Merry Yule!!

Let me first remind you a little of my own Social Identity! In Norse mythology, Yule is the time of year when Heimdall returns to visit his children, the descendants of Jarl. He would visit each home to reward those who have done well during the year, and leave a gift in their sock. Those who had done wrong saw at dawn their sock filled with ashes. Yule is also a festival when people on their side, gods on their own, meet to share a meal, tell stories, feast and sing. Does it remind you someone? ????

That day is celebrated around the Winter solstice (today... That's why I post... Today! ?? ). It is observed by commemorating the death of the Holly King who dies killed by his successor the Oak King. They are both tree-gods.

There was the horizontal crown, of Scandinavian or Germanic origin, which bore four candles. Every Sunday it was customary to light a new candle, which symbolized the rebirth of light.

Social Identity and Interculturality

During my group or individual coaching sessions, I work with attendees on their own culture. It is important to know how you identify yourself to your own National Culture, and due to this identification, how you will react when being confronted to another National Culture. As Geert Hofstede said:

Culture is more often a source of conflict than of synergy. Cultural differences are a nuisance at best and often a disaster.

We know that human civilizations tend to be imperialist at their best, totalitarian when they don't have boundaries. We can see easily how The United States of America or the People's Republic of China disseminate ideas through soft power. We can see it easily as they are the most powerful nations on Earth, but mostly any group will tend to disseminate its own culture: colonization showed it perfectly (beside the pillage...). Some sociologists or economists even consider that major companies, by the same trend, aim at setting up at least a common ground in cultures, so that their market would be less segmented, thus would make it easier to sell stuffs worldwide. Although it sounds quite logical, I would rather say that I don't know as no evidence has ever been issued until now (if you have, please share!)

It remains that national cultures still exist and that we identify ourselves more or less to them. You can pretend whatever you want, the mental programming is there, inside you, and there are but a few who purposely deconditioned themselves! As said Pr. Hofstede:

Culture is the collective programming of the mind which distinguishes the members of one group from another.

Some of the expats adopt new parts of a national pattern. Some think that aping the locals - the locals as they fantasize them - will make of them a local. That will never happen. Your culture is the sum of layers, inherited from your own history, the environment(s) in which you grew up, the education you received. This education is the result of the cascading lessons learned by your ancestors, consciously or unconsciously repeated through generations: what some people call wrongly epigenetic or what is considered by some as a "family karma". You understand that uprooting this culture to rebuild one of your own is an immense work. The kind of work that yogis, as per my understanding, try to realize. Kind of work realized, in Asian culture, by buddhas...

So what you will be doing in your life is just adding some layers to your "cake". If you were born an Irish person, you will never become a Japanese person. What you can do is limiting the nuisance and avoiding the disaster.

Be who you are if you want to ease cross-cultural relationships

If I say "be who you are", you might ask yourself what happened to me! Am I joining the dark side of moronic life-coaching?! Relax: that is not happening! The problem when you migrate or expatriate to another country and try to "look like a local" is that you will look like a clown. Example, that was given to me years ago by a good friend living in Thailand and speaking fluently "a" Thai language. We were having a coffee, and when ordering, he talk to the Thai waiter in English. I asked him why, and then he explained to me that his Thai capacity was fluent, but his level of Thai language was not high enough. Hence, it would be difficult for Thai person to identify him to the social status commonly acknowledge for Thai expats. That could lead to cross-cultural conflicts! That discussion unlocked in my mind hundreds of reflections, and made me go back and work harder to this topic...

My conclusion here is that you should be assuming who you are as a product of your national culture. Learn where your culture brought you, and how it makes you reacting to other cultures' patterns. Then, where are the weak points that might lead to conflict, and find the countermeasures to take. Learn to adapt, not to mimic: not only it will make it easier for you to live abroad, but it will also make it easy for the others to live with you. No personal development here, just science.

How can you improve your self-awareness?

Well, you can treat yourself for Christmas, for example, and purchase my 12 hours of online coaching, including courses and exercises that will enable you to understand at what point and how you can adapt to other (national) cultures, and how you identify with your native culture. From this year, our clients will be able to purchase only the courses for $49 and then choose to add some individual coaching for 1, 3, or 6 hours, as they like. You can learn more by visiting our website right here: Cross-Cultural Coaching.

Enjoy the winter solstice festivities!

Sébastien, Career Coach who helps people finding the career that will make their life better... With no personal development bullshit!