3 things I wish we immigrants would do differently

We are immigrants. We are brave and courageous, but we too are humans. We do things that are not always thought through or beneficial for all.  In this episode I share with you 3 ideas.  What do you think we should be doing differently? Where do you see a chance for imporvement? 
Leave me a comment as well. I would love to hear your thoughts. 

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Chapters

• 0:00 Building Belonging for Immigrants
• 9:15 Embracing dual belonging, adopting positive American behaviors, and respecting the privilege of living in the US.
• 20:22 Internal struggles of US immigrants, doubts about moving, personal sessions for guidance and clarity.

Transcript

00:00 - Ewelina (Host)
Hi, my friends, this is Evelina, life coach for immigrants, and first of all, before I forget, I have made a small change. I am adding the video element to these podcasts as well. So if you would rather watch what it looks like when I record these episodes, you can go to my YouTube channel. You will find the link in the description of this show and when you are there, please make sure to subscribe and help me grow my channel and share this episode with your friends. Many of my immigrant clients didn't know that this podcast even exists, so help me spread the word. 

00:44
Today we're gonna have a real talk. We're gonna look in the mirror and see what we could improve. Let's talk about three things we can do better. Number one I wish more of us would make a decision to connect to this beautiful country moved to from a place of choice. You want to know how to do that by creating safety for yourself First with a new, and then deciding how we will be connecting to the outside world. And the beautiful thing is that you can connect from a place of kindness for yourself and others, from a place of gratitude to have an opportunity to live here. 

01:30
Some of you might get offended and say but this is how I am a Marina, okay, awesome, continue on, my friend. I believe that this is the best way. But for those of us that are not always kind and loving and grateful and from time to time feel like they don't belong, like it's not your home, even though you maybe have lived here in the US for a long time, if you judge trust anxious and social situations, here is what I want for you to remember. When we move here, our brains will try to keep us safe by pointing out all of the differences between us and Americans. We will be focusing on what is different between the US and our home country, and this is normal, but it's not helpful when it comes to building belonging. Belonging is as important as food and shelter. It's the basic human need. But how can you feel safe to build connections and belonging in this environment If you allow your brain to constantly keep on seeing the other people as different to our lower brain? What is different is not safe. Building connections by hoping that it will kind of happen on its own is a costly mistake, my friend, if you don't make a clear choice that you want to build connections and how you're gonna go about it. This process, first of all, is gonna take you a long time and it's gonna cost you money because it will stop you from feeling safe enough to grow and change in the direction you want. Your American dream requires you to become the person that achieves the dream. If you cannot feel safe enough to change and grow, that is costing you that American dream. Also, if you're just hoping that it will happen on its own, you feel completely like it's outside of your control and that it's the other people who get to decide how you connect, if you connect at all. 

03:55
How many of you know immigrants that have moved here to the US and never learned to speak English well enough to get by on their own, that only hang out with people from their own country? It's like they don't really belong in the US. They belong to the small world that mimics the place they came from People who think like them, people who speak the same language. That's all they know. And that world, my friend, is small and anything outside of it does not feel safe. Many of us walk kind of in the middle, where we are with one foot in our own culture and with the other foot in this American world, and slowly slowly because they can take years where we become more open to Americans, more comfortable. But building belonging that way is hard because it's happening by chance. We're just kind of letting it happen and we are not making decisions for ourselves. 

05:04
For those of you who listen to me but are kind of confused about, like, what is she talking about? What is this belonging all about? I'm not sure. I'm gonna explain it like this. When we don't belong, we have these kind of thoughts. They don't like me because I have an accent. They think they're better than me. I don't belong here. They're judging me. They think that I'm stupid because I don't know anything. Nobody really knows me and nobody cares about me. I feel so alone in so many ways. I feel shy. Other people think I'm weird, I'm not from here and it shows. Everybody knows what they're talking about and I don't. When we have these kinds of thoughts, we feel disconnected, alone, lost, sad, stressed and overwhelmed and we are not free to be ourselves. We don't feel supported, we don't feel like we fit in. We feel lonely and misunderstood. We suffer. I want to offer my friend that this is not necessary. If this is where you're at, you don't have to continue on this path. 

06:30
You can decide how you want to think about yourself as an immigrant, about Americans, about what you have in common, and I am not saying that you're supposed to all of a sudden stop seeing differences. Of course we're different, but I'd like you to look at what we have in common. What are the places of connection? How do you want to feel when you're interacting with Americans? Do you want to shrink Because you think that they are judging you, or do you want to feel comfortable, to be yourself, relaxed, open, kind, soft, feeling safe to share who you are with the world, share about where you came from? We have so many things we could talk about. This might be super obvious to you, but for many of us it's not. 

07:29
As a person who has left in another country, you have a whole world inside of you that others don't know about and there are a lot of people that would love to learn about it. You can hold such interesting conversations. You can talk about the different ways you celebrate the holidays, about the history of your country, different customs. It's fascinating and it can actually show you who is interested in you, who would really like to connect to you. When you belong somewhere you are healthier, happier, if you have a stronger sense of motivation, because you know that when you struggle, there will be someone who will help you, and that in itself gives you a deep sense of comfort. So, my friends, I wish you would choose to create a sense of belonging on purpose, because it is a better way. If you need help with this, reach out to me. This is one of the ways I help a lot of my clients. We look at how we can create this sense of belonging for you, specifically for you, so you can start feeling in the US like it's your home. Of course, it's not the same as your home country, but it's a safe, comfortable place where you can start to really grow and change the direction you want to go in and develop more skills that will help you create an even more successful life, because you will feel supported to do so. 

09:14
Now, remember, when I am talking about belonging and living in the US and really connecting to the US, I want for you to understand me clearly. I am not saying that that means you're going to be cheating somehow, some way, on where you've come from, and that you're only allowed to love one country, to appreciate just one country. And if you even say to yourself I love living here, I love the US, I love these people here and I love the chances and the opportunities I have gotten here and there's so much good for me here that now, all of a sudden, you're cheating on a place you come from. So in my case it will be like I would be cheating on Poland. No, you can love both places, you can appreciate both of them, and I suggest that you do that, because if you choose to belong to the US and you choose how that connection happens I'm not even saying that needs to happen, like I just said. Right, you decide. All I'm suggesting is you decide I have made a decision at one point of my life that I'm gonna love everywhere I live, that I'm gonna appreciate and see the beauty in the places I live, because what happens is my friends is that I get to feel that feeling and my life gets lighter and easier and more pleasant. So I'm being very selfish here when I'm saying that I have chosen to love the US and I also have chosen to love Poland on purpose. And why? Again, because I get to feel that feeling, and so this is what I'm suggesting you get to make a choice. What do you want to think about the US, about your home country? You get to decide. Many of us don't decide on purpose, and I wish that you would give yourself a right to do so, because then you also get to decide what is the main feeling that you feel in relation to the place you live in. Okay, let's go to point number two Now. 

11:11
This might strike an error for some of you, and that's okay, I'm still gonna say it. I wish that we would pay attention to the positive behaviors Americans show in public and we would make an effort to act similarly. What do I mean exactly? You know how Americans smile at each other and they say hello and acknowledge each other, even if they don't know one another. That's what I'm talking about. That's one example. But also being just polite and saying please and thank you. You know acting friendly in those daily interactions, not pretending that you don't see the other person as you're passing them on a sidewalk, smiling, saying please, thank you to the clerk and the grocery store. You know, I know that a lot of people, especially from my part of the world, are not used to it, because that's just not what happens in Poland it's not very common. So that level of politeness, then, please and thank you. 

12:19
I had to learn it. Not necessarily saying hello to someone when I'm passing them on a street, but smiling at them yeah, smiling kindness, right, the small talk. If I walk out with my dog and I meet someone with another dog and we just stop and the dogs are sniffing each other's butts and we're just chatting about the weather. I had to learn that and I also wish that we would appreciate this country and the fact that we have been welcomed here, that we can live here. You know, sometimes I hear these negative opinions about Americans and then I think to myself hold on, think about how immigrants are treated in your country of origin. Because, honestly, if I was to compare the way Americans treat immigrants to how not all but some Polish people treat immigrants, americans are very, very tolerant in comparison. So that's something to keep in mind and I just wish that, before you judge, you'd ask that question of yourself what is it like in my culture of origin? 

