the easiest time for such changes in midlife career reinvention. You’re in the middle of your career, the kids aren’t out of the house yet and need attention, and the house isn’t paid off either. But this phase is also a time for reflection. We often think about a potential realignment because, after our first busy career phase, the question of meaning comes to the forefront again. Is this really all we want to achieve? How can I not just be content, but truly fulfilled and live a life in alignment with my values?
Breaking Old Patterns
It’s often hard to break out of the daily grind and really pursue these questions to achieve meaningful change. We struggle to get the necessary distance from our familiar life. Emigrating can therefore be a transformative experience that essentially forces us into a new life. You focus your energy on the new life and increase your chances of achieving sustainable, positive change. It’s a chance to escape the rat race, rediscover yourself, and unlock your full potential through personal sovereignty strategies.
For emigrating to become an enriching and successful experience, you need certain character traits. These aren’t innate predispositions—they can be learned. In fact, I believe we’re all born with these traits, but we unlearn them over the years. Below, I’ll introduce you to the 6 key traits that help us master the challenges of emigrating and seize the opportunities. As you read, try to relate the statements and requirements to yourself. Afterward, we’ll discuss the important framework conditions to make your emigration a success.
The 6 Key Traits of Successful Expats and Digital Nomads
People who thrive in a new country and environment usually have certain character traits. But it’s not important that you identify 100% with every point below. What’s key is that you’re willing to invest in them and improve yourself.
1. Adaptability
When emigrating to a new country, you’ll inevitably encounter different cultures, behaviors, and rituals. Adapting to a new environment doesn’t mean completely adopting the new patterns or trying to copy them. Rather, it means staying authentic in your identity while approaching the new and unfamiliar with respect and understanding.
Those who stay true to themselves while showing genuine interest and appreciation for the new will receive the same respect in return. Adaptability is essential for emigrating. It helps us accept uncertainties and find creative solutions.
Many of our routines and securities fall away, but adaptable people can see such challenges as opportunities and tackle them actively. Adaptability can be trained deliberately. A first step is the conscious decision to view changes not as threats, but as chances for growth in the AI age sovereignty. Start with small decisions, and allow yourself to make mistakes. Self-reflection also helps us better understand situations and improve our behaviors.
2. Openness
No matter how well you prepare, emigrating remains a leap into the unknown. You leave your comfort zone and enter a new, unfamiliar world. Openness is an indispensable trait for turning it into a profound and enriching experience. Openness means consciously engaging with the new and throwing your prejudices, preconceived opinions, and thought models overboard.
It’s not just tolerance, but an active interest in the world and our fellow humans. When emigrating, it’s necessary to engage with the new culture, accept the differences, learn a new language, seek contact with people, and build new relationships—even if it’s uncomfortable at first.
Openness is the key to successful integration and thus the foundation for a fulfilled and enriching life in your new home.
Everyone Has Their Own Truth
We all have our own model of the world and how things work. We’ve built and internalized these perspectives over our entire lives. They’re based on our identity, experiences, and interpretations of those experiences. This applies to both positive aspects and negative ones.
The negative ones manifest as prejudices, often deeply rooted in us. To break down such prejudices, it’s important to consciously confront and question them. It helps to put yourself in other people’s situations and mindsets. What’s their model of the world? Why do they make decisions the way they do?
We all have our own truth. That doesn’t mean others’ positions are wrong—they just have a different view of things. To train our openness, it’s important to repeatedly put ourselves in new situations and learn new things.
Always try to take different perspectives. This not only expands our horizons but also improves our decisions, especially in navigating midlife career change and existential liberation.
3. Resilience
Resilience describes the ability to handle setbacks and challenges. We all naturally try to avoid mistakes and uncertainty. That’s human nature. It becomes problematic when fear of failure stops us from making decisions or taking calculated risks.
This stems from viewing our status quo as safe and wanting to maintain it forever. But that’s an illusion, as the next crisis will come sooner or later. If we’re not used to handling such situations, we panic and make wrong decisions. Resilience allows us to better manage crises, stay cool in tough moments, and remain optimistic through inner strength in bad times, knowing things will get better.
When emigrating, countless challenges arise: language barriers, bureaucratic hurdles, loneliness, and financial or professional setbacks. Resilient emigrants don’t see these as unsolvable problems—they actively seek solutions. They get support and learn from their mistakes.
