The past
few days (and coming days I foresee), have been filled with cleaning and
organizing of the home, so nothing very new to report here. However, when
pondering what to post about, it came to me that I have received many
questions, and had many conversations, on the topic of adapting and how to get
used to and comfortable in a new place.
I have been
asked how we’re “adjusting” to new life and I’ve had conversations with women
who told me it took them quite a while to get used to the town/home/base, let
alone feel happy and comfortable here. One woman in particular I found rather
astonishing. She has already been here for three years and said she only just
became happy and adjusted here. She told me how she had been very depressed and
didn’t like it here and how she had missed her family, etc etc. Three years
later she was finally comfortable and is now sad that they leave in less than
year! I was rather sad listening to her story, and my head could only come up
with one thing in response, “gee, you wasted three years of your life” (don’t
worry, I didn’t say this to her out loud).
These
conversations and questions led me to some introspection, and I concluded that
I couldn’t recall a time where I had difficulty “adapting” to a new environment
I had moved to. I then attempted to break down what exactly it is that I do
that makes me feel comfortable and adapted in a new place. From these grew the
topic for this blog post, and the next few that will follow.
Mind you, I am by no means claiming
to be an expert, but I have found that I don’t have much trouble adapting and
some others seem to, so I decided to share the strategy that helps me, and hope
that it will also be of some help to others so they don’t waste three years of
their lives feeling depressed, alone, uncomfortable, and essentially, not
adapted.
Following I have listed two
elements I believe to be key in successfully adapting to your new surroundings,
and the sub categories/steps that I think are involved with them.
A)
Incentive/motivation
1)
A change in mentality/High Stakes
B)
Competition
1)
Territory
2)
Resources
3)
Alliances
4)
Culture
5)
Home Base
Part 1: Finding your
incentive/motivation
I believe without this, you won’t
get far. If you simply put “adapt to new environment” on your to-do list, it
will continually be put on the back burner. You need incentive and high stakes
to motivate you to achieve your goal.
Under A) Incentive/Motivation, I
believe the first step needed is a change in mentality. This is because you
need motivation to adapt, and motivation comes from within. People can offer
incentives for things, but it’s up to you personally to accept or decline them
as your motivation. I was on swim teams for many years when I was younger, and
the first place winner always received a blue ribbon, though there were
different colored ribbons awarded all the way up to 12th place. I
was very fast, and thus had plenty of blue ribbons, but this did not excite me.
I had a wall full of blue ribbons, and although blue is my favorite color, I
thought it would be much more fun to have a rainbow colored wall composed of the
ribbons. After deciding this, I signed up for events I didn’t excel in, and
would often glance to my left and right during a race to see where I was
compared to swimmers in other lanes so I could either slow down or speed up to
get the place I wanted. By the end of the season I hadn’t gotten every
place/ribbon offered, but I came pretty darn close, and my wall had colored
mixes of pink 6th places to bright yellows and deep greens (deep
green happened to be a participant ribbon). My rainbow wall made me happy in a
way a wall of solid blue could not. The colors motivated me, whereas the “1st”
in gold letters on the blue ribbon likely motivated other swimmers. The same
motivation does not work for everyone, and you must find yours. That motivation
is from within, so it’s your mind and mentality that will be your drive. Following
are three different types of thinking that have helped to motivate me.
I can recall going to camp in third
grade and watching other little girls bawl from homesickness, after being
parted from their parents, after less than 6 hours… “Really?” I thought to
myself. “You saw them this morning, like you see them every morning all year
long!” And camp was only 4 days long at that age. It wasn’t like we were going
to boarding school and not going to see them for months at a time. I couldn’t
understand it then, and I still struggle to understand that. Don’t get me
wrong, I love my family, and I often miss their presence when they’re not
around, but I never understood the value of the moping, depression, and self-pity
others seemed to put themselves through.
Perhaps it’s because money meant
more in my family. My mentality was telling me that my parents had sent me to camp this year, I may not get to
go next year as it would be one of my sibling’s turns. This was my opportunity,
this was my shot! Why waste their money, their/my time, or whatever it is on
self-pity? So as the other girls cried
and called home, I went out and played flashlight tag, knowing my parents
didn’t send me to camp so I could sit in a cabin and blubber.
