We’ve all been there. Whether it was due to starting at a new school or job, moving away or even settling abroad: Culture shock is a thing. It leaves us with lasting impressions and ways to improve and better our lives and the way we live them. Personally, I think it’s crucial to experience culture shocks every once in a while in order to become the person you wish to be.
Of course, there are different levels of culture shocks and depending on these, it’s more difficult to adjust and assimilate to a foreign culture. However, once you learn to do so, you gain so much perspective and understanding – understanding for the foreign culture as well as yourself. For several reasons, I therefore believe you can gain much from these so-called culture shocks and grow as a person. Be careful though, they are addictive:
- It makes you stronger to assimilate to foreign norms and behaviour through various and different challenges. Leaving one’s comfort zone is never easy, however, through loneliness and battles, you develop thicker skin
- As a result, it makes you more confident in yourself and your capabilities. Furthermore, you end up believing in yourself and stop finding excuses for not chasing your dreams
- You will inevitiably start chasing your dreams and you’ll find inspiration for further personal development through it. There’s thus something truly uplifting and inspirational about the process of culture shocks
- Furthermore, you will get to know yourself better and find out what you want in life as a result. Only through challenges, you’re faced with making important (life) decisions. As such, you have to dare to choose, and there’s no better way to discover yourself than through these life decisions
- Finally, it gives you a chance to start all over. Whenever you enter a new culture, you have to start over – you have to find your role in all of it. As a result, you get to reinvent yourself – it’s a once in a lifetime opportunity (unless you chase these culture shocks on a regular basis: Then you get to experience it every once in a while). In other words, you get the chance to become whoever you want to be…and is there anything better than that in the long run?
xo P!
Picture http://asiaoppo.com/info/culture-shock/
