Photo: istockphoto.com

My latest blog post over at Expat Focus is the first of two which addresses transitioning to life as an accompanying partner and talks about acceptance as the first step in the transition.  You can find the article here.

Breast Cancer Awareness campaigns on Facebook asking women to make cryptic comments about bra colours and where you put your handbag have created hype and hyperbole in the press and the blogosphere in previous years.  However,  2012′s campaign has caused minor havoc to erupt in the expat community.  This year, women are asked to post  ”I’m going to ________ for ___________ months”    The number of months is the day of the month on which you were born and the place (a country or city) is assigned based on your month of birth – January is Mexico, February, London etc.

A reader of the announcement “I’m going to New York for 23 months” might raise an eyebrow and perhaps ask a question or two.  But when the writer of the status is a globally mobile expat,  someone (maybe more than one) is going to take it seriously.   Thus, in recent weeks rumours have been spawned  - “Have you heard that the XYZs are moving to New York for 2 years?”; e-mails have been written and phone calls made to find out exactly what is going on –  ”OMG! New York for 2 years!  How amazing!”

I have to confess that I was one of several people who were “sucked in” (as my children say) by the first Breast Cancer Awareness status update I saw this year.  Of course, I should have been tipped off by the precision of the time-frame (23 months) but hey, it was a military family and they are precise.  I was seconds off sending a note to a second friend when I realised that is was the breast cancer thing and she is not in fact “going to London for 11 months”.  (What can I say, I was the kid who pulled out her Oxford English when a classmate asked “Did you know the word gullible isn’t in the dictionary?”!)

What it did make me realise is that when you’ve moved to another country once, your perspective on moving is altered.  You don’t see it as such a scary proposition; after all you’ve done it before.  Your friends and family view your mobility differently too – you’ve already moved to one other country so its easily conceivable that you might move to another.  A serial expat  is born?

I’ve moved countries 6 times already and I’d prefer to avoid the fallout so you won’t be seeing “I’m going to Austria  for 10 months” on my Facebook status this spring.

Can’t tell you how excited I am that I’ve been invited, along with Louise Wiles (my co-conspiritor on the Career and the Accompanying Partner Survey) to participate in an online discussion with Tara Agacayak and Anastasia Ashman, initiators of the Global Niche. Louise and I contacted Tara and Anastasia to ask for their help in publicising our Career Choice and the Accompanying Partner survey. As we got deeper into the conversation about the origins of our survey, our own backgrounds and our perspectives on the challenges of leading a fulfilling life and career (however that is defined) as an accompanying partner, they suggested that the topic would be of interest to the wider membership of the Global Niche and offered us the chance to participate in an online discussion. Needless to say, we jumped at the opportunity.

If you haven’t come across it before, the Global Niche is an amazing resource aimed at supporting “creative self enterprise for the global soul”. Tara is an expat living in Turkey and Anastasia has recently relocated from Turkey to her native US (so recent that she is still surrounded by boxes) so they understand the challenges of living in different countries and cultures. As an accompanying partner you may well find that these words from their website ring true:

“Ever feel suspended between multiple worlds? Disadvantaged in your pursuits and interests, cut off by culture or geography, language or time zone? We believe that limbo state holds your secret weapon.”

Through sharing their own experiences, their creative, social media and coaching skills, and the experiences of other creative entrepreneurs, Tara and Anastasia help other “global souls” (yes, that includes all of us accompanying partners!) to find and tap their own Global Niches. I’ve been a member of the Global Niche since its inception, so I’m very excited that Louise and will be discussing the challenges of being accompanying partner with Tara, Anastasia and the Global Niche community. The call which will be hosted on Linqto, an online video chat tool, is free and open to all participants. If you’d like to listen to the discussion live and participate in the q&a afterwards, here’s the link:

https://www.facebook.com/events/325584220815080/

We’ll be kicking off at 7pm CET/10am US Pacific. If you can’t be with us live, I’ll be posting a link to the recording as soon as its available. Oh, and if you haven’t done the survey yet, please take a few minutes to complete it.

