Before I moved overseas, I had always worked. I lied about my age to get my first job in a restaurant at 15, and have worked ever since. I would have described myself as the type A work-a-holic personality too. I dove into jobs where I didn’t really know what I was doing, or wasn’t quite qualified yet, and spent nights researching what I should be doing just to make sure I was doing the best job I could.
Boy did I feel like a fish out of water when I first moved overseas to be with my German husband. I tried to get a job teaching at the international school before I moved, but in all honesty, I really didn’t know how the international school circuit worked. When I got there, I found out that international schools don’t like to hire you once you are in Germany as they then have to give you a permanent contract.
I found myself unemployed, and newly married in a foreign country – all very new life situations which created a lot of discomfort for me. I didn’t know what to do with my time while my husband was at work. I didn’t know how to be dependent on someone else. I didn’t know how to meet friends without meeting them through work. I didn’t know how to ask my husband for money. I didn’t know what to say when people asked me what I did – nothing? I didn’t know how to be unemployed and happy. I didn’t know how to go about finding a job in a foreign country – I didn’t even think there were jobs for me. I didn’t know how to cook or be a wife. I didn’t know how to talk about what I was feeling, and I didn’t think I had anyone to talk to anyway. Basically I felt lost and was basking in my misery feeling like a victim of my new circumstances.
What I eventually realized is that if you’re looking outside of you, at WHAT YOU DO, to figure out WHO YOU ARE, you’re going to struggle constantly because you’re going to be only results focused instead of mind focused. Making a distinction between WHO YOU ARE and WHAT YOU DO can change everything. Because if you focus on WHO YOU ARE, it ultimately will determine WHAT YOU DO.
WHAT YOU DO in your life is very results oriented. The career that you have, and the things that you do on a daily basis, your actions, that’s going to determine the results that you get. But WHO YOU ARE is determined by what you think. Ultimately what you think will determine your actions. If you’re taking actions from a negative or desperate place that may not be coming from the person that you want to be.
For instance, I took a few tutoring and substitute teaching jobs to earn some money. These jobs were not in my area of expertise, but I felt desperate to work, so I took them although I didn’t enjoy any of them. While I made some money, they never led to further work leads, or to anything really.
When I changed my focus towards thinking about what kind of a person did I want to be living abroad? What kind of a woman? What kind of a wife? Then I really started to think about what was important to me, what my interests were, and how I could channel my time and energies towards those. I realized that my top priorities were experiencing and learning new things, and feeling like I was contributing in a meaningful way to the world and to my marriage. That didn’t result right away in finding a job. Instead I used the time I suddenly had, which I had never had when I worked full-time, to learn German, explore Berlin, read books I’d always wanted to read, learn to cook, and research about finding jobs in international schools.
While my insecurity about unemployment didn’t go away overnight, I felt mentally challenged and recharged, which took me to a whole new level of knowing myself. I felt good when I told people that I was learning German in reply to the question of “What do you do?” My days were full and I felt fulfilled with all the new things I was experiencing and learning. I had plenty to talk to my husband about when he got home at night, and loads of questions to ask about what it was like to be German.
I still struggled to ask my husband for money to buy groceries with, but I learned many of the things that have served my marriage well over the years. For instance to celebrate the everyday moments, like having all our meals, including breakfast by candlelight. That was part of deciding what kind of a wife I wanted to be. Or getting up and getting dressed everyday, even if I didn’t have a job to go to. That was part of deciding what kind of a woman I wanted to be. For the first time in my life, I developed a real passion for history, which I combined with the love I had always had for travel to discover as much as I could about the new country I was slowly beginning to call home.
Fulfillment isn’t something that I’m going to be given from a job; it’s something that I am. I am fulfilled. It doesn’t matter if I have a job, or what job I have, or what country I live in. I will be there, and I will be fulfilled. I can decide this is the kind of person that I am, so these are the experiences that I’m going to have as this person. Not as where I am in terms of the place, or where I am in terms of the people, but who I am.
Think about who you want to be in your life abroad? Nothing out there determines WHO YOU ARE. It doesn’t help to try to find yourself and your purpose, out there somewhere. It doesn’t help to look to other people and their opinions to decide who we are. Instead, decide who you want to be, be that person, and take that to wherever you happen to go.
We are not defined by our career, or lack of one. Really, the way that we need to define ourselves is by WHO WE ARE. We can still be WHO WE ARE at our core, no matter where we are. Can you notice how when you focus on WHO YOU ARE versus WHAT YOU DO, you get so much more empowerment? You get so much more control over WHO YOU ARE, and how to determine what you’re going to do based on WHO YOU ARE.
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