Why is it that expats go abroad? What motivates individuals to leave the security of home and try their luck in a foreign land?
From my experience, and by listening to clients in my coaching business over the years, it seems that one of the reasons why many people become expatriates is that they were not happy, or as they often describe it, they were "restless" at home. They decided, consciously or subconsciously, to move abroad in a search for that 'something' that would deliver them greater happiness.
If you can relate to this scenario, then here are some tips to help you transform your life abroad into a happier one:
Let Go Of The Negative
In the Universe there are many laws that we are familiar with, for example the law of gravity. But there are many others we normally are not familiar with. One of them is positive attracts positive. This means that if we hold some negative consciousness about something or someone, if we hold negative feelings, emotions or beliefs, we might attract more negative things. We need to let go of the negativity and detox our consciousness. This is even more applicable when we are in a country that is not familiar to us, because can feel vulnerable and at times, quite negative.
Feel Good About Yourself
We need to feel good about ourselves. We need self-confidence and positive self-esteem. If we are insecure, if we doubt ourselves, we really need to do some work to heal ourselves and feel whole and grounded. This is because in the new country there may be: challenges; misunderstandings due to cross-cultural issues; criticism; and we might come up against daily obstacles that overwhelm us. If we do not feel good about ourselves, we might get negative and then start looking for approval outside of ourselves, which can cause us to go out of our flow. A very important point about happiness is that there is nothing in itself (or nobody) that can make us happy - happiness is actually an inside job. If we look for happiness coming from outside of ourselves - from a person, a place, a country or a culture, we are looking in the wrong places and setting ourselves up for potential failure.
Don't Resist
Another thing to consider is resistance. As Carl Jung said: "What you resist, persists". We may think that if we resist something, we push it away. It is actually the opposite. We need to be very aware of this process and let go of resisting the things that we do not like in our home country or in the country where we reside. We might always find things we do not like and if we focus our attention on them, we will get more of them. If we resist them, they will usually persist and we will struggle.
Keep Your Ego in Check
The ego is the enemy of happiness. It will always tell us that we are not good enough, we do not know enough, we do not have enough, we have not done enough, and so on. It will cause us to put our attention on our apparent faults, which causes a loss in our self-esteem. It will cause us to be judgemental; it will tell us to criticize others, to look for what we do not like in others. This will just cause a lot of negativity. It will tell us our life is not enough and that maybe yes, we have moved country, but we are still not happy... and it is our fault! We really need to learn to be aware of our ego and be careful when to listen to it.
Connect With Who You Are
We need to know what would make us happy first, rather than hoping the new country will do so. And in order to do so we need to know who we are; we need to make a process to free ourselves from our original cultural conditioning and connect with who we really are. Whatever spiritual practice we use, it is extremely important for our happiness. We need to have the courage to be who we really are. This is not an easy process as there is so much societal pressure to conform, and so the process requires a lot of courage.
Do What Brings You Joy
Then we need to discover what we would love to do in life, what we are here to do on this planet and what exactly could be our unique contribution to humanity. Many people do not know what they would like to do in life and they try out many things. Again here I would like to bring your attention to the law of the Universe which says positive attracts positive. If we try out various things that we do not really like, we might become negative and go out of our flow. One way to know we are doing something that is right for us is if it brings us joy. When we are connected with who we truly are (within our soul) and follow our joy, then the flow is at hand.
Conclusion
As we go through this process - which I know it is not easy but extremely rewarding - and we connect with our core values, we are then able to discover the country, or simply the place, where we feel more comfortable and which has similarities with the way we are, our own journey and where we can fully express our life purpose.
Piercarla Garusi is the founder of PG Coaching and PG ArtWorks. A spiritual, metaphysical and cross-cultural life coach and painter, Piercarla is committed to helping bring about a shift in consciousness and healing in the human family. You can find information (and how you can help on her new project 'You Are Infinitely Precious') at http://www.piercarla-paintings.co.uk. Information on her coaching services can be found at http://www.pgcoaching.co.uk
