Days 265-266: Adaptation - letting go of "culture shock"

28-29062013

When I arrived to New Zealand I wrote about my difficulties with adjusting to the new culture I had stepped into. I shortly realized that I was following a pattern: every time so far during this trip when I have moved from one country to another I have gone into some form of a culture shock, which has affected the way I view the new environment – in other words, I have distorted the reality by looking at it through negative expectations. This has become more and more clear to me now that I have returned to Auckland, the same city where I first landed on in New Zealand, and have experienced the city in a whole new way as my culture shock has faded. I will now write about this experience in order to support myself when I change my environment again in a couple of days – I will no longer accept and allow myself to be directed by my culture shock.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to define a place according to my negative experience of it without asking myself where my experience came from and how it was created.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe and perceive the new environment I have arrived to to be a “bad place” (in whatever terms have applied to each individual case) based on my experience of discomfort, shock and resistance.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to resist adjusting to a new environment by reacting to everything that is different from what I am used to and refusing to let go of my reaction, believing my initial reaction to things changing to be the one and only truth.

• I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to mistake my first impression of things with the reality of things, not realizing that they are in fact not the same thing at all.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to react to the temperature of my environment changing from comfortable to less comfortable and to through that reaction define the less comfortable temperature as “worse” than the more comfortable one, thus resisting every bit of my environment where the temperature was less comfortable – which was everywhere – and so making my own living unbearable.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to react to the cleanliness of my environment changing from relatively clean to not so clean, moving my focus into noticing all the dirt in my environment and ignoring all the clean spots, through this behavior thus defining my environment as “dirty” and resisting every bit of my environment that I perceived to be dirty – which was almost everywhere – and through this making myself feel thoroughly uncomfortable no matter where I went.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to react to the people in my environment changing in terms of ethnicity, behavior, openness, friendliness and helpfulness, going into helplessness and isolating myself from people as I did not allow myself to cope with this change and instead defined this new environment to be “wrong” and the old one to be “right”.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to wish for my environment to stay the way it has been so that I wouldn't have to step outside my comfort zone and actually make myself comfortable in the new environment – not realizing that it takes actual effort and movement to live the circumstances I am in into such that I enjoy living in – and thus getting disappointed as my wish was not fulfilled when my environment did change.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that adapting to new circumstances does not happen all by itself but requires me to pull myself out of passiveness and make the adaptation happen.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that I am required to move myself in order for adaptation to happen.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to resist moving myself because I have expected adaptation to happen all by itself.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that adapting to new circumstances is an active process throughout which I need to breathe, be aware of myself and my surroundings, find the problems and propose and initiate the solutions myself.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to resist committing myself to the active process of adaptation because I have wanted to stay within my comfort zone where things were effortless, not realizing that the comfort zone is in the past because it was tied to circumstances that are no longer here, and that I am thus holding onto my memory of what used to be instead of facing what is actually now HERE.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to justify demanding my new circumstances to be like my old circumstances with the belief that what I find comfortable must be “the right way” of doing things.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to blame my new circumstances for not being like my old circumstances because I have believed my demand to be justified.

When and as I move onto a new environment – such as tomorrow when I fly to another country – I commit myself to remind myself that I cannot take anything for granted, and that I am going to have to reassess and reorganize every bit of my every day living. I commit myself to reserve myself time for this process in order to make sure my basic needs are fulfilled. I commit myself to support and assist myself in this process of adaptation by focusing on keeping my breath deep, slow and relaxed. I commit myself to move through all moments of resistance with the assistance of breath as I see, realize and understand that most of my resistance is not due to my circumstances being actually unbearable but because of me facing the borders of my comfort zone. I commit myself to utilize the help of other people when necessary. I commit myself to embrace and explore the new environment within and as the realization that other people live and survive in these circumstances as well, and that they are thus not going to kill me or endanger my immediate well-being.