"It takes backbone to lead the life you want, Frank."

April Wheeler: Don't you see? That's the whole idea! You'll be able to do what you should have been allowed to do seven years ago, you'll have the time. For the first time in your life, you'll have the time to find out what it is you actually want to do. And when you figure it out, you'll have the time and the freedom, to start doing.

Frank Wheeler: This doesn't seem very realistic.

April Wheeler: No, Frank. This is what's unrealistic. It's unrealistic for a man with a fine mind to go on working year after year at a job he can't stand. Coming home to a place he can't stand, to a wife who's equally unable to stand the same things.

This is a dialogue from one of the most powerful movies I have seen recently – Revolutionary Road. It is full of strong messages and thoughts worth pondering upon. For people who haven’t seen the film, it is the story of a young couple, Frank and April, living in a Connecticut suburb during the mid-1950s struggle to come to terms with their personal problems while trying to raise their two children. But really, it is a powerful depiction of the strong conflict between living a life in line with your dreams versus living a life in accordance with the script of the times and the society one lives in. And how this conflict could become magnified in a relationship in the dynamics of interdependence.

A prominent researcher in social psychology – Dr. Tory Higgins – talks about different selves people have. First a person has the actual self – that is who she currently is. Then there are the two “self-guides”. The ideal self, that involves her dreams, aspirations, desires. And the ought self, her understanding of what others want her to be - the self she thinks she should be. The conflict portrayed in Revolutionary Road is one between the ideal and the ought selves.

It gets more interesting when we look at the implications of having a discrepancy between who you are – your actual self – and each of the two self guides. According to the self-discrepancy theory of Dr. Higgins, when our actual self doesn’t align with our ideal self we typically feel depression-related emotions – disappointment, sadness and dejection. Indeed, in the movie we observe April experiencing all these feelings as she fails to do something that will get her closer to who she desires to be. 

The discrepancy between the actual self and the ought self – who we think we should be, however, is associated with a different set of emotions. We experience anxiety-related emotions – fear, worry, tension, guilt. We can see April’s husband Frank getting agitated and anxious when his prospective boss makes a comment about how his late father would be proud of him when he accepts that well-paying new position – a position he was planning to decline to fulfill his and his wife’s dreams in Paris, instead.

Of course, emotions are not the only implications of these discrepancies we experience when we perceive our selves as not measuring up to our ideals and standards. There are also motivational outcomes as we deal with the emotional discomfort. That is when we start looking for justifications – like when Frank says, “Well I support you, don’t I? I work 10 hours a day at a job I can’t stand” after accepting the high paying position to the dismay of his wife. Quite different from his wife April’s striving for taking action and planning on moving to Paris to close the gap between their current life and what they’ve aspired for, “that they would be wonderful in this world”.

This pull & push between the ideal and the ought selves is a major force that motivates many people to take action and work with a coach - people who can relate to April who says, “I saw a whole other future. I can’t stop seeing it.” Of course, it is not the easy way and it takes a lot of courage – or backbone. However, the key shift happens when one realizes that leading the current life in order to be the person she should be is a far greater risk than taking the chance to go for what she really wants.

For now here’s a few things to think about:

• What are your aspirations, dreams, desires? What does your ideal self look like?
  
• How about your ought self – the type of person you think you “should” be? 
  
• Which one is really more risky – striving for who you want to be or working on who you should be? 
  

The type of discrepancy you are dealing with also influences the way you approach your goals – but more on this next time….

On missing Vancouver and letting go…

I meant to write about our fundamental need to perceive our world as stable and predictable. How we need an anchor. I sat down at my desk and thought having a slideshow of random photos on my computer combined with some of my favorite music at the background would be inspiring as I write. But with the first few pictures, I changed my mind about the topic – let me tell you why….

Today has been a day of longing for Vancouver. With a few coincidences that I will share I was reminded of this amazing city I called home for 8 years. It started with a card I received from a fellow coach. The card had a thunderbird in the center – an important figure for the First Nations of Pacific northwest. It made me realize how much I’ve missed being surrounded by rich symbols of the First Nations when I lived in British Columbia. I have a framed print of the Raven - a symbol of creation, prestige, and knowledge hanging in my office. Then I heard the cries of seagulls, which for me has become a constant reminder of ocean – which I had had the privilege to see every single day in Vancouver. In the afternoon when I talked to my parents, they told me how they had come across the photos they took when they visited me in Canada as they set out to select photos for print. We talked about the wonderful time we had there and how we all miss the amazing nature of Vancouver. 

Well yes, then came the slideshow… You can guess which photos were among the first in the line up! Photos of coast mountains, sunsets over the Pacific, eagles in the huge Stanley Park nestled in the middle of the city … and of friends, lots of friends – from diverse backgrounds… and of me – happy to be surrounded with nature and friends… That was when I felt the intense longing and decided I have to write about Vancouver, about missing and about letting go… 

In their book ‘A Portable Identity’ Debra Bryson and Charise Hoge talk a bout a very important resource for people on the move – ability to let go. They define this ability as “giving up your attachment to the way your life was before some event, decision, or change altered its course…Letting go implies that you are holding onto something that needs to be released”. They point out that is not an easy thing to do because most of the time the thing you’re holding onto – your home, life-style, relationship – provided you with security. This relates to the theme I originally wanted to write about: our need for stability and predictability all serving to the higher-order need for security. In Maslow’s famous hierarchy of needs, our need for security so fundamental that it comes right after the basic physiological needs. 

A very important question to ponder on is ‘What are some things that you’re holding onto which might be blocking your way in adapting to your environment?’ Your roles, relationships, lifestyle – mountains & ocean? Without the awareness and working on “letting go” it becomes difficult to enjoy what you have. Then comes a point of decision – do you let go and focus on ‘here and now’, or do you fail to enjoy what you have because you’re still very attached to what you had before? 

Here’re a few questions to guide you in your journey of letting go:

• What do you miss about your life before your move? Make a list.

• How are you dealing with the discrepancy of not having those things anymore? You deny it? Get angry? Acknowledge it? Pretend? 

• Think of a time when you successfully let go of something you were very attached to – how did you do it?

• What will become possible/ available to you when you let go?

As for me, I feel that I am still somewhat in the ‘transition area’ when it comes to my attachment to Vancouver. Success in letting go lies in coming to terms with what letting go really represents - here’s my favorite part in Bryon and Hoge’s views on the topic:

“Letting go is not about forgetting or denying or ignoring what it was. Letting go is about trusting that the past will survive in you, in your memory and in your essential core self”

Confirmation bias ~ how it can make it or break it for you…

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Last week I was telling my students how they would end up finding my course interesting or boring depending on their initial expectations of it. We all have a tendency to look for evidence that confirms our expectations or beliefs about people, about places, about ourselves… Cognitive psychologists call this - very well documented -  tendency confirmation bias. It can influence how you perceive the world, how you judge people or how you evaluate yourself. And why do we have this bias? Because we like being right – it makes us feel good!

That’s why I was not surprised to read one of the first tips suggested to expatriates in a recent relocation article in the Financial Times  : “Don’t go looking for flaws!” It could have likewise said, “Look for positive things!”

There are many examples of how starting out with mindsets such as “They don’t like foreigners here” or “Locals are not helpful, distant, arrogant (list can go forever)” can spoil your – otherwise can be very rewarding – international experience! You will simply end up looking for evidence that will confirm those beliefs. And will you find that evidence? You bet! There will always be some behaviors that are unhelpful or distant, but even more importantly (or shall I say, dangerously!) some that you’ll interpret as unhelpful or distant. And here you go – you set yourself up for a negative experience. Here are three ways how confirmation bias works…

First, you seek biased evidence. You’ll pay more attention to – let’s take being distant – distant behaviors and you’ll become more likely to interpret even neutral or ambiguous behaviors as distant. Here’s how. You run into your neighbors in the mornings on your way to work, and they always seem to cut the conversations short. You decide “See, they are distant – all they do is a say a few words”. Have you considered the possibility that they are in a rush, or they are not confident with their language skills if your conversations are not in the local language? On top of that somehow you fail to notice their warm greetings when you see them over the weekend.

