No matter how well you plan out every detail of your move, the house moving process is notorious for being unpredictable and sometimes the whole relocation experience can prove to be miserable, disappointing, and even disastrous.
But believe it or not, things may get much worse after the move if your initial expectations clash with the harsh reality in a way you didn’t anticipate prior to the move. The thing is that you could start to regret moving to a new city.
There’s a huge difference between being unpleasantly surprised by the post-move reality and feeling regret about the move in the first place. Ultimately, the feeling of regret is one of the worst things that can happen to you after the move simply because it’s likely to trouble and upset you every single day until you manage to find a good solution.
The feeling of regret when moving house is usually unmistakable and it can be really difficult to deal with the bitter disappointment and even suppressed anger at yourself when you realize that you’ve made a mistake. Yes, dealing with regret can be a serious challenge that you must overcome quickly in order to restore your emotional balance.
What to do when you regret moving? Don’t give up without a fight!
Here are 5 things you should do when you regret moving.
1. Figure out why you regret the move
The very first thing you should do when you start to feel sorry that you’ve moved house is to try to figure out why your regret your decision to relocate.
Sometimes answering the why question will show you the possible solution to the problem itself. Surely there must be a reason for the regret, or maybe even several reasons for you to feel the way you do. Therefore, your special mission should be to locate the source of the regret in order to remedy the situation.
So, why do you regret moving to a new place?
You miss your friends. One of the most common reasons to regret moving is the fact that you had to leave your good friends behind and now you feel like a stranger in a strange place, surrounded by complete strangers too. You already miss your pals terribly and you wish you hadn’t had to move away from them.
You miss your old home. Moving into a new, unfamiliar place can cause an instant feeling of regret, especially when you still love your old home. It’s normal to feel uncomfortable and unwelcome when you walk into the new house or apartment, but that feeling of uneasiness may not go away for a long time and could even grow stronger as weeks pass by.
You hate the new city or town. You may happen to regret moving to a small town, especially when you come from a big city. Feeling stuck in a place where nothing ever happens? Moving to a big city from a small town can also lead to feelings of regret, particularly when you feel lost in an endless sea of unfriendly faces.
You hate your new job. The new job you start in the destination city or town may not be what you thought it would be before the move. The nature of the job aside, you may also come to dislike most or even all of your new work colleagues as well.
You can’t stand the climate. Barely surviving one harsh winter is enough to make you really sorry that you have left your warm and sunny state. Or you just don’t see how you’re going to make through another sweltering Arizona summer when you’ve just moved from up north.
Answer the why question and you do have a chance of working out a good solution to get rid of that constant feeling of regret after moving.
2. Focus on the positives
Let there be no regrets.
After the move is complete, some things may not be exactly as you pictured them prior to the move. As a result, you’re likely to feel disappointed, sad, and maybe even miserable, strongly regretting your decision to move house.
Now, to feel better about the whole relocation, you have to try to change the way you see things around you. Changing your overall perspective can be the key to shaking off any lingering regrets in order to feel alright once more.
But how do you change your post-move outlook when things are just not what you thought they would be? It’s easier than you think: focus on what you’re gaining and NOT on what you’ve lost as a result of the move.
Here’s what you should do: make a list of all the things you will win thanks to the house move and all the things you will lose due to the relocation. It can’t be all that bad, can it?
Here’s what the great Alexander Graham Bell said once,
“When one door closes, another door opens. But we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us.”
And when you’re ready with the list of the pluses and minuses of moving house in your particular case, then all you have to do is focus on the positives in order to stop regretting moving away from home.
Cherish the unique opportunities that the new place will give you – for example, you will meet and hopefully befriend some great people whom you would have never met if you hadn’t moved. You will also experience some amazing things that the house move had made possible for you.
Instead of dwelling in past, you should keep your gaze fixed on the future. And no regrets, remember?
Checklist for Moving to a New City
3. Keep in touch with your good friends
Certain regrets are pretty much unavoidable, especially immediately after the move is over. You’ll find yourself in a strange, unfamiliar environment so it’s fairly easy to feel sad and nostalgic about what you’ve just lost due to the house move.