That’s why emigrating is also an excellent opportunity to further train and build your own resilience, drawing on philosophical frameworks like Nietzsche’s amor fati for embracing fate in personal sovereignty. To strengthen resilience before deciding to emigrate, try these strategies and exercises:
- Self-care: Take care of yourself with enough sleep, healthy eating, exercise, and pursuing your hobbies and interests.
- Social connections: Maintain friendships, learn from others, seek support, ask for help, and engage in the community.
- Positive mindset: Be optimistic, see opportunities instead of risks, practice gratitude, use affirmations and visualization, seek solutions, and view mistakes as chances.
- Mindfulness: Focus on the moment, let go, accept things you can’t influence.
4. Self-Reliance
Our whole lives, many decisions have been made for us. The education system and common parenting philosophy in Germany don’t aim to make us self-reliant individuals. They want to make us dependent—on employers, doctors, the state, and insurance companies.
Deciding to emigrate is a big step toward self-determination, requiring courage, resolve, and self-reliance. Suddenly, you’re alone in a foreign country. Familiar structures fall away. This is crucial for our personal growth and achieving individual freedom, but it’s unfamiliar at first. We suddenly have to make our own decisions in many areas that were handled for us before.
We learn to take responsibility for our actions and be independent of external validation. This is a huge opportunity, because only then can we recognize our own needs, live our own values, and find and follow our own path toward economic liberation.
When emigrating, we need self-reliance right from the planning and preparation of the move, choosing our new home base, and communicating with family and friends. No one takes these off our hands, and there’s no certainty about the future.
But we don’t let that discourage us, because with careful consideration, the risks of emigrating aren’t higher than continuing our familiar life. The possibilities for improvement and growth, however, are immensely greater.
Active Decisions
One way to build more self-confidence and become more self-reliant is to make decisions actively. We often avoid decisions because we think that keeps us safe. We should realize that not deciding is still a decision—namely, to stand still.
That makes us passive characters in our own lives and loses us control. Even if it’s sometimes okay to stay in your current situation without seeking change, it should be a conscious decision. We should always consider different alternatives, weigh them carefully, be aware of the respective risks, and then actively make a decision.
Then, stand by your decisions and take responsibility for the consequences. It’s important to celebrate small successes and reward yourself for your courage. And even if you make a mistake once, it’s no problem. You can learn from it, adjust your decisions, and continue to develop, embracing Jung’s individuation process for midlife reinvention.
5. Curiosity
In my opinion, this is one of the most important traits. When we come into the world as children, we’re exposed to a world full of wonders. And every child has the curiosity to discover this world. Unfortunately, this trait weakens more and more over the years.
We start taking things for granted instead of seeing them as the wonders they are. If we lose too much curiosity, life becomes boring. We then seek stimulation in trivial things and replace satisfying our curiosity with cheap dopamine.
But curiosity is an irreplaceable driving force that helps us make the most of our lives.
Curiosity is the engine for innovation, creativity, and personal growth. Being curious means asking questions, questioning the given, and delighting in new knowledge and insights. When emigrating, curiosity helps us learn and appreciate the new culture and see the world with fresh eyes.
It also allows us to recognize the diversity and beauty of our surroundings and be inspired by them, tying into Watts’ philosophy for living with uncertainty in career change. To relearn our lost or at least partially unlearned curiosity, we can promote it deliberately.
Orient yourself toward children—they know how it’s done. Take trips and excursions, read a lot and especially about different topics, learn new languages and skills. Curiosity is one of the most beautiful and satisfying traits, and it’s worth cultivating.
6. Optimism
Optimism doesn’t mean everything will turn out well. Rather, it means being at peace with ourselves, no matter the external circumstances. Emigrating in midlife is a courageous step, and despite good preparation, not everything can be planned.
Will I feel comfortable in the new environment? Can I be professionally successful? Will I find new friends? Will I stay healthy? Such questions and doubts come up for everyone now and then, and of course, no one can answer them with certainty. What’s important is how we handle this uncertainty.
Optimism is a valuable trait that helps us look positively toward the future and approach challenges with confidence. Optimism is a life attitude—the certainty that things will turn out well. The certainty that we can achieve our goals, even if there are obstacles.
That doesn’t mean there won’t be lows or setbacks. But optimistic people know they’ll emerge stronger from difficult situations and that sunshine always follows rain.
