Once again, Maria over at I Was an Expat Wife has hit the proverbial nail on the head.
She wrote a great piece recently Can Previous Expat Experience Help With Adjustment? that I hope you’ll take the chance to read.
In it, she examines whether having prior expat experience can affect one’s ability to adjust in later overseas assignments. Are there shortcuts to adjustment that we can learn, as in the ‘same framework, different details’ approach? Or is culture-specific knowledge not necessarily transferable?
Based on her research, Maria comes down on the side of the latter (places can be so culturally different that they throw even the most hardened expat for a loop), but draws the conclusion that previous expat adjustment experience does offer broad knowledge in terms of understanding the importance of cultural awareness and of how you operate (e.g., self-confidence and a sense of how you act/react).
It was while reading the concluding paragraph that I had a light bulb moment. A seriously bright light bulb moment (for me).
You know the kind, where suddenly your brain makes the connection from two (or more) seemingly random or unrelated pieces of information. Only the connection seems so obvious, so intuitive, you wonder why you never made the connection before.
Definitely a ‘doh’ moment.
And yes, I slapped my forehead when I made the connection. But gently, since I didn’t want to interrupt my obviously slow-firing synapses any more than necessary.
So what was this flash of personal insight?
It had to do with my prior work experience, or rather, a specific period in my previous employment history.
Maria wrote: ‘The great benefit of prior experience is that it fosters more realistic expectations…You have more confidence in your ability to adjust to a new environment. You’re more forgiving of your lapses, because you’re aware that the journey to integration is often a bumpy one.’
That’s when my brain synapses had finally warmed up enough to fire, and I made the connection: my (relatively) frequent change in work assignments several years ago has served me in good stead when facing a state of flux or significant change in other areas of my life.
Including expat life.
Let me explain. In a prior life I used to work in the policy arena in the US Department of Defense. During my career there, I worked on a wide variety of policy issues. A really wide variety. Now if you took a look at my resume or curriculm vitae, you’d see that during my career I averaged only 18 months in most positions. Sometimes less.
To someone on the outside, all of that ‘job-hopping’ might raise a red flag. You might think that I was easily bored or lacking in focus or skills, or perhaps unable to fulfill my responsibilities. That I couldn’t hold a job. Or that I was a problem employee.
Fortunately, the truth was actually the opposite. I was regularly tapped for new positions. Sometimes it was the result of a reorganization or change in political administration. Other times it was because someone else retired or left. Still other times it was because we were creating an entirely new office, building from scratch or pulling disparate policy pieces together into a new entity.
I rarely had a chance to mull over the various job assignments, because while they were ‘asking’ me to agree to take each new job (and they were downright flattering as they did so), we all knew that I didn’t really have much of a choice.
They were mentoring my career while I was gaining experience and building up organizational goodwill (I’d say ‘brownie points’); it almost always worked out, and besides, it probably wouldn’t be all that long before I was called in and informed that there was a new challenge on the horizon that they wanted me to be part of.
After awhile, it became a bit like ‘here we go again’. Starting over, starting anew. Only for good reasons, not negative ones. Get thrown in a new pool? Better start swimming.
Now I’m not saying that I was smarter or more knowledgeable or more experienced than others, because I wasn’t. Clearly I was not so indispensible that they felt they couldn’t move me. Let me also say that I worked with and had the support of great people, so I never felt I was ‘out there’ by myself. I enjoy working with people, so continually building new teams wasn’t torture to me.
Rather, I think it was a case of getting thrown into a job and when faced with a sink-or-swim situation, I tended to swim. Maybe not Olympic-caliber crisp strokes, but enough to keep my head above water.
Not everyone enjoys change, but I learned to deal with it. I could operate in that vague, new-to-the-job-but-better-get-up-to-speed-quickly fog without panicking or feeling overwhelmed.
How could I not learn to accept change since it happened often enough? I guess you could say that I learned to embrace change. It even became my personal credo.
New positions, new adventures. Sound familiar?
Now, I don’t pretend that just because you make the adjustment in one culture that you’ll automatically whiz through elsewhere. I have absolutely no doubt that there are places in this world where I might move that are so culturally different to what I know and have been exposed to that it would feel downright alien.
And that’s okay. It’s in embracing the change, and knowing we’ll survive it that we can take heart. It isn’t always easy, and sometimes it’s painful. It may not be neat and tidy. Often we’ll be operating in a state of flux.
As Maria said, ‘…prior experience fosters more realistic expectations…more confidence in your ability to adjust…forgiving of your lapses…aware that the journey to integration is often a bumpy one.’
So when faced with change, monumental change, cut yourself a break. Know that it may be bumpy, but the journey does lead to integration. Go easy on yourself (and others), and ride out the transition.
