Working and living abroad: An experience that changes lives

Living and working in another country is no doubt an experience that looks very good on our curriculum and opens the door to a wide choice of experiences. It is a life challenge and a good and direct way to learn a new language, become familiar with a new culture as well as test our adaptability.

Whether for a long or a short period of time, this new journey is always a major challenge, because we have to overcome numerous obstacles. Leaving behind life as we know it is the first one. It is definitely a challenge to start a new life without family, colleagues, and perhaps not speaking the language.

If you ever made this important decision, you might remember your first days in the new country, arriving at the airport and the adrenalin surging when you breathed in the air of the new adventure that would change your life forever. You did not know when you would be at the airport again, but on your way back you were a different person.

From the first moments of our new journey…

The moment when we arrive in another country, we feel life is giving us a new opportunity. Difficulties we have to overcome provide the reward of moving us forward, stretching our limits.

Situations we do not normally face in our home country, we now do on a daily basis. For example, if we are not yet familiar with the local language, we are forced to learn seemingly small things such as go to the super market, finding our way to or work even though we do not know how to ask, not knowing where to buy a good lunch and overpaying for food for the first weeks until a kind soul helps us understand. Yet all of this helps develop our independence and adaptability to new situations. One day, we will smile at the experience when we think about how we panicked that one time.

The other advantage of living abroad is meeting new people. Whatever the purpose of our stay, we have to build?a new network. Now networking is not about people we know from our childhood, classmates or colleagues we know well; we learn to talk to as many people as possible who may help develop our social lives. And, if we add our limited knowledge of the new language, we might end up with some interesting adventures.

Professional and personal experience

There are two sides to the expatriation experience: the personal and the professional. Developing an awareness of our limits is important for the former. Whether we move to somewhere in Europe, Australia or Africa (in my case, I did move to USA), we face a new environment. We learn to adapt to new people with a different lifestyle and habits. Witnessing people’s different problems and the way they deal with them might help us re-evaluate our own difficulties and see them from a different perspective.

On the professional side, this experience can increase our resourcefulness and resilience. It shows that we are able to accept different working practices, which makes us more flexible and adaptable.

New country, new attitude

No matter where we come from, we live in diverse environments with specific attitudes, and we are all different. One lifestyle can seem stressful, another relaxed, but once we change our environment and start to adapt, we must be ready to change. Very often this happens unconsciously, and frequently before we adapt we go through difficult times. Everybody has their own experience depending on where they are going and where they come from.

Does this mean that we have to change our personality? For example, shift from being an introvert who likes to keep a certain distance to a public, jovial person? Not necessarily. We do, however, need to learn to be accepting of differences and become accustomed to them. It is a lesson in tolerance. One important thing to mention is, before my move, my company provides me a cultural change training, to know how to behavior to this new "world", and it was more than important, it was essential.

Attitudes also affect our professional life. What seems normal to us may not necessarily suit others. Some people work long hours, taking short brakes, while others work at a less strict pace, take long pauses or even break for a siesta. These factors play an important role in our job performance.

It is a great achievement to make it through the hardships of living abroad and to see ourselves do things which we had previously thought we could not do. Yet how else would we know that we can learn a new language in a couple of months? How else would we know that we are capable of working under conditions we have never experienced before, such as a different economic situation or even an unfamiliar climate? If we never travel without family and friends, how do we build the self-confidence that we can make friends from around the world? We cannot know until we try.

I'm glad that at Volvo Car USA I was more than welcomed and all my colleagues was worried about my adaptation and how they could help me on this process. Showing, that in a company like Volvo Cars, the most important thing is: People and they happiness.

Special thanks to Greg Nee and all Volvo Car USA family, who took care of my adaptation, always making sure everything was doing as expected and welcomed me and my family to my new "reality".

The main message of this post is: If you feel that it is time to change, don't be afraid. Follow your instincts and I'm quite sure, that you can do it and be happy and learn.

Robson Gomes