For some of you, this mentality
will work. The idea that you’re wasting precious time or money by
wallowing in self-pity might be enough to get some people going. For others,
the guilt trip might work best. I know that for every opportunity I pass by,
there is someone out there who wishes they’d been given such an opportunity. For
the woman who spent three years here, not adapted and unhappy, there are loads
of people who wish they’d be given just one year (or less!) to live in Italy
and experience all it has to offer. How dare you waste the opportunity that
others would so willingly take for you!? So if the guilt trip mentality
motivates you, use that one.
The last one I recommend is likely
the one that will work best and apply to the majority of people. People are
selfish beings, so thinking of yourself and what you can get out of a situation
will likely motivate you most. So, think of it as life or death; YOUR life or
death. Your happiness, your comfort, your survival is on the line. If you don’t
adapt, you will fail and die. (Okay, “dying” might be a little extreme, but
this woman spent three years in a depression, unhappy and wishing she weren’t
here. She certainly wasn’t living, was she?)
This is where the Hunger Games starts
to come in (as well as the “high-stakes” sub category). When dropped in the
Hunger Games, their situation was life or death, very high stakes! But high
stakes are what motivate people. If you lost a wallet with only $5 in it,
you’re not likely to spend much time searching for it. However, if you lost a
wallet given to you by your spouse, containing hundreds of dollars, pictures of
deceased loved ones, ALL your important credit/debit cards in it, and heck,
let’s throw in your original social security card too, you’d be highly
motivated to find out what happened to it, wouldn’t you? Raising the stakes
increases your motivation and thus following, your actions. If you’re not
motivated to adapt, you’re not going to.
The more that is at stake, the more
motivated you will be in your actions. So how do you raise the stakes in your
situation? To raise the stakes of a situation, you must have more on the line,
you must increase the importance, the danger, the cost, the risks, the
considerations involved, etc. This is why I say to make something life or
death, it raises the stakes some doesn’t it? For me, I know that my adapting
affects my family, both my husband and my soon-to-be child. How much better
will they also be able to adapt if I adapt well? I will be able to help them
adapt and their happiness and well-being should increase along with my own.
Part 2: Competition
Like you had to find your
motivation, I believe you must also find competition. People thrive with
competition, it’s everywhere, from small-scale tests in school to large scale
Olympic games; competition motivates people to try harder and to prove
themselves.
When I moved here to Italy, finding
competition was easy. Since there are always people moving in and out of bases,
it is easy to find people starting at the same place as myself. The same was
true when going to college or camp as a child, everyone arrives at the same
place at the same time. But what if you don’t have that natural pool of
competition? That’s okay, pick someone who has been around for awhile. No,
that’s not a fair race, they have a huge head start, but hey, that raises the
stakes doesn’t it? You’re competing against someone who has already been around
and now you have to work double time to catch up. You can also compare with
their past if you find it too difficult to compete with them in the present.
Talk to them and learn about their history. I could compete with that woman I
talked to. She may have been here three years longer than me, but based on the
information she told me, I’m quite sure I’m more adapted at one month than she
was at 6 months, possibly more. The key thing here, is the need to find someone
to compare yourself with.
If there really is no one to
compare yourself with, you’re going to have to compete all by yourself and with
yourself. Some people do this when they lose weight. They can join groups and
compete, er sorry, I mean encourage each other in weight loss, or they can do
it alone as an individual. If someone were to lose weight by themselves, what
would they do? They’d likely have a goal that sounds something like: lose x
amount of lbs by a certain date. So do this for yourself if you are competing
alone.
Have a time of your own for
introspection and analyze the things that make you feel well adapted in a
place. Is it having a best friend that you can call up and hang out with at
anytime? Is it knowing the area so well you don’t require maps or a GPS and
could give directions to someone new? Is it being a regular at a store or
restaurant so they know you and your wants before you even speak them? Figure
out what makes you comfortable and happy, figure out the steps to achieve these
things, and coordinating deadlines. Voila, your competition and game plan.
I believe
that there are 5 main areas that require your focus in order for you to feel
well adapted in your new area. Since we have determined that this is a
competition, these are the areas you will be competing for success in. They
are:
1)
Territory
2)
Resources
3)
Alliances
4)
Culture
5)
Home Base
I feel like I’ve done enough
yabbering for one post, so I intend to make mini posts about each of the areas
of competition in the following days and compare them with the Hunger Games,
since they seem to fit well together and are an excellent life or death
scenario.
Please feel free to comment with
your thoughts or criticisms on this matter, concerning what I’ve written, your
struggles or successes in adapting and what makes you feel like you’ve adapted
to a new place, or whatever else.
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