Skip to main content





Anatomy for a Successful Return Home!    

Anatomy for a Successful Return Home!



I got to thinking about what a great metaphor our skeletal system is for returning home or moving in general.

There are lots of moving parts in bodies.   Bodies do better when they are flexible, strong and healthy.  Our bodies house our spirits and require regular daily maintenance.    They constantly need movement, feeding and watering just like our re-entry does.   If we are flexible and take loving care of our re-entry we get wonderful healthy results.

How is our anatomy a metaphor for a successful Return Home? 


Head

How are you using your head?  What are you thinking?   Which thoughts are filling your mind?  How organized or chaotic are your thoughts?   Are you paying attention to your headspace? 

Taking the time to write down your reflections upon your relocation journey, daily if possible,  will help you become more present to what’s going on in your head.  If you pay attention you will start to notice your patterns, how frequently they repeat and how entrenched or how flexible you are in your thinking.     

              “Those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything”.
               George Bernard Shaw       

Shoulders

What are you shouldering?  What is weighing you down?  Are you taking on some burden that could be divested or shared?

If you are reeling from the shock of Re-entry and your relationships are out of sorts, some of you might feel weighted down by this.   Devise a plan to lighten up your load and remove some of the heaviness.  Fun the most necessary part of any day.    If you are not having fun (for at least some portion of the time), where can you build fun into your day?   Our brains work best when they are lit up.

Back

If you were to guess what is your most unconscious or subconscious worry? 

Back pain is often associated with the subconscious mind and with deep seated feelings and beliefs that we are not even remotely conscious of. 

Heart

Are you loving being back home?  Or are you upset by your return?  What do you love about your expat life that you want to continue back home?

How rarely we are encouraged to follow our heart, to focus on our personal dreams and aspirations in Re-entry.  Give yourself a healthy dose of permission and take the time to listen to your longings.  Let your deepest-seated desires rise to the surface.  No matter where you are in your Repatriation journey it is possible to thrive, to live and to love your life to the fullest. 

                                       
 “Grow to love yourself, you are the person you spend every 
waking moment with."    Brigitte Nicole 


Stomach
What are the stressors that might be upsetting you?  What can’t you stomach?
Isolate the most torturous parts of the process – whether it is financial, physical or emotional. Focus on the area that challenges you most.  

Legs
What are you moving towards?  What are you running away from?  How much ground are you covering?  
Take stock and pay attention to your results.  Create a clearer picture of where you are in relation to where you would love to be.

Arms and Hands
What are you holding onto that you need to let go of?   What actions are you taking?
Move into action so that you can experience momentum and success.  Consider the returnee journey as a game that you are winning.   Every day ask yourself “what one action can I take today that will move me closer to the new life I really want”?

Feet
How grounded are you?   What activities lead you to feeling grounded and centered? 
The feet are wonderful tools and mostly we are unaware of them until they hurt.   Are you taking the best, most appropriate steps to reengage yourself in your new life? Take steps, whether they are baby steps or giant leaps, just keep taking them.

I suggest using your body-map to create the best mindset and take the physical steps necessary to close the gap, make the leap and enjoy the journey we call Repatriation/Re-entry or Relaunch.  We wish you the best of success wherever you are in the process.  

Use this tool and let us know how you get on!
Rock Your Re-Entry FB group


At Rock Your Re-entry we have designed signature systems that help you transform your rocky re-entry back home to a rockin' success.

Dream Building Your Way Through Repatriation         6 weeks course (online soon)
Mastering Re-Entry - Enjoy the Voyage                        6 months
                                                 





Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

I WISH I KNEW THEN WHAT I KNOW NOW

Orly airport, outside of Paris, France.   A lonely, scared 22-year-old sat on a bench feeling like she had just made the biggest mistake of her life. Distraught, she barely heard the last and final call for her flight to Yaounde, Cameroon, West Africa.  She bolted into action and ran like the wind towards a future unknown and unraveled. On that journey to my first overseas assignment in Cameroon, I felt like I had signed away my life to the British Foreign & Commonwealth Office, trading breath itself in exchange for adventure.   Growing up in and around Glasgow, Scotland I had up until that point lived a delightfully provincial, charming, yet small life. Burning in my bones was this idea that there must be “more."  But more what? more travel, more freedom, more choices?   I just knew something was impelling me forward.                  ...
Post a Comment
Read more

5 Secrets to Calming Re-entry Conflict

After Returning Home from Overseas I felt I was choking – the oxygen I needed was draining out of my body.   And yet my body seemed to be alive and well in one country whilst my mind took a detour into what felt like outer space. No worries – except that space felt more familiar, more normal and more real in so many ways.    I had arrived “back home” and was sitting amid what I had assumed would be my new tribe, my soft landing – a group I had visited and identified with prior to my arrival. They had courted me, right?    They knew me, right?      They had shared the secret bathroom code, right?     I was in the arrival stage of Re-entry after almost 20 years’ continuous years of living overseas. A seismic shift felt like it hit me like a bear raiding a campsite of fully stocked cars brimming with food.   My feeling of tribe changed from a calm, soft landing to feeling like I had slid through...
Post a Comment
Read more

Reverse Culture Shock: Climbing the Repatriation Mountain!

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 ...
1 comment
Read more