Finding
Your Perfect Place
Relocation
is a great American tradition. While our grandparents may have crossed
the ocean, we continue to cross the country, moving from place to place
at an enormous rate. When corporations decide to move an employee, there
is often little choice in the matter.
If you are
self-employed, moving may simply be a decision to find a more congenial
environment in which to build world headquarters. Mobility and freedom
are, after all, two of the great rewards in working independently. Selecting
your perfect place is much easier if you are clear about your goals and
are looking for the best place to support those goals.
Minneapolis
is the sixth place that I've lived in my adult life and the one that has
proved the most nurturing for me. It was also more consciously chosen
than the other places where I had lived. Before you pick a specific city
or town to hang your hat, identify your own criteria. What, exactly, do
you want and need? My own list included access to good theater, a major
airport and respectable libraries. I also considered things like the crime
rate and a stable economy. Even though I envisioned a business that would
not be local in scope, I wanted to be surrounded by people who valued
individual initiative. Although I knew only a handful of people in this
part of the world, I was not influenced by choosing a place with ready-made
relationships. Weather, a popular consideration, was not on my list.
Once you've got a general idea of what you'd like to have your hometown
include, you can get more information by checking one of the numerous
books such as
Places
Rated Almanac for more details. Increasingly, magazines are doing
annual issues evaluating towns and cities. One of the best known is the
yearly rating by Money magazine, but even the Utne Reader
and Home Office Computing have offered their opinions about best
places. Naturally, each magazine has very different criteria.
If you narrow
your search to several possible locations, you can get a better sense
of each of them by subscribing to the local newspaper for a month or two.
If your destination is a large city, your library may carry the city's
newspaper. Spend some time studying what issues seem important to the
community, read the classified ads, see if the recreational interests
you have are available. You can also learn a great deal about a strange
town by reading the Yellow Pages of their phone book. A large library
or your local phone company may have directories you can consult.
Write to the Chamber of Commerce, too, and ask for any materials they
have on local demographics. Many Chambers also publish a directory of
organizations, which can be helpful in determining if you'll find kindred
spirits once you arrive.
If you're planning a move to a place you've only heard about, a trial
run can help you make a wiser decision. You might arrange a short-term
home exchange or rent a furnished apartment for a month or two so you
can get a better sense of what living there would be like. In the long
run, such an expenditure can be money well spent. You may find that the
place doesn't suit you at all. Or if it is just right, you'll have a home
base to work from while you're making permanent arrangements.
Of course,
money is a consideration in making any move. This is less of an issue
if you've gained entrepreneurial experience and confidence and have a
plan for relocating your business. Your research will have given you ideas
about opportunities to pursue in your new locale or you may be able to
keep old clients and customers and serve them from a distance. Probably,
however, you will want a nest egg of some sort to get you through the
transition. Many folks who are making major lifestyle changes see the
opportunity of moving as a symbolic fresh start and are comfortable with
liquidating many of their possessions. Downshifting may be accompanied
by scaling back materially, at least for a while. Uncluttering your life
can help you gain a new perspective.
Most of the people I've talked to who have lived in several diverse locations
share my enthusiasm for the growth that comes with each change of scenery.
Even when moves turned out less happily than expected, most are quick
to add that even a wrong move had benefits which they would not have found
any other way.
"It is
a good and safe rule," wrote John Ruskin many years ago, "to
sojourn in every place as if you meant to spend your life there, never
omitting an opportunity of doing a kindness or speaking a true word or
making a friend." That may be the best advice of all for turning
a new town into your perfect place.
There's
more where this came from.
Order Winning Ways now!
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