Is the Expat Lifestyle Really for Me?

Just the word “Expat” sounds so exotic and perhaps high flying to people who don’t know much about it. Or maybe to some it seems like the “in thing” to do; maybe you have friends doing it and you think you should be doing it as well, because well that’s what lots of young people seem to be doing. You can have this attitude to travel and easily spend a fortune on travel, just to be able to say “yeah I’ve been there and done that, too” but it’s not so easy to be an expat and becoming an expat is a much bigger decision.

Like any decision in your life there are consequences, there are advantages and disadvantages. Here I’ll delve into a few of them…

Why am I doing this?

You can’t become an expat without a real sense of purpose otherwise all the heartache and pain just isn’t worth it. You make the choice to become an expat; it’s not like being a refugee where you have had to flee your country to survive. You should see being an expat as a privilege or else you shouldn’t be an expat at all. Why might you do it?
Because you believe you can give your family a better future in another country
Because the career opportunities don't exist in your own country 

·      Because you are working for some cause and to do it you have to be overseas

·      Because you are passionate about multiculturalism and world peace and you think living overseas will have a small impact on people’s tolerance of foreigners if you can be a good ambassador

·      Because you have an insatiable appetite for knowledge, you need to continually be learning, meeting new people and having different experiences

·      Because you are addicted to challenges and setting goals. You want to prove to yourself that you can “do this”

·      Because you are a fanatical traveller and you figure you’ll have a smaller carbon footprint by living overseas and exploring in close vicinity to your new whereabouts.

·      Because you are a natural anthropologist and you are only happy when you are living in strange places meeting amazingly different people

·      Because you want to learn another language, probably for love or for your career, and you believe the only way to learn it properly is to live in the country where it’s spoken

Culture Shock

In my experience it doesn’t matter how many times you move, inside or outside your country, you will always experience some level of culture shock usually in the first six months.

There’s a nice summary about it on Wikipedia I recommend. What is it? So there are phases of adjustment when you go somewhere new; there’s the Honeymoon, Negotiation, Adjustment, and Mastery phases and essentially 3 possible outcomes;

1.     You don’t adjust and you go home. Back home you struggle to fit back in, too initially.

2.     You relocate once and you feel happy there so you stay and totally adapt to the new culture.

3.     You take on board what you like about a culture, but you also maintain the values you see as important from you former culture. In this way you are able to adjust again and again, ultimately becoming an “expat” I guess.

Even if you are lucky enough to count yourself in the third category it doesn’t take away from the fact that you still will experience culture shock again and again every time you move. Believe me it is not fun at all! You feel alone, alienated, confused about who you are and what on earth you are doing, little things seem stressful and difficult and there’s a point where it’s so painful and you don’t believe the feeling will ever end. At this point lots of people go home, only the very stubborn continue to exist the way they are, or those that know they have an end date in sight.

Some people who think they have travelled a lot may think they aren’t susceptible to culture shock. The point is that you don’t get culture shock when you travel usually because you are always moving so you are always in the Honeymoon phase enjoying new experiences, etc. It’s when you stay someone more than three months that you start to experience it.

All you can do to survive culture shock is first recognise you have it, accept you have it, be willing to talk about it to your friends and family and know that it won’t last forever! This sounds much easier than it is in practice!

Family

Maybe some expats are lucky enough to have a family they despise so being away from them is no problem! But most normal people miss their families immensely and are missed immensely, and remember: absence makes the heart grow fonder. This means even those of you sick of your families after a few months away from them start to realise how important they are to you and how much you need to maintain them in your existence.

Thankfully these days there are a million and one ways to keep in touch with our families and a regular Skype chat and daily emails make it bearable. But do you have the support of your family for your Expat existence? For those who don’t it can only make the experience even more painful with the added sensation of guilt that you are perhaps abandoning your family.

Cost

Being an expat is extremely costly, especially for those who like to move around. Every time you move you have to either pay hundreds to thousands of dollars to relocate your possessions or buy them all over again, unless you think you can live on the very basics for extended periods of time, which becomes painful believe me.

Visas can be costly and time consuming and you can spend months unemployed waiting for visas to be approved, which could be days earning money in an easier situation back home.

Visas, red tape and shit

Every time you move to a new country there is a new mountain of red tape to get through before you can live there legally. Believe me this is a huge pain in the bum and alone enough to put lots of people off from trying to be an expat. It doesn’t get easier if you’ve done it several times; it just gets more loathsome!

Lack of contacts and networks

You have know idea how important the people are around you to your own sense of self worth until they all just miraculously disappear from your life and you have to start again from ground zero. This is both liberating and daunting; the people you meet in a new place have no idea that you were that embarrassing guy in high school that got bashed up by the school bullies or whatever so you can carve a totally new identity for yourself. But you might grow tired of trying to recreate your former identity or you might get confused about your new one, is this really me? If you are living in a country that doesn’t speak your native language, you might find it impossible to replicate your former self in the new language, say because you don’t know how to replicate your humour in the new language.

Some people may exist in very tight knit social circles with clear hierarchies. Someone may be well regarded by their peers at home, but feel themselves to be “nobodies” out in the big bad world. An expat situation is extremely threatening to many people’s sense of self-worth and self-image for these reasons.

My recommendation is to build up a network of friends at home that you value and respect and a network of expat friends who know what it’s like to be an expat and who you can relate to when things are tough in the expat lifestyle that your friends back home can’t understand. For many people initially this seems a less than ideal situation, but it’s the best you can hope for. It is important for you to keep in contact with your friends back home for many reasons, but most importantly it gives you that sense of identity you lose in your new home. But the support from your expat friends is as equally as important to stop you feeling alienated and alone during culture shock, etc. It is good to know you are not alone and others understand what you are going through.

A sense of groundlessness

Literally, when you live somewhere new it can be like you have come unattached from the earth. This is especially true if you come from a smaller town and you’ve thrown yourself into a big city lifestyle. Beyond culture shock, there’s an “environment shock” – you can have sensory overload as you adjust to the new sounds, smells, tastes, sights and so much unfamiliarity makes you feel like you aren’t connected to the environment anymore. It is a horrible feeling of loss as your old connection to the land so to speak gave you so much pleasure you were hardly aware of, as it was so natural and unconscious. 

Perks

Well the perks are better known than the blows, which is why I’ve chosen to concentrate on the blows in this article. But if you can put up with all these challenges and stresses of course you can be well rewarded in your expat life. You get to meet interesting people regularly, being outside your comfort zone helps you understand yourself and the world better, and you will have the memories forever of the beautiful places you have seen and all the experiences along the way. As well, the sense of achievement having conquered all those challenges only sets you up to fearlessly take on other life challenges! So you decide now if you think it’s the lifestyle for you!