3 Reasons to consider leaving your hometown

Introduction to leaving your hometown

0:01 Hey you guys, I just wanted to join you today and share three reasons why I think you should consider leaving your hometown. It's a big decision for a lot of people because here in the United States, I think we tend to be a somewhat conservative country, and that tends to lead to people relying on their families a lot. I don't think it's as community-oriented as what I've learned about some other countries.

Leaving old relationships behind

0:30 So basically, yeah, let's get into it. The first reason that I think that it's worthwhile to leave your hometown is leaving old relationships behind. A lot of us, you know, we're coming of age, and the main connections we have are people we've always known. For some people, these people can be really positive; you're surrounded by leaders in your community, people that helped set ethical standards. They provided a sort of role model experience or a mentorship type of experience where you can see they might not be doing exactly what you want to do, but they're able to provide you a sort of template.

1:21 But for me, growing up in my community, most of the people that I was exposed to were not positive influences. A lot of the people that I grew up around had drug and alcohol problems. They tended to spend their weekends and free time drinking, doing drugs, engaging with sort of trash content, things like Jerry Springer. These things can distract you from your problems, and for some people, their problems are so extreme. In my case, I can attest to that; there were times, many times, where I just wanted to get into a video game and totally disconnect from my life.

2:10 I recognize that a lot of people were doing the best they knew how, but I don't think it's an excuse to go down that path. When you can recognize who's contributing to and enriching your life and who's not, you may find that a lot of the longest relationships in your life can actually be some of the least productive and most harmful. I learned this the hard way, realizing some of the most important adults in my life actually did not have their lives together, whether it be financial struggle or interpersonal struggle. They had some pretty glaring flaws that I felt like they had opportunities to correct and chose not to.

Meeting new people and ideas

2:53 When I visited California, Colorado, and other states, I started to meet people that place higher importance, like I do, on education, personal development, challenging yourself, and exploring ideas you don't agree with. This was a big one in my area in Tennessee, as I felt like people were dogmatic. If not about politics, they were didactic about religion or dogmatic about something. They had some black and white type of philosophy and didn't feel like there was any gray area or opportunities to learn from people that felt differently from them.

3:40 I don't feel like that's the case in other parts of the country. Now, there may be areas in your area or the country where you grew up where you feel there are other problems, and that's okay too. I think that's one of the beautiful things about living in the United States is that we have the opportunity to check out different geographical areas, whether it be the West, the East, the Midwest, the South, even Hawaii and Alaska, which provide unique experiences that you don't have to get a passport for.

Planning your desired lifestyle

4:12 So, these are things to think about. What kind of lifestyle do you want to build? A lot of people, I think, maybe get stuck in the day-to-day and struggle with the planning aspect of things. If they had a better picture of what they were aiming for, it might be easier to accrue the finances, relationships, or skill sets to obtain more of what they actually want.

4:38 Moving along from bad memories is something that you can't really change. A lot of people say you can't change the past, and I think one of the things we don't connect to that is the memories and habits built into the past. For me, I had a pretty tragic time growing up. I lost my mom when I was 8 years old, and my dad died when I was 11. I didn't really know my dad that well; I was actually being raised by my grandmother after my mom passed away.

5:05 On a somewhat regular basis, I would find myself inevitably driving by one of the old houses that I grew up in and kind of being taken back to some of these super tragic situations. It was really triggering to me to have these types of experiences and to sort of feel like I was just stuck repeating the same sorts of experiences over and over again because I'd take that anger, that sadness, and bring it into my own interpersonal relationships. It was a vicious cycle where I felt like I was just reliving my past over and over again.

5:42 Another thing is, I got into several different car accidents throughout my youth. Because it's a place where you can't live without a car, I just felt angry all the time. I was angry from being reminded of all I'm stuck in traffic. When I grew up, there weren't as many people in Tennessee, so it was bad memories compounded by the fact that people come into the area looking for success. It's just hard to integrate your past experiences with the new experiences of incoming residents. I just felt like my culture did not really mesh as well in Tennessee as some of the other people.

Starting a fresh life and education

6:30 A third reason is to start a fresh life. I've talked about leaving old relationships behind and leaving bad memories behind. The great thing about living in California for me is that nobody knows my past. It's an opportunity to realize the tragedies I've experienced without people just feeling sorry for me. I can actually be judged based on the merit of my experience rather than, say, the fact that I was arrested for marijuana when I was 18. These things sort of stuck with me in Tennessee; I knew that it would always be something that would come up on a background check or something I needed to explain to employers.

7:08 I'd regularly get harassed by the police, stopped for no reason every other month. I didn't get a traffic violation until I was 25, but I got used to getting pulled over in Tennessee 6, 8, 10 times a year for made-up, pretend violations. They wouldn't take me because they realized I would probably follow up and go to court to prove my innocence, and that was really repetitive and annoying.

7:37 The great thing about California is they really value education. In Tennessee, I had high school teachers that would regularly try to dismiss evolution and other integral parts of science that serve as a foundation to understand other sciences. That cripples students in Tennessee from having an educational advantage. We often talk about how great education in the United States is, but I think we have to add a caveat that it's often private education or living in nice areas. The majority of people not living in educated areas suffer from this anti-science, anti-intellectual mentality.

8:25 In my school, it was often these athletics departments that got the majority of the funding, which is frankly unrealistic for most students. Most students are not going to be star athletes; they're more likely to harm their bodies. It would be a better idea to steer people toward developing a technical skill, working with their hands, or developing a career in finance or computer science. These two things are probably going to be around for a lot longer in comparison to just sports in general.

9:13 Sports will be around, but it's fairly obvious there's a higher demand for top programmers, web developers, software engineers, and machine learning experts than quarterbacks and running backs.

Conclusion and future content

9:33 But really, I just wanted to talk about these three reasons why you should leave your hometown. I don't think it's discussed enough. There's sort of a divide: people who want to leave get out as soon as possible, like me, and people who want to stay, they stay and make life-changing decisions that are not easily reversed, like having children or getting into debt for a large home. If you watch this video, it might give you some tips on how to navigate or what to think about when it comes to leaving your area.

10:03 I'll do another video talking about reasons you should stay in your hometown because I don't think it's for everybody to leave their area. I think a lot of people could benefit from it, but I also think there are people that leave their hometown and it negatively impacts their life because they weren't really prepared. If you like this video and my content, give me a thumbs up, hit the subscribe button. I want to continue to make content like this, mixing it up. Some will have editing, some won't. Let me know in the comments if you have a preference.

10:36 Let me know in the comments. Thank you for watching. I'm Alex Conway.