Are You Suffering with Culture Shock? – Part 2 Dreaming and Scheming

Hello my fellow expatriates!  This is the second part to my series on how to cope with Culture Shock when you have transitioned to life in a new country.  If you haven’t read my first post,  I recommend you do.  You can find it here: Are you Suffering from Culture Shock .

To recap briefly:

You have made a significant life transition and this has put you into a cycle of change.  It helps to understand that you will pass through several phases of change while dealing with the effects of culture shock.  By identifying and understanding where you are on this change cycle can help alleviate your uncertainty, sadness and lack of direction.

Here’s how the four steps of the change cycle look:

Step 1 – Death and Rebirth

Step 2 – Dreaming and Scheming

Step 3 – Daring and Emerging

Step 4 – The Promised Land

Today we get to focus on the feel good stuff of dreaming and scheming.  Heck, who doesn’t like to dream, eh?

Once you have fully accepted, grieved and realized that your old life as you knew it is over, you will begin exploring and dreaming about your new life experience.  This is where you get to look at your inner wants and desires and gradually take steps to move them into your real world.

Here are some things you may be experiencing to signify that you are in prime Square 2 dreaming and scheming territory:

1. You find you are more creative.
2. You redecorate your home.
3. You change your outward appearance and maybe get a new hair style.
4. You imagine doing things you’ve never done before.
5. You laugh more easily and more often.

Now what do you really want?  Try this exercise:  

1. See if you can write a list of things you want very, very much.
2. Next to each item write the feeling state you will have when you have this item. If you’ve noticed, it’s not the item you really want, it’s the feeling state you are after.
3. Pick your top desired item and spend 10 minutes a day fantasizing about having obtained this item.  Who and what is around you?  What are you doing?  How does it feel, smell and look?  How are you interacting with it?  Write all your observations and feelings down.

Try this exercise on a daily basis always picking one of your heart’s desires and see if you don’t start automatically taking little steps towards all that you dream of having and experiencing in your life.

I challenge you to try this daily for two weeks, perhaps jotting down your wild and crazy dreams in a journal.  I guarantee you will start to get clear pictures of what you want and how to bring these wonderful things into your life. Try it, you’ll like it!

Let us know how it works for you below…we love the inspiration.