From the outside, it seems that I have a perfect lifestyle for my age — I am 27 now.

I rent a flat in a residential park with a balcony and a great view of a tranquil brook. I have an awesome car that is parked in a garage underneath our residential park.

I work in sales at a tech company with an amazing community, a perfect office location, and exciting projects. I earn good money.

I also have great friends who are supportive and with some of them, I can have intellectual and deep conversations.

I have a good family with loving siblings and the greatest mom I can have with lots of love and care and who has always been supporting me beyond her capabilities.

Yet*, many times I feel that I am not in the right place.* I have especially been feeling this in the past months.

Those days, I believe that I should live somewhere else but in my hometown, Budapest.

On many days, I have a deep aversion to people I see in the supermarket, on the bus, or on the streets. I see nothing but neglected, depressed, frustrated, obese, and in general, unpleasant people.

And every time I see such people, I feel like I should not be seeing this every morning and every afternoon of my days.

Whenever I am in Southern or Western Europe, in a place like Vienna or Barcelona, I feel different energy from regular people.

More positivity, more self-care, more sophistication, more optimism, less frustration, and so on.

And hence, I get frustrated — why cannot I see such people on the streets every day? Why do I have to see those frustrated and unpleasant people every day I am downtown?

And I let this experience turn into frustration and an urge to escape.

Viktor E. Frankl said the following:

“Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”

Well, nowadays, I’m just getting to the tangible realization that I have not been utilizing this space between stimulus and response.

My rental agreement expires in August, so I started brainstorming on whether I should prolong the rent or move out.

I had some exciting plans in case I would move out: I would spend a few weeks in the summer traveling around Greece by my car, working remotely on weekdays, and enjoying the weekends.

In the Fall, I would spend one week in Budapest, working in the office and crashing at my brother’s place. The next week I would be heading somewhere in Europe, doing my work.

This did sound like a fascinating plan. Yet, my gut feeling intervened.

I felt some kind of anxiety as I was doing that brainstorming. I felt that I would lose more than I gained.

After a few days, and some discussions with my friends and family, I had some watershed moments. Firstly, thanks to a scene from the Passengers — I came across on Instagram — in which the bartender says the following:

“You can’t get so hung up on where you’d rather be that you forget to make the most of where you are. Gotta take a break from worrying about what you can’t control. You gotta live a little.”

A day later, one of my favorite bloggers, Jack Raines posted another fascinating post on his blog Young Money with the title Putting Success on a Pedestal.

Jack started his post with a quote from Seneca who wrote the following to Lucilius:

“Are you surprised, as if it were a novelty, that after such long travel and so many changes of scene you have not been able to shake off the gloom and heaviness of your mind? You need a change of soul rather than a change of climate…”

“You need a change of soul rather than a change of climate…”

Well, this is certainly what I need to do — said it to myself.

So how should I proceed? As a starter, I should stop spending hours scrolling through apartment rental listing ads. I need to fully appreciate the living environment I have now and the fact that I can afford such an amazing and cozy flat in a nice area.

Second of all, I need to work on my soul, my inner peace, and my intellectuality. I did complain about the people I see every day in the city. Instead of getting frustrated by that experience, I need to engage with inspiring people — online and offline as well.

That’s one of the reasons I’m writing here now as I hope that such a writing habit will lead me to meet some inspiring minds. Also, I need to spend more time reading and growing my knowledge on stuff I passionately care about — such as space exploration.

And lastly, I do need to “live a little”. I need to enjoy and appreciate my days more deeply and pursue some of my healthy desires — such as enjoying the perks of the area I live in (i.e. thermal spa, running paths) and including the one about going on a road trip to Greece in the summer.

That’s definitely something that gives pure excitement to my gut feeling.