8 mistakes expats make that can leave them feeling disconnected

by Margarita

One of the biggest challenges of an expat lifestyle is feeling disconnected – from the life you leave behind, from people and events in your current place of residence, from family and old friends back home, and even from those who surround you.  If you are an expat right now, how strong is the feeling of being disconnected in you on a scale of 1 to 10?  Are you somewhere between 4 and 10?

If you are, read on and let me know if these eight mistakes resonate with you!

Mistake 1.  You have very high expectations that people back home will continue to want and initiate consistent interaction with you.   We all miss our friends/family when we move, but face it – we left.  They stayed behind and they moved on with their lives.  They’ve substituted the vacuum you left in their lives with something/someone else and they are doing just fine.  It’s harder for you, of course, because you are the new kid on the block. Sure they’ll be there for you when you need them, but for heaven’s sake – don’t expect them to get in touch with you as often as they did in the past – and don’t sulk if they don’t.  Remember that it’s now up to you to initiate and maintain contact.  You are the one who has left.

Mistake 2. Somehow, somewhere you’ve decided that making new friends isn’t your strength.  Fair enough – some of us are more outgoing than others, but make sure you realize that perspective is everything.  It colors the lens you use to look at the world.  So if your current perspective is “I suck at making new friends”, you will suck at it.  Change your perspective and you’ll be surprised to see how things change around you.

Mistake 3. You decided that you only want strong, intimate connections and you are not interested in anything else.  It’s your choice, of course, and there is nothing wrong with wanting to create lasting friendships.  But are you sure you are giving everyone a chance?  How do you know that someone who doesn’t seem “the material” now isn’t going to turn into a dear friend?  Stranger things have happened in the world.  Make sure you are open to every possibility that comes your way.

Mistake 4.  You think your to-do list is too long and you just have no time to get out and get to know people.  It’s a classic one – how many times have we used our to-do lists as an excuse not to do something that seems challenging, uncomfortable, or scary to us?

Mistake 5.  You take trips home every 3-4 weeks for a vacation, just a visit, or… just because.  Another classic – and another very strong reason for not feeling connected either at home or at your new place of residence.  Commit to one of those places and grow your connections there.

Mistake 6. You feel uncomfortable chatting up to people because your language skills are not perfect.  This may be a good place to train yourself to let go of expecting yourself to be perfect – in languages and anywhere else.  Besides, how else would you improve your speaking ability if not by speaking to people?

Mistake 7.  You engage in unfavorable comparisons of your current place of residence with home (or with the one you left).  We all heard that the “grass is always greener on the other side”, but guess what?  Yours would be green too if you only watered it enough.  So forget about how your new home doesn’t stack up to your previous home and stop the comparisons.  Instead find the beauty where you are.

Mistake 8.  You use social media like there is no tomorrow.  Lots of people adore Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc, etc, etc (I don’t even come close to knowing all the social networking sites out there), but life still mostly happens on the outside and the connections you make on the outside are the ones that are going to nurture you.  Your 1000+ friends on Facebook will forgive you if you engage in the outside world.  So what are you waiting for?

Which mistakes resonate with you?  And what additions may you have?

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25 reasons for expats to be happy

1. You are alive.
2. You are healthy.
3. You have people who love you (even if they are not near you at this moment).
4. You are courageous (you moved away from home after all!)
5. You get to see things others don’t.
6. You get to experience new foods.
7. You get to travel.
8. You have friends around the world – and not just virtual ones!
9. You have memories and stories that others would envy.
10. Your kids are growing to be global citizens.
11. You speak more than one language.
12. You get to explore the world.
13. You can help others less fortunate than you without having to travel far to do it.
14. You can act as a cross-cultural ambassador for your country.
15. You are creative (because your life now incorporates so many different ways of doing things).
16. You are worldly.
17. You have skills you could not have had if you stayed home all your life.
18.  You know to count your blessings.
19. You have patience (even if you think you don’t!)
20. You have more opportunities than people back home.
21. You can try different wines and different coffees.  And don’t forget the dessert!
22.  You can study and learn something unusual.
23. You almost certainly have a novel in you.
24.  Your friends and family back home admire you.
25.  You have a fun life.

