Living abroad could be stressful... 3 tips for keeping your mind healthy

Living abroad could be pretty stressful, to say the least. You live away from your family and friends, your language, your favorite comfort food and you throw yourself into a different culture. 

There are many tips and tricks that people might give you in order to stay healthy (physically as well as mentally), relaxed, and relatively calm. They usually consist of eating well, sleeping, doing physical exercise, have the courage to talk to people and make friends that you can rely on, go on a trip once in a while, etc. They are all true and these tips are helpful to a certain extent but not in a definitive way.

I'm an introvert workaholic who cannot limit myself from overworking. I'd rather stay home and read a book (or work!) than go out to have a drink with friends. I have a hard time asking people for help because I don't want to disturb others and don't want my fellow students to think that I'm always profiting from them, without being able to give anything back. A difficult person as I am, I came up with 3 ways to keep myself sane (for now at least).

1. Make yourself useful to others.
When you are in a foreign land and you are not fluent in the local language, you feel very vulnerable. You think that you have nothing you can do right and it's always you that has to ask for help. This will hurt your self-esteem significantly whether you realize it or not. 
So what can you do? One way is to put yourself in a position of helping people. If there are people who want to learn your native language, you can teach them. You can also participate in a linguistic tandem, in which you teach each other to learn your own native language. 
Personally, I teach Japanese to a high school student who is learning it in school as a private tutor. I help her revise and put into practice what she had learned in textbooks and classes. That allows me to earn extra pocket money, too.

2. Have one cozy hiding place outside your home.
When you are busy, it's easy to fall into habits and routines. I'm not saying that the routines are bad or useless because they often are, but I'm saying that you need to get away from your organized (or not so organized) life one in a while. I recommend a quiet place, a cafe, a library, a bar (not sure a bar is a quiet place...but anyways)... And also, I recommend you to go there regularly so that people there will sort of recognize you and talk to you in a non-intrusive way.

For example, I have a favorite café 15 minutes away on a bus from my apartment. It is not in my usual way to go, anywhere as a matter of fact, but I go there once in a couple weeks to have a cup of coffee. Because I go there often and not during the busy hours or days of the week, the people working there recognize me and I get to talk a little bit with them. Usually, I read a book or study there. It's my own hiding place that I can recharge myself.

By the way, I have their loyalty card I made when it opened for the first time. It was supposed to be for a year but every time I go there and tell them that my card is expired and wish to get a new one (that costs about 2 euros, if I remember it correctly) they say "don't worry about it!" then serve me with a loyalty price. I'm sure you're not going to read this, but thanks!

3. Take a day off: cancel engagements, skip classes.
It's easier said than done, I know. How many hours or how many days would it take to catch up to what you have missed in a day? But, in fact, the world will not come to an end if you rest for a day and watch Netflix in your bed all day long, if it's for only a day, of course. 

A perfectionist and do-it-all person, like me, has a hard time being naughty enough to skip school. But you need it sometimes.

This is actually what my American host mother allow me to do when I did a one-year exchange in high school. She let me take a day off once a month, no questions asked. I said I'd take a day off from school and she'd call the school that I'd be absent. 

You might think that not being in a class or canceling on an engagement will make an unrepairable hole into your life and the earth would split in half... but it wouldn't. It's okay to have an off-time all to yourself.

Tomorrow will be a whole new day.

#lawschool #lawstudent #studyabroad #lifeabroad