What you’ll hear in this episode:
• How self-care is really having empathy for your future self (and what this really means).
• A fun Seinfeld clip to illustrate this concept (in the inverse)
• Some ideas for what this type of self-care might mean for you. Read More
Today’s Mindful Expat Guest is Sundae Schneider-Bean!
Sundae is an intercultural strategist and solution-oriented coach, and – as she says – she’s on a mission to help expats make the most of their lives abroad!
Sundae is originally from the United States, from the state of North Dakota. Even before meeting her Swiss husband and launching on a series of international moves with him, Sundae had a thirst for international adventure. In her early 20s, she traveled extensively throughout south-east Asia, where she met her husband in Vietnam – which then led her to move to Switzerland. After a number of years together there, they then moved to Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, where they stayed until in 2016 when the political situation and lack of security in the region made it no longer safe to remain – at which point they relocated to South Africa, where they now live with their 2 children.
Sundae has her masters in Intercultural Communications and is a certified coach with the International Coaching Federation. Her experiences of living and working across cultures, being in an intercultural marriage, and raising bicultural TCK children makes her no stranger to the challenges – and opportunities – of expat life. As an intercultural strategies and coach, she works to help other expats navigate these challenges and learn to thrive in their lives abroad and make the most of their experiences.
What you’ll hear in this episode:
• Debunking some common myths about the cultural adjustment process and how believing these myths can be detrimental to our wellbeing and adjustment as we adapt to a new culture.
• How there is no one “right” way to move through the process of cultural adjustment and some of the factors (personal and contextual) that can impact what this process looks like.
• How our expectations can shape our experience — for example, by making us either more or less patient with ourselves as we move through the cultural adaptation process.
• How “culture shock” isn’t necessarily a bad thing and how we can use it as an opportunity to increase our own self-awareness.
• The importance of self-acceptance and self-compassion (rather than being harsh and critical toward ourselves) as we adjust to a new culture. Read More
What you’ll hear in this episode:
• How you can create a pause between your initial experience of an emotion and your reaction to it, and how doing so will allow you to cultivate more self-compassion and feel less out of control in your life.
• About the differences between pain and suffering — and how our responses to our own internal experiences determine the extent to which we suffer.
• The Buddhist metaphor of the two arrows, which illustrates this difference between pain and suffering.
• How all of this might apply to the experience of struggling with adaptation to a new country/culture. Read More
What you’ll hear in this episode:
• A discussion of the different attitudes of mindfulness — beginner’s mind, non-judgment, acknowledgment, non-striving, letting be, self-reliance, and self-compassion.
• That acceptance and commitment to change and growth are not in opposition to one another and can, in fact, coexist.
• About my plans to attend the FIGT conference next week!
• A sneak peek at what’s coming up in next week’s episode.
Read More
There’s an old Cherokee legend about two wolves that goes like this:
An old man was talking to his grandson about life.
He told the young boy, “A battle is going on inside of me. It is a terrible fight between two wolves. One wolf represents all that is bad — fear, anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego. The other wolf represents all that is good — joy, peace, love, hope, sharing, serenity, humility, kindness, friendship, empathy, generosity, truth, and compassion.”
The old man then turned to the boy and said, “The same fight is going on inside of you, and inside of every person on this great earth.”
The boy thought about this for a moment. Then he turned to his grandfather and asked, “But which wolf will win?”
And the old man replied, “The one you feed.”
You may have noticed that I’ve written a fair number of blog posts on the subject of mindfulness so far.
And if you’re an expat or international student following this blog, you may be wondering what mindfulness has to do with your experience of living abroad.
Good question!
While the practice of mindfulness can be helpful for almost anyone, those of us living outside our comfort zone for a period of time may find it especially helpful for a number of reasons. We’ll talk about just 3 of these reasons today. Read More
Heraclitus (an ancient Greek philosopher) wrote, “No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.”
I love this metaphor.
The moment you step in the water, it has already moved on, constantly flowing, constantly changing.
You may look at the river and see what looks like a single entity, but, of course, its very nature is constant change.
And, as Heraclitus so rightly points out, so is ours.
“No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.” —Heraclitus
Both we and our lives are constantly changing. Our bodies are changing. Our perspectives and even our personalities are growing and evolving, responding to the flow of our experiences. Our values may change. What we want may change. The circumstances and events of our lives are in a constant flux. Our emotions are ebbing and flowing from one moment to the next.
When we try to hold on to the moment, to prevent things from changing, we often feel out of control, desperate, afraid. Sort of like trying to hold on to water as it flows through our hands. Read More
You may have heard this quote before: “Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.”1
Sounds good, right? But when we’re the ones suffering, it feels anything but optional. And to suggest that we’re choosing to feel this way feels pretty insensitive.
So let’s take a closer look at what this saying really means.
In life, it’s true that pain is inevitable. Every one of us will experience not only physical pain but also emotional pain many times throughout our lives. We will experience losses, rejections, and defeats, and they will hurt — there’s no getting around that. To suggest otherwise would be to deny our experiences and our feelings, and no real good comes from denial. (We may push those feelings down in one place, but they’ll pop back up in another — in our relationships, in our physical health, or somewhere else.) Read More