Even if all of those don’t quite apply to you, there are still enough reasons here to keep in mind — especially when feeling sorry for yourself.  Pick the ones that especially speak to you and write them down where you can always see them.  And make sure to look at them when the bad mood strikes!

Remember that the FREE Expat Support Day is on January 20th!  Get some inspiration and support through a free 15 minute laser coaching session — reserve your 15 minutes of clarity here. 

To benefit from the collection of tools, ideas and exercises based on experiences of expats from around the world, get your FREE “A to Z of Successful Expatriation™” workbook by signing up for our Expat VIP list here.

 

10 things expat women should stop doing

Moving abroad is a perfect opportunity to start something new.  Not necessarily a new job or a new business, but rather a new YOU.  Perhaps tap into talents you never had time for or explore parts of yourself that you didn’t know were there. But before you do that, there are a few things you may want to leave behind.  For starters, here are your first 10!

Stop allowing guilt to ruin your days.  Feeling guilty serves no useful purpose.  You don’t grow or evolve because you feel guilty.  Nor do you become a better mother, a better daughter, a better professional, or a better friend because of guilt.  So next time the familiar pang of guilt shows up, notice it and then choose to put your attention elsewhere – somewhere where you can feel good about yourself.

Stop being everything to everyone.  Being a perfect mother while also being a perfect relocation manager for your family while also being a perfect professional woman while also being a perfect daughter to your aging parents you are leaving behind while also being a perfect friend is not possible.  Repeat – NOT possible.  Recognize it and give yourself a break.

Stop putting your own needs and wants aside.  Losing yourself in the messes and stresses of the expatriate life and forgetting that you are special too is common.  Children, husbands, employers, clients, parents, and friends are all in need of being taken care of.  How much space does that leave for you?  You decide!  If there was ever the time and the place to engage in your passion and do what matters to you, it’s now.  Remember that.

Stop trying to be someone you are not.  Take the roles you want to take in life and don’t take the roles imposed on you by others.  So what if people back home think you should be able to learn a new language right away?  Maybe that’s not what you want.  So what if your friends at home are surprised that you are happy not working full time in your new country of residence?  Maybe it’s time for a sabbatical.  Bottom line – take the time to discover (or remember!) who you are and be that.

Stop blaming others.  Research has shown that only 10% of our happiness depends on life circumstances, while 40% of our happiness is intentional.  So next time you decide to blame your spouse for taking you to this God-forsaken country or you blame the company for not enough resources, think again.  Change your thinking.  Change your intention for your life there.  Change your attitude.

Stop holding on to the past.  Yes, you probably had a great job and a promising career.  And yes, you were financially independent.  And yes, you felt like you were contributing.  And yes, you have none of that here where you are living now.  But you have something else.  So stop peering longingly into the door of the past and open the door of the present.  Discover what it has to offer.

Stop hanging out with the wrong people.  You want to have a positive experience while an expat, don’t you?  So why surround yourself with unhappy complainers? Choose your alliances wisely – remember the energy of people around you has a huge influence on your own.

Stop feeling sorry for yourself and commit to change.  Perhaps your move wasn’t as smooth as that of your neighbor.  And perhaps your spouse works much longer hours, your kids are hating the new school, and you are feeling like you’ve lost sense of who you are.  Take that as a sign that change needs to happen to how you are in the world and commit to that change.  Don’t skimp on resources here – this is the time to act and get all the necessary support you need.  Buy a self-help book, join an online course, hire a coach.  Move forward.  Sitting at home and feeling sorry for yourself won’t get you anywhere.

Stop explaining yourself to others.  Yes, you may have been a professional woman back home, but now you’ve chosen not to work.  And you may have decided to indulge in a history class at a local university while a nanny watches your kids.  You don’t owe any explanations to your friends back home who have been expecting you to start working as soon as you land.  And you don’t have to explain to your family why you are not spending every waking moment with your kids.  What YOU do with YOUR time and resources is no one else’s business.

Stop pretending like everything is good when it is not.  If you are not happy, voice it.  If you are missing something, speak about it.  If you need help and support, get it.  Pretending that everything is fine and that you are a brave soul who can wither all the difficulties on her own is silly.  After all you can be spending your energy on actually enjoying yourself rather than pretending that you are enjoying yourself.

Thoughts?  Additions?  Comments?  Shoot!

Find yourself doing any of these 10 things over and over again?  To help yourself stop, join our Expat Women Academy where you’ll be given the tools and the curriculum — along with the community of women going through the same thing — to be successful in stopping them!

ALSO — To benefit from the collection of tools, ideas and exercises based on experiences of expats from around the world, get your FREE “A to Z of Successful Expatriation™” workbook by signing up for our Expat VIP list here.

How are change and happiness connected — and is there a place for each in the new year?

It’s no secret that the one thing, which unites us all, is our desire to be happy.  It’s also no secret that at the end of each year we look forward to the next and consider the ways in which we can become happier.  Perhaps a change of job, or a change in relationships, or a change in business-as-usual approach to life, or a change of a routine, etc.  Change is central to our pursuit of happiness – for without change there is no progress.

All this seems pretty straightforward but it turns out that when it comes to initiating and maintaining change, we really suck at it.  Just think of the New Years resolutions that come and go.  As much as we, humans, always want to grow and evolve, when it comes to this growth being propelled by change we stumble.  In their book, Immunity to Change, Robert Kegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey give an example of a study that “showed that if heart doctors tell their seriously at-risk heart patients they will literally die if they don’t change their lifestyle, only one in seven, on average, is actually able to make the changes…”

One in seven!  Imagine that.  At the risk of dying, only 1 in 7 people would change their ways of being in the world.  How is that for resisting change?

Kegan and Lahey go on to say that one of the reasons changing is so difficult for us is that by not changing we are honoring a “hidden commitment” – a commitment to something entirely different, something that conflicts with our desire for change.  It’s hidden because it’s so deep in our subconscious that it resides completely outside of our conscious awareness.

Because this commitment is hidden, we don’t get to examine it closely.  But if we do, we may discover a couple of things:

1.  The hidden commitment is based purely on fear and/or guilt.

“How can I take time away from kids to have a massage, take a photography class, or a history course in a local university?  I am already not working so it’s my job to always be with the kids.  What would my friends and family back home say if they find out that I regularly leave them with a nanny even though I have all this time I can spend with them?”

2.  The hidden commitment expresses the things that are truly important to us – and the change we want to initiate doesn’t agree with them at all. 

“I must look for work in the new year – I can easily get hired here.  We don’t really need the money but I’ve worked all my life and not working feels kind of weird.  My friends back home are making fun of me for all the time I am wasting on my hobbies.  Although I really like concentrating on them now …”

In scenario 1 digging deeper helps us see that at the root of this “hidden commitment” is our subconscious understanding of what makes us safe – on physical, emotional and social levels.  We come to realize, thus, that we live our lives the way we do because we are scared.  And more often than not – we are scared of things that are either not really valid for us or seem scarier than they actually are.   Staying at home with kids at all hours of the day and feeling guilty when leaving them to take time for yourself may be scary in the realm of social acceptance/safety — yet it does nothing for either your or their happiness.

In scenario 2 digging deeper helps us discover the values that we hold dear and makes us realize that only by living those values will we achieve happiness and fulfillment.  Working because you’ve always done so isn’t a good enough reason to give up on what’s important to you now and what makes you tick.

So what can help us to initiate and sustain change – the change that will bring us closer to being happier in the new year?  Try these three steps:

Step 1: Learn your hidden commitment – what’s really stopping you from going for that change?  This isn’t an easy exercise and requires a process that’s like peeling an onion – digging deep until you expose the fear or the values at stake.

Step 2: Make a choice.  Either consciously choose to continue as before or commit to change.  Make it your choice rather than an automatic behavior you’ve engaged in until now.

Step 3: Get a support network together.  Surround yourself with people who will help you through this process of adopting change.  This is difficult, so make sure your support network is 100% behind you, holds no judgement over your choice and the outcome, and doesn’t have any hidden agenda.  Family and friends are probably not the best people to enlist here – a buddy system or a coach is your best bet in sustaining a new behavior.

Good luck on your dreams, wishes and aspirations in the coming year!  Remember that if you are not feeling completely happy in any area of your life – you can choose to make a change there and begin moving towards greater happiness.  Why continue to settle when you can create an amazing life for yourself?

Starting in December 2011, Global Coach Center offers a free laser coaching day specifically for the expat community — once a month.  Have an issue you want to discuss? Stuck on something? Experiencing a dilemma? This is your opportunity to get some stellar coaching – just sign up for a FREE 15 minute laser session on the Expat Laser Coaching Day and when the time comes, bring your issue/topic with you. Limited spaces, of course, and in January 2012 — it’s January 20th! Reserve your 15 minutes of clarity here.  

Sharing the moment

by Margarita

These are the kinds of moments that help keep the stress and frustrations of being  a solopreneur at bay and I just had to share it with those of you who are not members of the LinkedIn group where this was posted!

I announced the upcoming Culture Mastery 4 C’s Process™ licensing/certification and received an amazing testimonial in a comment from one of the previous participants:

“I can’t recommend Margarita’s training enough! I’ve done it and regardless of all my experience and knowledge, it gave me a different insight into how to approach my training programmes. Relevant, pertinant, interactive, useful, and enriching. Margarita was a great facilitator and the other participants really took part and shared. Personally, since I did her training I have reassessed my programme contents and presentation and my clients love it!

No, Margarita didn’t ask me to post this, this is a real feedback…I used a lot of what we discussed in the course just yesterday, for the first time ‘live’ , with MBA students wanting an insight into intercultural management. I was able to demystify the theories, make it relevant and apply it to their professional lives. Must have done a good job because I’ve been invited back! Thanks M! (Helen Le Port of HLP Training)

Thank you, Helen!

So if you are a solopreneur and sometimes feel that it’s always uphill and never downhill — think of these moments and remember them!

If you want to use the Culture Mastery 4 C’s Process ™ with your clients, the next licensing/certification is taking place on December 1 & 8, 2011 via a webinar.  The early registration discount is only until November 24 — so sign up now!

Change – what’s it good for?

As expatriates when we move from country to country we experience a lot of change.  At first it’s quite natural to reject most of it because homeostasis (the tendency to maintain the system the way it has been) is a very strong universal force, especially for humans.  Yet one of the gifts of that imposed change is that we can now give consideration to things that lay outside of everything we are used to – and try them on just the same way we’d try on a new piece of clothing we’d never thought we’d wear.

As with that new piece of clothing, sometimes there are surprises.  That thing we’ve never done in our lives may become our next favorite experience, business idea, hobby, habit, a memory to look back to, etc.  Imagine for a moment what you would have missed if you never moved.  What things would you have never seen and what things would you have never experienced?  And now imagine what you have seen and experienced as a result of every move.  How many more new things are out there for you?

Someone once said that “life is always offering us new beginnings, it’s up to us whether to take them or not.”  I don’t remember who said it, but it’s an empowering way to look at what’s available to us at every moment of every day.  And especially to those of us who get this incredible opportunity of imposed change.

So here is a short exercise that will help take advantage of change:

Step 1. List everything that’s new to you.  Take a few days to compile the list.  Note that you may be adding to that list as you go through the weeks and months of your expatriation.

Step 2.  From the above list, choose a few things you’d like to try.

Step 3.  List ways, in which the things from Step 2 can help you grow and evolve. 

How did it go?  What part of this experience can you share with others?

