You may shoot me with your words, You may cut me with your eyes, You may kill me with your hatefulness, But still, like air, I’ll rise. – Maya Angelou
After a week of airline travel with two small children and multiple days kept indoors with extended family due to bad weather, all while struggling with a bad chest cold, I am thinking there should be a RESILIENCE award somewhere out there. But, unfortunately, there is not. Not officially anyway.
Resilience, or the ability to stick it out when your situation becomes difficult, has its own rewards. These rewards can be success in a new career, graduation from college in a study abroad context, facing the challenges of military relocation head-on, reaching missionary church-planting goals in the face of extreme adversity, or opening your company’s first international office. These rewards make us feel good, in the end, but can really cause some incredible anxiety while we are in the weeds.
[tweet_box design=”default” float=”none”]Resilience, or the ability to stick it out when your situation becomes difficult, has its own rewards.[/tweet_box]
Though much less trying, when I was in high school and college, I really struggled with math. Every day was a challenge, but I found a way to stick it out and complete one semester after another until I graduated. The funny thing was that no matter how difficult the semester was, I always looked back on it positively. In other words, once the challenge was over, I forgot how difficult it really was. Success in a task can have this affect, but the reality was and is that those classes were very difficult for me.
Likewise, if you are about to launch you and your family into a cross-cultural experience, you can expect some real tests. Please don’t misinterpret my analogy here; the challenges you are about to face will be much, much, much more difficult to navigate than college algebra. Whether you are moving across the ocean for short term study abroad or uprooting your family to London for business or a remote island for missions, you are about to be hit with some of the most incredible trials of your life.
But don’t let me scare you off. Yes, the failure rate is 2 out of every 3 people, but there are now tools available to help you and your family navigate this sometimes-arduous juncture. No doubt you will have days you want to just give up, but with the proper resilience practices, you and your family can stay one step ahead of these lurking and unforeseen threats to your success. Please don’t go into cultural transition blindly. Take the necessary steps to ensure the success of both you and your family. Contact one of our Global Ambassadors today to set up a time to chat BEFORE you make the next move toward departure and let us help you steel yourself for the forthcoming adventure so you can reap the rewards of real resilience.