How to help your kids get excited about a move in 10 minutes

If it’s difficult for us, adults, to move from place to place starting over and over again – it’s paramount for kids.  Especially the kids whose ages thrust them somewhere between “I’ll miss my grandparents!!!” and “I cannot live without my friends!!!” sentiments.

So what are we to do to help those kids? Sharing information about the impending destination and communicating throughout the process will, of course, help, but how do we get them really excited about the move?

Here is a fun exercise you can do with your children to help them move from sadness to excitement in about 10 minutes:

(1) Get a sheet of paper, write “Moving to _____ “ on top, and divide it into 2 columns.

(2) Title the left column “Bad things about moving to_____” and title the right column “Good things about moving to _____”.

(3) Ask them to come up with the “bad things” first.  Write down everything they say and make sure not to offer your own opinions.

(4) After they are done, ask them to come up with the “good things”.  Again, stay clear of imposing your “good things” on them and instead listen for their ideas and write each one of them down.  This part works really well if you have already spoken with your child about your destination and things you can all enjoy there.

(5) After both columns are done, rate each thing you wrote on a scale of 1 to 10: 10 being “how bad that thing is” for the left column and “how good that thing is” for the right column (and 1 being the reverse).

Example:

“Bad things” about moving to ______	“Good things” about moving to ______
Leave grandparents (10)	New adventures (10)
Leave school (6)	Learn a new language (7)
Leave local TV (3)	See snow (8)

(6) Sum up the numbers.  If you did your sharing and communicating throughout the process, your child will come up with a lot more “good” things than “bad” things and you’ll be able to point out how high their satisfaction is with the move as opposed to their dissatisfaction using the numbers.

(7) Hang the list in your child’s room until the move and remind your child that they can always look at it when they feel particularly sad.

Leave a comment letting us know how it went for you!

For another kid-friendly exercise that can help your children adjust in a new country, download our Adjustment Guide E-course – on online self-taught course that provides tools on how best to manage the effects of adjusting to another culture.

Also, enrollment is now open for May 1 start of the Expat Women Academy. a one of a kind program that provides expat women with strategies to overcome expatriate challenges.  Join us for a FREE webinar to learn more about it here.

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?

Looking to improve your sense of connection?  Join our Expat Women Academy where you’ll be given the tools — along with the community of women going through the same thing — to be successful in getting connected!

 

 

Shit Expat Men Say

After doing the “Shit Expat Women Say” video, it’s only natural that we would want to follow it up with the “Shit Expat Men Say”.  The first one stirred a bit of a controversy among some, so I am very curious to see the reactions to this one.

Thoughts?  Comments? Things we missed?

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.

And for those of you who work with expats, the next licensing/certification webinar for the Culture Mastery 4 C’s Process™ is coming up in March 2012.  Sign up now HERE and save — and get two languages at a price of one!

Parenting, education and culture – a big mix

Yesterday I remembered Amy Chua and her now infamous book, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother.  My daughter started middle school and her assessment scores for courses’ placement didn’t turn out to be as high as we expected.  Aside from questions on where that would take her in the process of learning and how it would affect her own self-esteem, I was suddenly faced with questions of my own… like:

• “What the &^$%$!”
• “She’s always been a stellar student, what’s going on here?”
• “How can she score worse than before – and worse than the other kids?”
• Etc, Etc, Etc…

And as I mulled it over, feeling embarrassed, let down, bitter, and confused, I noticed that my husband wasn’t as emotional about it as I was.  I was ready to march into school and request to see the tests, I unearthed the KhanAcademy site and persuaded my daughter to spend an hour doing math (excellent resource, by the way!), and I spent more than just a few hours planning an intervention for what I felt was a failing student (now, mind you, it’s only been 2 days since the school started!).

Meanwhile my husband, as upset as the placements made him, wasn’t as emotional about the whole thing as I was.  Yes, the results bothered him and yes, he wanted to investigate farther yet he wasn’t burning the midnight oil looking for tutoring resources and creating to-do lists on how to tackle this.  So why was I so up in arms and why was he so nonchalant?

Then it dawned on me.  Cultural differences.   He is American and I am Russian-born.  I grew up in a society where education was akin to religion and where being best among the best was a must for the intelligenzia children.  My husband grew up with the motto – “as long as you do your best” whereas I grew up with the motto – “you only do your best when you are doing much better than most of the others”.  And so having my almost-a-straight-A-student daughter placed into non-advanced courses definitely touched a nerve.

What have been your experience with your children’s education?  Have you felt any differences in how you manage your kids’ education especially if you and your spouse hail from different cultures?

REMEMBER: if you coach, train, or consult people who work across cultures, consider joining us for the Culture Mastery Certification and License Program.  We start September 21, 2011 and a discount is available to anyone who registers before September 7, 2011.