This process of taking advantage of change is an excerpt from the Global Coach Center Adjustment Guide E-course available at the Global Coach Center Academy.

Move countries… adapt, move again… adapt again – one tip to ease the process of constant adaptation for serial expats

It’s often easier for us to name things that we don’t want in our lives than the things that we do want.  During the move and the adaptation process so much change is happening around us that it’s quite natural to reject most of it (because face it – homeostasis or the tendency to maintain the system the way it’s been is a very strong universal force).  And so, believe it or not, but this is when we want to become clear not about what we reject – but about what we are looking for.

The way to get clear about what we want, surprisingly, is to list the things we don’t want and look at the alternative.  So here is an exercise*:

Step A: List things you are not looking forward to – things you don’t want (perhaps dealing with a moving company, struggling with the language you don’t speak, finding household help, etc)

Step B: Once you’ve listed them all, take each one and turn it around.  If you don’t want that, what is it that you do want?  For example: I don’t want to not understand a word when I arrive.  What do I want? I want to know some basics.

Step C: Once you have all the “wants” listed, choose the one that seems most attractive to you at this time and list a few things you can do to get to that want.  In our example above – I want to know the basics of the language – maybe you would look for language lessons to take before you leave.

So whenever you find yourself going over and over things that you find annoying/frustrating/unpleasant/etc in changing countries, pull yourself away from concentrating on the “not wants” and reframe them into wants.  Not only does it empower you to change those things but it also lets the Universe know what you are looking for.

*This exercise is an excerpt from a larger guide to adapting in a new country — Adjusting Guide E-course, available now for self study on the Global Coach Center Academy.

Waking up an artist in you — expat lifestyle opportunity… and a learning opportunity

One of the common advices an accompanying expat spouse receives in response to her/his concern about losing a career/job is this: “Enjoy your hobbies while you have this great chance.  Look at what you love to do and do it.”  It’s a great suggestion and many newly-unemployed expats have definitely found a peace of mind in taking up pottery, painting, writing, or stamp collection.  Finally all of those things they’ve been meaning to do their entire lives were at their fingertips and they had time and resources to do them!

Then a few months later a few of us “impact-oriented” people (me included!) started to wonder.  So here I am painting away (or writing or creating pottery or sewing) and isn’t this the time when I am supposed to be getting really good at this — my new craft, professionally-speaking?  I mean I’ve always been successful at my work, I’ve advanced and made more money in my career almost every year so isn’t this the time to start booking galleries or creating my fall fashion line?  And if not, then why am I doing this?  Why am I spending all this time and resources on doing something that’ll never create any impact in the outside world and will never make me money?

This is when the old familiar voice of doubt starts getting louder.  Maybe this new painting I am making is going to be really bad.  Should I change this color or should I add this color or should I… just quit the whole thing and do what I am good at — find work and immediately begin putting in 60-hrs weeks to catch up on what I’ve missed?  The hobby I’ve taken suddenly takes the form of some race I am supposed to win and every day I am more and more afraid to screw up the canvas.

Has anything like that happen to you?  It certainly has happened to me — and it continues to happen once in awhile.

What do I do?

I go back to a great metaphor my coach and I created.

I see myself as a child playing in a sandbox, building a castle.  The castle isn’t coming out the way I’ve wanted and so I level it to the ground.  “It’s just sand,” I hear my child say and begin to build the castle again. Playing is the main point here.

Allowing yourself to play is the biggest gift and the biggest learning — and that learning comes from our inner children that we’ve forgotten with all our career and impact aspirations.  So how about making play the central part of whatever we are doing and remembering that it’s just sand?

Your thoughts?

NEW at the Global Coach Center: an online course on Culture Mastery — offering how to be effective in any culture through the 4C’s ™ process of culture-emotion intelligence.

Copyright © 2011 by Global Coach Center.  If you’d like to reprint this, please do so but make sure you credit us (with a live link)!

Identity – by permission or by design?

