Which beliefs hold people back from adapting to a new culture?
The beliefs we hold are one of the most powerful factors of our identity that are holding us back from adapting to a new culture.
Perhaps more importantly, beliefs are also one of the factors of our identity which are the easiest to identify and change.
We can articulate our beliefs in statements like: “people should constantly strive towards increasing their amount of savings”, “hard work will always lead to success” or “only people from the same social status should mingle with each other”.
This ability to articulate our beliefs sets it apart from other aspects of our identity such as the roles we have in relation to others, the assumptions we make about the world and the behavioral patterns we have internalized.
Your belief system consists of thousands of beliefs
The main challenge of identifying which of your beliefs are detrimental for your success to adapt to a new cultural environment is that your own belief system consists of thousands of them.
You have beliefs about every aspect of your life that influence your behavior.
One interesting exercise to get more mindful of how beliefs influence our behavior is that for a few days, whenever you interact with somebody else, try to identify things they say that can give you hints about their beliefs about pretty much any aspect of life.
For example, when your conversation partner says that: “I will only meet with the CEO of that company directly, not with any staff members”, there will be different options for beliefs that can underlie this behavior.
He or she may believe that only the CEO of a company can really get things done, and therefore it is a waste of time to meet with employees. Or, it may be a belief that only people from the same status in the company should meet.
Certainly, for most statements there will be different ways of interpreting it, and quite often we will be wrong in doing so.
In this case, I would argue that although there will be different ways of interpreting this behavior, it is a good bet to say that the person who has stated this has a general tendency towards a high degree of power distance.
Power distance is the degree to which a person (or a culture) believes that differences in social status play a high role in society. People with a high power distance try to maximize the influence of these status differences, and people with a low power distance try to minimize them.
Noticing and analyzing beliefs like these in others seems, and certainly is extremely hard, but understanding the beliefs that influence you personally is not necessarily easier.
Belief #1: Adapting to another culture is like betraying my own culture
People tend to think that adapting to another culture is the equivalent of loosing one’s roots and becoming a completely different person.
That is neither desirable nor possible.
Essentially, the goal in adapting to another cultural environment is to learn how to achieve the outcomes we are trying to produce while keeping the people around us happy, too.
In order to achieve the outcomes we are trying to produce, do we really need to “become a new person”? I don’t think so.
Rather, we need to reach an understanding of the new cultural environment, while also increasing our behavioral toolbox. We need to make slight adjustments to our behavior, while still staying true to who we are.
Belief #2: Becoming bi-cultural leads to unhappiness
A lot of people with experience of living overseas believe that becoming bi-cultural can cause people a lot of unhappiness.
Their argument is that often, bi-cultural people are torn apart between their different identity layers, putting them into a crisis of who they are. And this argument is absolutely right.
Indeed, when somebody internalizes two different belief systems from two cultures, what often happens is that this person is unable to create synthesis between the contradictions that are inherent in these cultural differences.
But the reality is, that it doesn’t have to be this way.
While the belief systems of two cultures may seem contradictory to one another, it is always possible to integrate them in a way that a third, new way of thinking and behaving is created.
Working on creating synthesis between two different cultures is a great way of growing personally and coming closer to our own authentic self.
Belief #3: Our identity is fixed and determined by our past experiences
While it is certainly true that who we are now is a result of the experiences which we have made in the past, the belief that these experiences create a fixed identity which we can not escape from is dangerous.
Rather, what happens is that different layers of our identity are constantly changing, even if just slightly.
We certainly never wake up one day and suddenly become a completely new person, but we do make slight adjustments to who we are slowly over time.
Let’s just take the example of an adventurer who keeps traveling around the world and living in new countries on a regular basis. This becomes such a central aspect of his identity that he could never imagine changing it.
As it happens, however, one day he finds the woman he really loves and decides to get married. Is that the end of his identity as an adventurer?
I would argue that this is unlikely. Rather, he would find a way to bring more stability into his life to address the needs of his wife, while still finding ways to expose himself to new environments on a regular basis.
For instance, instead of moving to a new country every few months like before, he and his wife can decide to extend the periods to several years, in the process really getting an in-depth understanding of the new cultures.
Our identity is certainly not fixed, we can always make slight changes in our beliefs and our behavior without losing a sense of who we are.
It’s the more radical changes from one day to another that lead to unhappiness.
What are the next steps?
Next, it is time for you to take a serious assessment of your own personal beliefs.
- Which beliefs are holding you back the most from adapting to the new cultural environment?
- Which beliefs can you develop that will help you on your journey towards becoming a multicultural person?
- Which beliefs that you hold are contradictory to each other and therefore need to be resolved in one way or the other?
Lastly, if you want to learn more about cultural adaptation, you may also find this article of mine interesting:
