Are You Skipping Back Home From Vacation of Dragging Your Heels Back to a Life Abroad?
Post-holiday blues are a normal feature of everyday life. Once pre-holiday anticipation and expectation are over, reality bites and knuckling back down to “normal” life can seem boring by comparison. For expatriates returning to their lives abroad can be even more ‘bitter sweet’.
I can think back to many conversations with expatriate friends along these lines:
“welcome back, how are you feeling?”
- “I’m trying hard to feel good about it, to look at the positives and get on with life but it is tough”
- “I am having some really difficult moments. I miss friends and family and hate that the holiday is over”
- “It really is an effort to motivate myself to get stuck back into life here again”
Do YOU get the post-holiday blues?
Imagine feeding yourself daily with negative self-talk about your enforced return to your life abroad, all this serves to do is bring you lower and lower. I’ve done this myself and once spent the better part of a day discussing with a friend our mutual negative views of our lives abroad.
Delighted to find someone who shared my views, I downloaded every single negative thought I had ever had about where we were living. While we laughed and enjoyed ourselves, it all came at a cost. The next day I woke up with a heavy heart and real desire to up-sticks and leave.
The problem with feeling like this is that it can be quite a challenge to break out of the negative and possibly lethargic mindset and find the energy and motivation to get out there and make your life abroad enjoyable and successful.
But BREAK OUT you must and it is important to remember that the effort it takes to get going again is very much like the force required to push a heavy weight, tough at first but then as it builds its own momentum suddenly you become surprised at how easy it really all is!
By all means recognise that there are negative aspects to life abroad. But also remember that life can be improved. It is better to spend time focusing on the challenge of improving life than it is to focus on the short term enjoyment that can come from a “complainathon!”
Also it is best not to sit around simply waiting for the next relocation in the hope that it will produce a better experience. Start creating the life YOU want and deserve right now.
Here are 7 actions that will get you skipping back to your life abroad:
1 Tour your favourite spots. As soon as you arrive back, reconnect with your favourite places, do the things you enjoy, meet your favourite people.
2 Think forward. Plan out some of your future work activities, with time for hobbies, family and fun. Review your goals and objectives to re-motivate yourself.
3 Get the family involved and doing. Remember the whole family needs to adapt to being back so plan out some fun family events that everyone can look forward to in the next weeks and months.
4 Take time out! Living in a brand new place is stressful, no doubt about that! Schedule some “chill out” time regularly in your diary.
5 Stay connected with family and friends back home. You enjoyed their company, so why not ensure it continues. Investigate Skype or other low-cost options.
6 Get organised! Catch up on all your filing, paying bills or financial planning, or clear out some clutter. You WILL feel all the better for it.
7 Record your successes. Make time each day to write down what went well. After a week read back your list of successes and repeat, you will be amazed to see how many good things you do each day!
After a holiday visit back home, the return to normal life abroad can spark a real mixture of emotions, from enthusiasm to getting back to normality, to dread at saying goodbye to loved ones and having to face the challenges of living abroad.
