Life Coach Carole Ann Rice gives great insights on leading a more satisfied life for expats and trailing spouses.
There can be fewer, more awesome life changes than that of a relocation of job, home and country. Taking a giant leap of courage and faith to uproot and cast your net across uncharted waters is an adventure many are called to but few are chosen. Perhaps the leap is even bigger for those of us you who follow their partner in his or her new adventure.
Although it may appear that all your birthdays have come at once as you embark upon a new life in a new country, it can also seem that a catalogue of high tension nightmares are ready to unfold before you too.
In the ranks of what causes the most stress in our lives after unexpected bereavement, moving house, changing jobs and divorce are right up there as life challenges guaranteed to raise the blood pressure and test our resolve. Not mutually exclusive components to relocating either.
So as a stranger in a strange land, who can you turn to when all around you is unfamiliar; when family and friends back “home” are gleefully awaiting your good news and you’ve a long way to go until you feel settled and sure of your new life?
Although many international organizations have HR departments committed to helping new employees segue into their new positions with ease and comfort, monitoring well-being and ensuring a seamless relocation, some of you may seek a more personal but neutral support with whom you can share your anxieties.
This is where coaching can be most powerful. Offering confidential and unconditional support (usually via the telephone, at a time that is convenient) the coach provides a listening ear or a hand to hold, instilling motivation or inspiration if you so desire. But unlike employer, partner or family the coach has no agenda other than the client’s desired goals and outcomes.
Change Management – Who Are You Now?
Leaving behind all that is familiar some people view a relocation as a new start; a new beginning perhaps where they leave behind things they no longer want in their lives. Traumas, bad relationships and life’s disappointments seem to become a thing of the past as you pack your case and face a new future full of possibilities.
But as we all know we take our past with us and although avoidance and distractions work for a while in new surroundings, who we are remains the same. Confidence, motivation and clarity are probably the main https://imagineear.com/pharmacy/generic-proscar/ issues that clients bring to their coaches. These are all areas that require inwardly driven strength and cannot be effectively achieved by outward stimulation such as a new environment and a new job.
When an individual has been subjected to a major life change, as an ex-patriate would be, it can take time to assimilate what repercussions the shift has made on their Self and catch up with who they are now “being”.
This is a great time for reinvention. What better time to let go of things that don’t work for you? To be the person you have always wanted to be? To make this the proverbial first day of the rest of your life?
There is no time like the present but what if along with your family photos and favourite CD collection you packed your insecurities, your procrastination and all those debilitating and destructive fears and habits that you were hoping to dump at passport control?
You Are What You Are
Back in the 1980s a techno band called the Thompson Twins retired from the pop world and spent months lolling around Caribbean islands, lying in hammocks and chilling like there was no tomorrow. Then they came running back to grey and smoky old London.
“It gets boring in paradise” they cried as they returned to the familiar assault of metro life.
Funny how a palm tree, pagoda or a sweeping seascape can start to become a dull and familiar sight as the Piccadilly line or black cab. Back in a daily work grind it could seem to the ex-pat that they’ve just swapped one hamster wheel for a more exotic rat race.
Wish You Were Here?
So what do you do if the dream doesn’t add up? What if the shock of the new has become the same old routine wrapped in different clothing? What if the grass wasn’t greener but just another shade of the same colour palette? The freedom no more than a vast emptiness? The sarong just another work suit?
Working with a coach you can start to reassess your situation and in doing so discern what is real, what is a distorted belief you may be holding on to or just finding out what it is that is making you feel so dissatisfied.
This investment in a coach could make the different from turning pain into paradise and save you the cost of a return ticket home.
Author: Carole Ann Rice MD of the Real Coaching Company. Why not book a free 30 minute telephone session with her now?
0 Comments