Expats often worry what living in another culture may do to their identity.  Will they have to surrender the identity they know and adopt another one?  Will their identity change?  Will it stay the same and as a result they won’t ever fit in or feel that they belong?

This list of concerns can go on and on and, if you look closely, you’ll see that a lot of these questions relate to (1) who we see ourselves as and to (2) how we preserve that in unfamiliar environments.  In my previous posts (here and here) I focused more on how to preserve the sense of who we are, but today I’d like to address the first question – how do we find our identity in the first place? How do we come to see ourselves and identify with who we are?

I grew up in a family and environment where my future was decided for me.  I was a child and a grandchild of engineers growing up in the society where people were relegated into either a techie or an artsy field.  There was nothing in between and one very rarely crossed from one to another.  And so with my family being engineers I was told all my life that I belonged to the techie crowd (somehow my complete and utter inability to comprehend some very techie subjects didn’t bother anyone).

Fast forward several decades later.  I am no longer a techie and I have not been for a long time.  But it took me many many years before I actually permitted myself to experiment with the artsy – and it’s taking me a lot longer to see myself as an artist.  My sense of identity and my sense of how I see myself evolved from a place of being who you are by permission to acknowledging who you are by design.

So when you are looking at your identity – the near and dear one that you are taking overseas, what are you seeing? And perhaps, if you are finding that you are playing a role by permission and feeling afraid to relinquish that role, how can living in another country – away from the society that pre-determined that role for you – can help you find yourself by design?

NEW at the Global Coach Center: an online course on Culture Mastery — offering how to be effective in any culture through the 4C’s ™ process of culture-emotion intelligence.

Copyright © 2011 by Global Coach Center.  If you’d like to reprint this, please do so but make sure you credit us (with a live link)!

Expats and broken marriages – who is to blame?

There have been a lot of blog posts and articles on the subject of losing a marriage/relationship while living overseas on an expat assignment.  There is even a fictional blogella, masterfully written by the Expat Expert Robin Pascoe, exploring the aftermath of such broken-while-expat marriage.  Heated discussions about who to blame and who should be responsible (a cheating spouse or his/her company) fill many forums — and, while I completely understand our human desire to find someone to blame, I’d like to look at this phenomenon from a different perspective.

Faith Fuller and Marita Fridjhon pioneered the field of relationship coaching that looks at all relationships – be it marriages, teams, partnerships, etc – from the point of view of what is trying to happen vs who is doing what to whom?  They say that systems are naturally generative and intelligent and conflicts within any system signal that some kind of change needs to happen.

If your marriage is entering troubling times during your expat assignment – if you are noticing stress and frustration or if you are perceiving that a distance is growing between you and your spouse or if there is anything at all that makes you question your relationship – stop and try to listen to the voice of the system that is your marriage.  Try to avoid blaming your spouse for going out after work and spending less and less time at home, for traveling a lot, for spending hours with their smartphone and, instead, do the following exercise:

(1) From the perspective of a bird view (or a helicopter), look down and imagine that you are looking at yourself and your spouse.

(2) Notice how you are in relation to each other – are you facing each other, are you turned with your back to each other; what are your facial expressions, etc.

(3)  Looking at yourself, your spouse, and your relationship from high above, answer this question: what is trying to happen here?

(4) Ask your spouse to do the same thing.

(5) Compare notes.

If the system is signaling that a change needs to happen, this change will happen no matter who gets blamed for it.  So your choice here is to help the system achieve the change it needs or ignore the system’s voice and deal with the consequences.

What would you prefer?

A reminder for expat coaches and cross-cultural trainers: include your practice in our International Directory of Expat Coaches and Cross-Cultural Trainers, sorted by country and search-able by city, language, specialty, certification, etc.   At this time our Alexa rank is 900,000 and 105,000 in the US.  Your listing costs only $5 or $8 and it’s for life (not yearly).

Copyright © 2011 by Global Coach Center.  If you’d like to reprint this, please do so but make sure you credit us (with a live link)!