“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.” – Mark Twain

Those words are enough of a reason to pack up and see the world or at least live in another country for a time. To get out of your comfort zone is one of the most exciting and effective ways to grow as a person and learn lessons you never knew you needed to learn.

In this article, I will go over several reasons you should live as expatriates at least once in your life.

1 – Become more open minded

Seeing other cultures first hand and being the outsider yourself is the first big step in opening your mind.

When your perspective changes from learning about how other people think and understand the reasons they do things the way they do, your mind is expanded rather than just open.

If you visit a place as a tourist, you can get an inkling or a tease about what makes people tick. Yet, the only way to really get a deep understanding is to live with others for a long period of time. 

2 – Become independent

There are so many movies and books about women getting out of bad relationships and healing by traveling or moving abroad. The constant in these stories is that there was a codependency and when it was over, the parties were not clear who they were anymore.

Living in another country is the perfect antidote to being dependent on other people or situations.

When you live abroad in another culture, you have to find a way to solve problems on your own. When you are able to do this, you quickly become independent. And this lasts for quite some time. If you decide to move back to your home country, you will be a far more independent person.

3 – Global network

Imagine having friends all over the world. Real friends, not people you know from the internet. 

You can travel and have people you know to show you around or to have a local experience. 

Even getting a job could be a possibility when you know people internationally. 

4 – Learn another language

Even if the language you end up learning is not particularly useful outside the country it is spoken, you will get a lot of benefits from learning it. Learning another language helps you in so many other ways.

Your brain becomes sharper as it is like using a muscle that used to get neglected. It can also improve your memory and help you with your decision making. When you speak two languages, you also improve your native language. You may fall into bad habits linguistically that you don’t even realize until you experience a second language. 

Just having the skill of learning another language by immersion is probably the best reason to live abroad.