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)!

Expat Coach – where art thou?

In the past few months I received many requests for expat coach recommendations in various countries.  And while a coach doesn’t have to live in the same country or the same city or even the same time zone to be an effective presence in an expatriate’s life, it seems that some people are looking for an in-person coaching experience.

In the course of those few months I have had to respond several times that I didn’t know anyone in the country they were looking in.  And then, when another request came in a few days ago, I thought – why not create a resource where people can go to and search expat coaches by country?

And that’s how the International Directory of Expat Coaches was born.  I’ve had my site adapted for the directory that lists expat coaches by country, provides links to their sites, and thus connects people who want an in-person coach with a coach who might be living down the street from them.

So, if you are an expat coach and want to be listed in this directory, here is what you need to do:

• Create a listing
• Pay one-time administrative fee of $5 USD (note: this one-time fee covers our time spent formatting your listing — your listing will remain active for as many years as you’d like it to be)
• Create a link on your site to Global Coach Center Home page

For more information and to submit a listing, please go here. Your listing includes meta tags/meta description that’s SEO friendly. The listings will be arranged in the order they are received (per country).

If you are an expatriate looking to hire an in-person coach, stay tuned and visit International Directory of Expat Coaches from time to time.  Soon you’ll hopefully be able to find a coach in your city!

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)!

Third Culture Kids — what’s in the “programming”?

I recently finished reading a fascinating book by Dr. Bruce Lipton — Biology of Belief. Among many very interesting things, Dr Lipton touches upon the difference between sub-conscious and conscious minds.  He goes on to say that during our adult lives in 95% of the time we operate according to the programmed habits and beliefs that are stored in our subconscious mind.  And that programming of the subconscious occurs mostly between the ages of zero and 6.

That got me thinking about my own parenting, the messages that my daughter had downloaded into her subconscious in the first six years of her life – and how being a third culture kid affected those messages.  I realized that as we raise our kids in cultures that are foreign to us, we unknowingly pass on – without thinking – all the negative messages that come up in us in response to stress of adjustment, relocation, and simply being a stranger in a strange land.

If you think back to times when you moved with your kids at the time when they were young, what messages may have escaped your lips?  What behavior may you have exhibited in moments of stress that perhaps became recorded in your children’s subconscious?  What cultural misunderstandings may have influenced your reactions to things?  And can you now see those beliefs coming up in your children’s lives?

According to Dr. Lipton (and to many others), re-wiring the downloaded programs in our sub-conscious takes a lot more than affirmations and positive thinking.  Since our subconscious mind is our habitual mind, the only way to change the program is to engage in a completely different habit time and time again.  That’s not an easy preposition, but it can be done.  The best strategy, of course, is not to create those beliefs to begin with.

Your thoughts?

People who read this post also enjoyed:

Cross-cultural misunderstandings — got one?

Your identity in expatriation — will it stay or will it go?

To belong or not to belong — is that the choice we make when we move abroad?

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)!

Parenting across cultures – a never-ending exercise in cross-cultural misunderstanding?

Recently I read an article by Amy Chua on the subject of superiority of Chinese mothers.  Whether or not I agree with the author isn’t the point of this blog.   Although, as a side note, I must say that the author’s ego rivals that of Paris Hilton — which I thought was never possible!  And, as many other readers, I was amazed at the length she went to in order to satisfy that ego (the up-in-your-face article in WSJ included).  Disclaimer: I have not read her book but her article was enough for me to decide never to read the book and to feel bad for both her kids and her students at my (!) alma mater.

But back to the subject.  Amy Chua’s husband is apparently American and reading her me!-me!-me! article got me thinking of the role that parents of different cultures play in raising kids together.  I happen to be married to someone outside of my own culture and we are raising a beautiful girl.  How often do we agree on our own respective methods of parenting?  How often do we disagree?  And what transpires when you take an already mixed-culture couple and throw them into an expat lifestyle where a third culture becomes part of the mix?

We all know there is a lot of beauty in being exposed to and in living with different cultures.  We all know kids benefit from this immensely.  But that’s not what I want to discuss.  I want to discuss the difficulties.

If I had a penny for every time I was told I was “too strict” (I think I need to share Amy Chua article to show my husband what strict really means!) or that “my parenting culture was too critical” or that “I would do it differently” – I’d be a millionaire with my own private island already.  But instead of a penny, all I got was the feeling of being labeled,  judged and misunderstood.  Of course I have not been a saint either and I think I’ve given my share of opinions about my husband’s parenting culture.