Positive Thinking for Expats
When making the move abroad, it’s important to believe in the success of the new beginning, especially knowing it will be tough. A positive mindset, just like a negative one, often becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. If we believe we’ll succeed, we’ll succeed.
If we believe we’ll fail, we often do. This is because negative thoughts become negative beliefs. And those subconsciously determine our actions. A person who believes in success acts differently than someone who doesn’t. To train our optimism, it’s important to pay attention to our thoughts.
The thoughts we repeat and the stories we tell ourselves become our beliefs, our truth. In difficult situations, it’s helpful to take different perspectives. Beliefs can be changed to more positive ones—this requires active reflection on them. Notice your thoughts, and if negative views stand out, ask yourself where they come from.
What would be alternative explanations? How could I see the situation in a more positive light? This way, we can gradually become more positive people and attract more success into our lives, overcoming AI anxiety through philosophical approaches.
Making Your Dream a Reality: Success Factors for Geographic Liberation
Beyond the character traits crucial for emigrating, there are also some practical topics we should cover to increase the chances of a happy and fulfilled life in your desired country.
Financial Planning
Emigrating is often an emotional decision driven by the desire for a meaningful and better life. Especially in midlife and with a family, solid financial planning is essential. Without careful planning and a realistic assessment of your financial situation, the dream can quickly turn into a nightmare.
We can’t assume we’ll immediately earn the same income as in our previous employed life. Even if we already have our own business, there may be financial constraints in the transition phase. We also shouldn’t underestimate the costs coming our way and should definitely set aside a buffer for unplanned expenses.
Good financial planning and security is our foundation for a successful new beginning. It gives us security and peace of mind, allowing us to focus on the beautiful sides of the adventure. This way, we can realize our dreams without constantly worrying about money.
Determining the Financial Framework
For meaningful financial security, it’s necessary that your desired standard of living in the target country can be financed over a certain period, even without or with reduced income. To calculate the required cushion, proceed as follows:
- Estimate monthly cost of living: This requires understanding typical costs in the target country and your desired lifestyle.
- Consider when you can finance this lifestyle from regular income. If your emigration is linked to jumping into entrepreneurship, this usually takes 1–3 years.
- From the time and monthly costs, you can then calculate the sum you should definitely have saved before diving into the adventure.
In these estimates, always be conservative and include at least 50% as a buffer for emergencies and unforeseen events. Costs like health insurance or car repairs should also be factored in and set aside. This helps ensure we don’t have to change or even abandon our plan due to financial reasons.bbrechen müssen.
Language Skills
If you want to fully and meaningfully integrate into your new environment, it’s essential to speak the local language. Of course, daily needs and errands can be handled without language skills. However, you’ll never really arrive that way.
I know many emigrants in different countries who struggle to learn the new language. These usually have ongoing difficulties being accepted as part of society and never really feel at home. At this point, I’d also advise against expat strongholds like Playa del Carmen on Mexico’s Caribbean coast.
There, mostly foreigners from the USA, Canada, and Europe live, seeking a new home. You’ll certainly find more amenities you’re used to from home, but the massive influx of mostly affluent foreigners also leads to social problems.
Social Network
To confidently face the challenges and uncertainties in this new chapter, a strong social network is invaluable. So, start networking in your target region even before emigrating. For every region, there are various active groups on Facebook, Telegram, or WhatsApp. In these, you’ll not only find answers to most questions that arise during preparation, move, or integration—you can also make new friends right away.
Your Journey Starts Now: With Courage and the Right Mindset
Becoming an expat in midlife is more than just a change of location. It’s the chance to create a life by your own rules and align with your desires and values. It’s a conscious decision for more meaning, fulfillment, and freedom.
In this article, we’ve introduced the 6 key skills to help you on your way: adaptability, openness, resilience, self-reliance, curiosity, optimism, and courage. These traits aren’t innate talents—they can and should be deliberately developed to make your emigration experience as successful as possible.
We’ve also looked at the most important preparation measures that decide the success or failure of your new beginning. Emigration isn’t an easy path, but it’s definitely enriching. So, what are you waiting for? Emigrating starts with a conscious decision, followed by careful planning.
Need Support on Your Journey?
The Small Reset offers individual consulting services to accompany you every step of your emigration. From planning to implementation to integration—we’re here with advice and action.
Learn more about our mentoring offers for Expat Readiness & Relocation Strategy or book a free Strategy Session to plan your new dream life abroad.
This article was translated from the german original.
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