There comes a time in life where you are forced to pack-up your bags and start fresh somewhere else. This may be because termites have taken over your home and forced you out the door, this might be the result of a relationship that ended very poorly or this could be because your job has told you they need your leadership and wisdom in Siberia. It happens to all of us at some point. Or sometimes people just stay in one place forever in which case this doesn’t apply to them at all. Either way, having a Fear of Relocating can be a scary thing.
What Does Relocating for Work Mean?
An excellent question. You see, the word ‘relocating’ means to move from one place to another while the word ‘job’ means something you do to earn money to not end up living on the street. A job is something you do in order to avoid spending your days fighting off raccoons for leftover garbage while finding enough money to purchase a mobile phone with unlimited data so you can continue reading posts like this one. Yes, Things I Fear just found itself in the same sentence as raccoon garbage. In this context, relocating for a job could mean choosing to go to a different city to start a new opportunity or being told by your employer you will be deported from your current office to begin work miles away from your friends and family.
If you’ve been told you need to pack up your desk and leave the office not because you’re fired but because you’re being shipped off to the new office on the other side of the country, you’ve been relocated. Many pre-screenings for jobs ask the question ‘would you be open to relocating for work?’ and everyone just answers ‘yes’ because it’s easier to lie in an interview than be honest. You never expect that your answer to one question or inattention to fine print will one day come back to haunt you. The alternative to relocating for work is relocating for home which is when you decide this here town ain’t big enough for the both of ya so you leave.
How to Relocate Your Fear of Relocating
Once you’ve gotten over the mental hurdle of packing up your entire life because someone else told you to do it, it’s easy to overcome your Fear of Relocating. Of course part of overcoming the Fear is having the natural ability to be receptive to change, enjoy new challenges like new cuisine or dealing with a new transit system and live your life free of planting any long-term roots. Relocation often requires you to essentially punt on the life you’ve made for yourself and try to recreate it without missing a day of work or soccer practice. Hopefully you have a supporting cast of family and friends who will either encourage your decision to abandon them or at least tag you in social media posts occasionally with captions like “miss you”, “wish you were here” or “did you remember to pack your cat?”