Second, because previously you have paid attention to or interpreted incidents in line with your expectations; those will be the ones recorded in your memory. When it comes to remembering things you recall things also in a biased way. Maybe your neighbors do talk for longer some mornings, but again somehow you always remember those short conversations.  

Finally, you start believing in what psychologists call “illusory correlations” – meaning you see relationships between things where there is none. Once you have in your mind­ linked locals with distant behaviors, each distant behavior you encounter will be explained by being [insert the group you have in mind here!]. In reality, there is no such relationship because there are many warm people in the culture where you live or there are many distant people in any culture.

And here’s the icing on the cake. All this can end up being a self-fulfilling prophecy! Because by now you have found enough evidence that these people are distant, your behaviors will reflect that perception – you’ll be less talkative and warm towards them. And guess how they’ll respond to your distant behavior! Congratulations, you have really made your expectation come true!

Doesn’t sound adaptive, does it? But don’t be discouraged, the beauty of confirmation bias is that it also works in the other direction! Imagine the opposite of above example – that you start out with the belief that locals in your new host culture are warm and friendly people. It opens up possibilities for very positive experiences! Well, you know what to do ~ enjoy! 

I'll get by with a little help from my friends...

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One feels the lack of social support most intensely after relocation. If you have just moved to a new country you are probably cut off from most members of your social support network – that is family members, friends, colleagues, your gym buddies, salsa group, etc.... That means you will need to start re-establishing your network, sometimes almost from scratch. And of course, you also need to maintain and enrich relationships you already have or have just formed. It shouldn’t be a daunting task, don’t worry – remember the magic number three from last time? You are in good shape if you have three people in your life that you can count on. Ready to do some thinking on this in 5 steps?

Step 1 - Let’s start with taking an inventory… Make two lists of the members of your social support network; one before and one after your relocation. In each, include family members, friends, organizations, informal groups of people with similar interests, your coach or counselor if you have/had one.

Reflecting on both before and after helps you to realize the extent of change that’s happened in your life and can account for some of the frustrations, emotional ups & downs you’ve been experiencing. Once we can put our finger on the reasons for our frustration, dealing with it becomes easier. After all, how can you snap out of your lingering frustration or stress if you don’t know where it’s coming from?

Step 2 – Know thyself: Are your emotional, informational and tangible social support needs met? In other words, do you have people who lend you an ear when you need to talk about your worries or fears; acknowledge your successes? People who offer you expert counsel or advice when you are not sure what to do? Friends who would do your grocery shopping when you’re sick or give a ride to the airport for an early morning flight?

Assessing your needs and becoming aware of where you are lacking support will help you to come up with an effective plan for re-establishing your support network.

Step 3 – Prioritize: What are the three most important needs you want to be met through social support? Deciding which needs are more important will assist you in being more focused and committed. Also the ability to manage our behaviors for meeting goals seems to be a limited resource according to research on self-control. In other words, because we will be using from the same reserves we can not stretch ourselves too much in investing to forming and maintaining many relationships as we try to cope with the demands of adapting to a new environment.

Step 4 – Why should you bother?? Think of the consequences… What will it feel like when you have all these needs fulfilled? How will your life improve?

Step 5 – Set sail! Select one need for now, and take it upon yourself to take at least two steps you can take to reach for support to fulfill that need. Research on procrastination (stay tuned for postings on this) shows that one of the reasons for postponing things is setting unrealistically high goals. So start with the modest ones to ensure action! After all “Little by little, one travels far.” ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

Be assured that these are important steps to generate the wind to fill your sails!