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/partnerscareerchoices

Looking forward to seeing you online on Friday.

Happy New Year! I’ve been in Australia over the holidays visiting family and friends and enjoying some of the sunshine and warmth that I missed during the last Northern European summer. While I was away, I wrote my second article for Expat Focus on Goal Setting. If you haven’t thought about what you want to do or achieve in 2012, perhaps these tips and resources will inspire you to reach for your dreams this year. One of the ways to engender a sense of accountability for a goal is to share it with others so use the comments below to share what you’d like to achieve in 2012.

I was delighted to be asked by Expat Focus to join their group of expert columnists. As their Expat Coaching for Partners columnist, I’ll be writing about the issues that affect the lives of accompanying partners. My first column, about dealing with some of the seasonal challenges that are particular to expat families, is online now.

To read my seasonal tips for expats click here Like to share your own experience or tips? Comment below or at Expat Focus.

What a phenomenal response we’ve had to our Career Choice and the Accompanying Partner survey!  So far, almost 200 accompanying partners have responded to the survey – an amazing start and almost half way to our goal of 400 responses.  Of course Louise and I have had amazing support from some influential people which has helped us to make such a great start.  If you’re interested in reading more about the survey, here are links to the articles:

Expat Women

Jo Parfitt

Judy Rickartson – Expatriate Life

Future Expats

Shelter Offshore

Kate Cobb

There’s more to come over the next week or two to continue the dialogue on Career Choice and the Accompanying Partner, so watch this space.  If you haven’t completed the survey, please click on the link below – we still need as many responses as possible.  If you’ve already completed it, thank you and please forward it on to all the accompanying partners you know; female or male, working or not. Don’t forget that your response gives you the opportunity to win some great prizes including coaching programs and great books.  We’ll have more updates soon.

Career Choice and the Accompanying Partner Survey

My own career took me from London to New York on my first expat assignment in 1989. Fast forward nine years and my soon-to-be husband and I managed (after a 15 month separation and a with the help of a sympathetic boss) to move to Hong Kong and keep both of our careers moving in the right direction. However, a baby, a new boss and one more move made it difficult for me to maintain my career. Since then, we’ve made three additional moves and had another child and my career in investment banking is a distant memory. Despite having no visa restrictions in two out of those three countries, I chose not to seek paid employment.   Though I have no desire to return to my investment banking, I have often missed the fulfilment and sense of identity that come with having a career. Why make the choice not to work? Uncertainty over how long my husband’s assignment might last, the complexity of our household logistics given my husband’s travel schedule, childcare resources which would not fill in all the gaps, lack of contacts in the countries I’ve lived in and the time required with each move to set up a household and get our children settled into school are just some of the reasons that, until I started my own business two years ago, my career remained on ice.

What decision did you make about working/maintaining your career when you moved overseas?

What factors drove your decision to work or not?

How has the decision impacted your satisfaction with your life?

These are all questions that Louise Wiles, founder of Success Abroad Coaching and I are asking in our new survey “Career Choice and the Accompanying Partner”. By asking these questions we are attempting to shed light on the issues that influence the choice to work or not and to better understand the implications of that choice on an accompanying partner’s well-being. We hope that our findings will help families to make more informed decisions about expatriate assignments and that they will further the dialogue on how accompanying partners are supported in a relocation.

If you’re an accompanying partner currently on assignment and would like to share your experience, please click here to complete the survey. It shouldn’t take more than 15 minutes to complete. If you can spare another minute or two of your time, we’d appreciate if you’d forward it on to all of your expat friends. As a thank you from us, every participant will have the opportunity to be entered into a prize draw.

Watch this space for news of our findings.

Remember those moments.  The moments in life where everything changes.  There might be an epiphany; the course of your life is inexorably changed and everything that comes after is driven by a sense of clarity and purpose that didn’t previously exist.  Or there might be some insignificant event; one which alters your perspective which in turn leads to a distinctly different set of actions.  Though the changes are more subtle,  it’s clear that life would have been different had that moment not occurred.