Image credit: Salvatore Vuono portfolio 659, freedigitalphotos.net
This is an interesting discussion. I got my “AHA” moment too reading this. I also made a link with something that seems to have nothing to do with managing expatriation and integration.
We have been struggling with my 9 year old for him to remember his math facts, multiplication in particular. As I was desperate and ending being upset and angry at him after he was still not able to remember 8×4 while he knew 4×8 ! I heard from a friend about the benefits of KUMON, a tutoring program for math and reading very popular in the US.
Fortunately I found one center 2 minutes away from my home. We went there last Monday and the person in charge gave him an evaluation test to decide wich program to start. I was really surprised that he gave him a working sheet with more than 200 simple additions up to 10! C’mom I thought to myself, he is in Grade 3, he doesn’t need to practice this! In fact my son was very excited because:
1-He remembered he succeeded in the past to learn those simple additions,
2-He told me the teacher was happy as he felt he was a good teacher because he made no mistake
3-He discovered that adding something to 9 was the same as adding 10 minus 1 so he could answer faster
After 5 days he has still 240 simple additions up to 18 and another set up to 20, but his confidence and speed have skyrocketed ! So yes repeating past experiences are fundamental to build strong foundations.
Going back to expatriation I do believe that the more you move the better you are at managing the logistics and creating a supportive and friendly environment. Of course like anything you do it is much easier if you enjoy some steps in the process like the initial excitement of discovering a new place to call “home” and meeting new people for example.
Thanks Anne, glad your son is making great progress and feeling better about himself and his abilities. As you’ve noted, learning by doing and building confidence are two things that can be of potential help to expats. I want to make sure people don’t think I’m saying you won’t experience culture shock and turbulence along the way if you’ve done it before. They’re bound to happen, but I believe that being aware that they are likely to occur and being able to recognize cultural challenges and disorientation for what they are do give you something to reassure yourself when you’ve left the honeymoon stage and you’re feeling alienated, frustrated or angry. I was glad I had a sense of what was going on, and I relied on previous experience to make peace with being in that ‘state of flux’.
You are absolutely right Linda, it is not because you have been to the dentist 100 times that you will enjoy the pain 🙂
To be honest, 2 weeks in my new home in NJ has been like the weather: very hot the first week almost 100F/#38C, felt so good, met nice people, enroll at the YMCA, went to Zumba class, discovered the community pool and on and on 🙂 This week my mood is down like the temperature with some rain showers: Our container has been custom-cleared and I have very low expectations regarding next week, unpacking is not fun, hopefully I know by experience that American summer camps are great for my son.
I like that dental analogy, lol! Despite the hot temps and being unable to unpack and truly settle in, you’re doing amazingly well. Your experience tells you the weather will improve, the container will arrive and eventually you’ll be settled in, and that in the mean time you do the best you can. Be kind to yourself in all of this!
Hi I loved reading this and the the other article by Maria. I had been quite a stagnant expat whilst living in Spain for the past 20 years and now I find myself here in the Netherlands. What you said at the end of your post is true it is a bumpy ride and we have to wait. We have been here for 2 years now and still lots is not how we want it, when I speak to others, they say only 2 years, that’s not long, when I tell them what we have done here in those two years, they always comment on how much we have achieved. I think expats have to sometimes take a step and back and realise that in just moving to another country is an achievement in itself!
Oh I absolutely agree, thank you so much for saying this! We have a tendency to only look at what’s not right rather than what IS in place and going well, what we’ve accomplished. I’m guilty of this myself. We also forget that most non-expats are constantly dealing with change in their lives, tweaking things to make them better. We’d be doing some of this wherever we are in the world; it’s just a little more challenging with the cultural layer added.
I think previous experience helps when we have to transition to anything new, whether moving as an expat, changing jobs/careers, dealing with life crises. Understanding the various transitional phases of change and how we personally react to those changes gives us a level of confidence – however small!
Knowing things will get easier and having established proven coping strategies to help to reduce stress levels does help. There will always be the unexpected, the curve balls but I think you build emotional resilience over time without being aware of it.
Absolutely brilliant. Loved. Every. Word.
Living abroad can be an alien and an alienating experience What’s gone before doesn’t always prepare you for what’s to come. Sometimes I think I’ve got it then something happens and I’m thrown off balance. It’s like a game of snakes and ladders. Perhaps this is why expats huddle together for security and create little ghettos, and why many, if not most, expats go home in the end.
No doubt that it can be alienating and disconcerting. Your comment got me thinking. Perhaps it’s the case that some get tired of the ‘same old, same old’ and seek new/different/better; we rise to the challenges because it’s new/different/better, but when it’s just different and starting to wear (like ‘same old, same old’), many of us choose to revert back to the ‘known’. Less emotional energy expended?