And of course, the thing that you’re likely to regret the most after moving away is the fact that your best friends are no longer around you and you can’t hang around with them whenever you feel like it. You are here and your buddies are over there, and that’s just not fair no matter how you look at it.
Whether you had a choice not to move away is irrelevant – what’s relevant at the moment is to make the most of the situation you’re in right now. You can’t undo what’s already done (or can’t you?), so what you can do is try your best to keep in touch with your good friends regardless of the distance that separates you.
Set a day and time when you and your best friends can talk to each other – either on the phone or on the Internet via a video conferencing program such as Viber, Skype, Facebook Messenger, etc. How often you communicate with your pals will depend on various factors such as your daily schedule, their daily schedule, and whether or not you have anything interesting to talk about. There aren’t any communication rules here – you can choose to hear their voices every single day or once a week.
Consider exchanging real letters and/or postcards with the friends you had to leave behind. This is an excellent way to stay in touch, giving yourself more time between the letters or the postcards to think of new and exciting things to share with the people who are the closest to you.
Invite your best friends to visit you in the new place whenever it’s a good time for both of you. Or make concrete plans to go back to the old place to see them again. This way, the mere thought of spending a day or two with your good pals should make the abrupt change much more bearable for you and should also help you stop regretting your decision to move away.
And while it’s a great idea to keep the link with your past, remember that the only way forward is to make new friends whenever a good opportunity to do so comes around.
10 Essential Things to Do After Moving
4. Turn the unfamiliar place into a familiar one
The only way to get to like the new place is to be brave enough to explore it.
One of the major reasons for regretting a move is that you’ve replaced familiarity with unfamiliarity and comfort with discomfort. You just moved into a strange place where most people may seem cold and welcoming while the surroundings feel foreign and even menacing at times.
During those first few weeks and even months, you’re very likely to wish to go back to where things were familiar, people seemed to be not so distant, and everything just made sense to you. However, going back may not be an option at all so you’re going to have to find a way to cope with the strong sense of nostalgia in order to get rid of the regret of moving.
In fact, there are a couple of things you can do to improve the situation: 1) make the current place feel more like home, and 2) get to know the town or city better to shake off that distressing feeling of strangeness and unfamiliarity.
Consider decorating the new place in such a way as to make it cozier and comfier to live in. Arrange the furniture pieces exactly the way they were in your old home, or at least close enough. The idea is to speed up the process of warming up to the new house or apartment so that you get to feel at home there. In most cases, surrounding yourself with familiar stuff – stuff that you love – will definitely help.
Explore the new city, town, or village in order to get to know the area better. In fact, discovering the charms of the new place is a proven way to stop feeling sorry that you’ve moved in the first place. Each area in the country will offer something different, something unique, so it’s up to you to discover the charms of your destination and, little by little, to get to feel welcome and accepted there.
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5. Let time heal your regrets
If you can’t seem to get rid of that awful feeling of regret after moving no matter what you do, then you should try one more thing that should work great and that’s to give yourself more time.
They say that time heals all wounds, so you should also give yourself more time to acclimate to the new environment, more time to form new friendships, and more time to feel the new house or apartment as your own home. You just have to believe that adaptation is the key to feeling alright again as it that’s often the case.
Good things happen to those who wait… and hopefully, time will help you to stop feeling sorry that you’ve moved. However, things don’t always work out well in the end, so it’s possible that you don’t find a way out of the constant regrets about your decision to move. Your situation can become even more complicated if you happen to be dealing with relocation depression due to moving.
How to Overcome Relocation Depression After Moving
If you’ve tried everything and nothing works for you… then you may not have other choice but to move again. Here’s the thing: you can either move back to the place you left (when nostalgia proves to be too overwhelming for you) or you can choose to move to a brand-new place in the hope of finding that elusive sense of happiness that you’ve lost along the way somehow.
And if another move is just around the corner, you’re not likely to have the desire or the energy to organize yet another move all by yourself. So, it’s time to let experienced professionalс handle your next move.
Get a free quote from the best cross-country movers in your area to start your journey to a place with no regrets.
The post 5 Things to Do When You Regret Moving appeared first on The Moving Blog.