My own turning point took the latter form.  I was comforting a fellow accompanying partner whose youngest child had just flown the nest for university.  She was devastated.  Her whole life, her purpose and her identity were tied up in being a mother to her children.  She had few interests of her own.  She had done little for herself in almost 20 years.  Her life was so focused on others that she had completely lost sight of her own dreams and ambitions.  Her youngest child had left taking his mother’s purpose in life with him and she was lost.  At the time, I was already uncomfortable that I had not worked for the last 7 years and at that moment, knew precisely where I didn’t want to be when my children left home.  In the course of that one conversation, I strengthened my resolve to reconnect with my own dreams and develop a career (paid or not) which gave me a sense of purpose beyond my family.  The journey is ongoing and there have been a couple of major detours along the way, but I can pinpoint that moment as a turning point in my life.

In her new book “Turning Points”, launched today, Women’s Development Coach Kate Cobb brings together the stories of 25 women entrepreneurs and the moments that changed their lives.  In the introduction, Kate looks at how we can recognize turning points and how we can maximise their power of transformation.   Each of the 25 entrepreneurs tell their own stories, sharing not only the moments that sparked change in their lives but also how they made the change happen, what they learned along the way and what resources they used to inspire their journeys.  Two of my favourite expats are featured in the book.  Fellow expat coach Louise Wiles, with whom I am currently collaborating on an exciting new project (more about that in a couple of weeks) tells the story of how she created her own business so that she could have a meaningful career which accommodated her peripatetic life. Also featured is Linda Janssen who writes for a number of expat publications and is the author of the Adventures in Expatland blog.

If you’d like to read these inspiring stories, Turning Points can be purchased from Amazon and, as if the stories, tips and resources are not reasons enough to buy the book, the authors have committed 10% of the royalties from the book to the charity Seeds for Development which supports farming families in Uganda.

P.S. I’m a bit slow in getting my blog post out today, but if you do buy the book before the end of the day today, log your purchase at www.theturningpointsbook.com to be eligible for some amazing launch day bonuses.

What aspect of living in a new country was most challenging?

How did you overcome the challenge?

What parts of life as an expat were easy for you to adapt to?

Share your answers in the comments below.  I’ve also started conversations on Facebook and Twitter so have a look over there for more answers.

So how do you motivate yourself to keep moving forward with all the things you need to get done, when pretty much everything you feels difficult?

1. Team up with someone else who’s new.  You may not offer each other much in the way of help but you’ll be experiencing the similar things at similar times.  You’ll be able to cry on each others shoulders and maybe one day soon (I know it can be hard to imagine), laugh about your mistakes.

2. Don’t be shy about asking people who have lived in your community for a while for help to get things done.  You don’t have to learn everything the hard way – every expat has been where you are now and most are happy to pass on their knowledge and experience.

3. Give yourself goals for accomplishing the tasks which are outside your comfort zone.  Continually putting yourself in the situation of feeling helpless because you’re struggling to accomplish tasks that you could do with your eyes shut in your home country can be soul destroying.  Give yourself a goal to accomplish each day based on how ready you feel to take on the challenges.

4. Acknowledge your achievements.  It can be easy to look back and minimize what you have done because you’re measuring it against the benchmark of how easy it would be in your home country.  Recognise the challenges that make the task more difficult in your new country and celebrate overcoming them.

5. Enlist the support of your partner and help him or her to understand the challenges of the things you are doing so that he/she acknowledges the achievement too.  The last thing you want to see after telling your war story of how you negotiated the local systems to pick up your residence permit at the town office is that look that says “So what’s the big deal about that”

Be kind to yourself and, over time, you’ll find that all the things you found difficult at first become as familiar and simple as they were in your home country.

Don’t get too comfy though.  Once you’ve got the basics ticking along, part of the richness of living in another country and culture is to keep experiencing it on new levels and to do that you might find yourself once again stepping outside your comfort zone.