Dr. John Gottman in his brilliant book “7 Principles of Making a Marriage Work” says that 69% of problems in a marriage are perpetual.  He goes on to describe that no matter what you do, these problems are not going to go away simply because they are born out of your disappointed dream or a disappointed dream of your spouse.  Put another way – the times we fight and the fights that repeat themselves over and over again happen because our values are not being honored.  Instead – a label is issued.  Someone calls you strict instead of recognizing that by imposing a certain schedule all you are trying to do is to protect your child as much as you can from stress and anxiety.

In an interview I heard recently, Marianne Williamson said something so simple and brilliant that I am amazed I didn’t think of it myself.  She said that all over the mammal world, the maternal instinct first and foremost goes to the protection of the young.  As mammals, we – human females – are also quite intent on protecting our children.  And so thinking along those lines, I am now realizing that I am protecting my young – but I see that protection in my own, unique way.  The way that has come from my culture and my upbringing.

So what do we do if our instinct to protect and if our parental style that comes from our values collide with that of our partner/spouse?  When tensions run high and labels are attached faster than the speed of light, how do we stay calm and discuss the cross-cultural misunderstanding that’s at the root of the argument?

Your thoughts?

People who enjoyed this post also read:

Cross-cultural misunderstandings… got one?

7 Habits of a Happy Expat

Expat Entrepreneur?  Who is your ideal client?

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)!

A to Z of Successful Expatriation™: Y is for YOU and what YOU make of it

Often times my clients have trouble focusing on their own needs.  They are so concerned about the necessities of people around them – spouses who have started working in a new culture and are stressed beyond belief; children that need help adjusting to a new country and a new school; parents who have been left behind and want to be comforted; friends who expect regular updates and quick invitations to visit; former co-workers who wonder about their next career step, etc, etc, etc.

When so many people around you need tending to, there is not really any time left for your own needs and dreams, is there?  And even if there is some free time somewhere in your day, how guilty might you feel if you decide to spend it on you rather than on any of the above?

Turns out – very guilty.  A lot of us would drop anything to make lives of people around us better, yet we rarely strive to do the same for ourselves.  Even after a day of housework, running a virtual business, making dinner, helping with homework, and spending time on the phone with family, many of us find it difficult to take a few moments of guilt-free pleasure for ourselves.  Be it a book, a mindless television show, a massage, a facial, a bath… whatever.  The point us – remember there is YOU in that expat reality you are all living in.  And YOU too need some pampering.

So next time you feel that you should not be having that massage or that the TV show you are watching is too stupid to waste your time on, stop and think about what your needs are in that moment.  How are you serving them?  And how much better does it feel to serve them than to ignore them?

And as for the “what YOU make of it” part in this letter Y – Dr. Dyer once said some very powerful words: “If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at will change.”  How are you looking at your expat life?

Want to work on those guilt-feelings with others like you? Join our Expat Club: 10 Weeks of Wisdom Program where we will provide tools and skills you usually get during coaching to work on this and other expat issues.  Learn more here. BONUS: if you sign up before December 1, 2010, you get FREE access to the “7 Habits of a Happy Expat” online course.

For all the letters in the A to Z of Successful Expatriation™ click here.

Copyright © 2010 by Global Coach Center.  If you’d like to reprint this, please do so but make sure you credit us (with a live link)!

A to Z of Successful Expatriation™: V is for VISITORS

Most of us can agree that getting people to visit us is a great experience … in healthy doses of course.  Visitors give us an opportunity to share our lives with them (remember sharing is one of the 7 Habits of a Happy Expat).  Visitors give us a chance to take time out of our busy schedule and visit a landmark or two with them – the landmark we’ve been postponing to visit.  Visitors give us a new perspective on the country we are living in and open our eyes to things we may have not seen.  And, finally, having visitors means that someone actually cares about our experiences and wants to learn more about them!

So what are some strategies to have the best time with visitors in your home and your country?  I have a few of my own but since each country is different I’d love it if you add yours.

Here are mine:

(1) I make a list of all museums that are worth a visit and include the opening times, the days when the museums are closed, the entrance fee (if any) and the quick tips about each one if I have them.

(2) I look up schedules for performances for the time my visitors are going to be in town and send it to them ahead of time.  If they are interested, I offer my services of purchasing them tickets.

(3) I always keep a few spare maps of the city in the visitors’ room along with a map of public transport, if that exists.

(4) If I am in a country where renting a car is not ideal, I try to reserve at least one weekend to take our visitors to places that are not accessible by public transport.

(5) I try to show and recommend at least a couple of places off the beaten tourist track – and a few of very local restaurants.

What about you?  What are your strategies?

For all the letters in the A to Z of Successful Expatriation™ click here.

Remember to check out our Expat Club: 10 Weeks of Wisdom Program. It has been specifically designed around expatriate issues and concerns and it’ll help you feel supported, encouraged, inspired Register for it here.

Copyright © 2010 by Global Coach Center.  If you’d like to reprint this, please do so but make sure you credit us (with a live link)!