ROCK YOUR REENTRY! Making Re-Entry the Best Time of Your Life!

Who Will You BE? “Floating, falling, sweet intoxication. Touch me, trust me, savor each sensation. Let the dream begin, let your darker side give in to the power of the music of the night.”  ―  Charles Hart ,  The Phantom of the Opera: Piano/Vocal Two weeks ago today, I was wending my way through the bustle and hustle of a dark, wet and rainy London evening.   People traveling home from work, going out for the evening and heading to thousands of differing destinations created packed pavements. I was on my way to a private showing of a movie preview.   Navigation between Charing Cross station, through Covent Garden to Soho and beyond was my immediate task. I had lived in London back in the 1970s, twice in fact.   Back then this journey would have taken ten minutes max. Over thirty years later, my I-phone would not access data; alas no google maps to navigate with.   I had to find my way through the spaghetti streets that make up the Theatre district with a wet m

Please look under your car for penguins! If you saw this sign would you pay attention? A colleague of mine, previously an expat for 14 years in Japan, shared that after years of using Japanese, learning the language and really paying attention and listening deeply, he found himself back home needing to acclimatize in surprising ways.   He missed the effort and the attention required to understand what was being said.   The focus, the exercise of leaning in and listening was missing.     Free of the “struggle” to communicate, comprehend and understand all day long, he found the return to his homeland a bit of a let down, like there was a challenge missing.    He finally came to the conclusion that his brain was no longer stimulated in that particular way.    He shared that life back in his home country was almost nauseatingly boring, that he missed the challenge that his brain had been programmed to adapt to.    Expat adaptation arrives in so many packages, and languag

Have you ever got into the groove of a new location really quickly?   Yesterday I completed a task, which seemed easy enough for hundreds of people do it every single weekend.    I climbed Mt. Evans which is 14,264 feet, which seems challenging on the face of it; however the catch is that you can drive almost the entire way to the top.    That last 150 though are on foot!    Now while this distance seems small, you get to make this climb at over 14,000 feet which proved problematic for me.    I felt very unsteady, a bit woozy and was able to make it by taking a few steps at a time then resting for a bit.    Altitude sickness is still on the list of “to be mastered in this lifetime”. Sometimes when we move and immerse ourselves in a very different environment, culture and geographic location we can experience similar results.     Here are a few strategies to deploy or tips if you like, which I remember helped to rock my last dose of reverse culture shock.  

“Failing means you’re playing.”   Translation: It’s better to be doing badly than not taking part. In Scotland there’s an old fashioned saying “Failing means you’re playing”.       Growing up in Scotland I used to hear adults use this phrase time and time again.   I translated and internalized it to mean that if I am failing, I am really not serious, not focused, not successful and most certainly not doing my best. Fast forward a lot of living, travelling and fitting into countless life situations in seven countries and four continents.  I realized when I saw this written this morning that suddenly a corner has been turned and this quote has taken on a completely different meaning. This clearly didn’t happen overnight; I have no clue about the moment when this awareness happened. When I attempt something and fail I have developed the tendency to look at it as an attempt, or a  learning or a step in the direction I am actively choosing to go. Do I still loo