13:27
We basically moved here and we're welcomed here, but I sometimes like to think about it like this you have a house that you live in and a stranger that does not speak your language. Well, that is from a completely different environment, wants to move in, and that stranger is behaving in a different way, has different customs, different way of understanding things, different reactions than that you're used to, cooks different food, believes maybe differently than you, but you welcome that person into your home. I know that this is an extreme example, because our home is our home and you know city or a overall country. It's different because home is more of a personal space, but still we are being welcomed here and I wish that more of us would appreciate Americans for their kindness. There's a lot, a lot of Americans that are very, very kind and that we also would be forgiving towards those that might be acting a little bit strange. 

14:28
I remember when I would, in the first years of me living here, I had sometimes situations when I was interacting with people who have never seen a foreigner before and they were treating me like I was from some sort of a circus, because I opened my mouth and they heard my accent and they could not really understand very well what I was saying to them and they were just confused and you know I made it mean a lot of different things. I felt very, very bad about it myself, and I remember actually, at one point I started to ask them say do you want me to speak slower? Are you having a hard time understanding me? They would nod their head and I'm like, okay, I need to speak slower. They're not sure what I'm saying to them. So let's give Americans some grace as well, like it's all in our power. Okay, another thing that might not be super obvious to you, but it's quite obvious to me I wish that we would respect the fact that we get to live here by respecting our environment and keeping it clean. 

15:34
I live in a pretty clean city and still, when I walk my dog every day, I pick up trash and throw it away every single day. So who throws it? Is it Americans only? I doubt it, because where I live there are a lot of immigrants as well. We can do better. We can show respect to this beautiful place. 

16:01
Ok, the last point, number 3. We could recognize what we went through and give ourselves credit for our strength. How much work it took to assimilate, how we went against the evolution of our brain that loves safety. We threw ourselves into the unknown over and over and over, and we succeeded. This is what the strongest people do, and we are strong. I wish we would give ourselves credit for it, but also for some of you. 

16:40
I wish that you would give yourself a right to take care of your needs. Realize, I have arrived. I can relax a little bit, I can take care of my inner needs. I worked so hard, conquered so many obstacles and now I am exhausted, not happy. What does my soul need? What am I feeling on a daily basis? If I am tired? Why am I feeling like this? Why am I feeling overwhelmed? I wish you would give yourself a right to take care of the deeper needs, now that your survival is taken care of. I wish you would give yourself that gift, because you are strong and beautiful and courageous and you simply deserve it. Ok, my friends, this is it. 

17:31
I want to remind you about a few things. First of all, if you are an immigrant that has a hard time in social situations with Americans where you do not feel comfortable in their presence and you feel anxious, you feel anxious, overwhelmed, confused, because you know that your English is not that good. You think that you are being judged because every time you open your mouth you might make a mistake. I have a course for you. It's called how to feel good hanging out with Americans when you are the only immigrant in the group. Most of us immigrants think that for us to feel accepted, we have to become someone else, someone we are not. We have to speak better English and be more like Americans. But then we think I am never gonna be like them. And first of all do I want to? Right, we just want to be who we are. But to feel accepted, you don't have to become someone you are not. In fact, you can and should be more of who you actually are. 

18:44
What really needs to change is what's happening within us, how much space we give ourselves for making mistakes, what is our own tolerance for failure, how we react within when we make a mistake. When we're talking to an American, what's happening in our heads? What is that first thought that comes to your mind when you mess something up or when someone ignores you and does not feel like talking to you, and you're hoping to connect with that person In that moment? Are you a safe space for yourself or not? Do you know how to take care of yourself in that moment? Or maybe you pretend that everything is fine, even though deep inside it's not, you're hurt. 

19:30
In this course, I teach you what to do, exactly how to feel calm, relaxed and in control when you're interacting with Americans. If you need help with this, go to the description of this show to sign up. Watch the videos and learn what to do exactly to feel better in those daily interactions with Americans. Also, my friends, keep in mind that as a life code for immigrants, I hope my clients develop true self-confidence, self-confidence that will not leave you once you develop and then know how to keep on developing it more. I also hope you develop sense of belonging and I hope you manage your stress. So reach out to me if you feel stressed, if you feel overwhelmed, anxious, if you need help figuring out where your true home is. 

20:22
Some of you really struggle with this, if you even should live in the US. There are a lot of immigrants that hire me because they feel this inner conflict. It's a really hard place to be right when you don't know if you made the right choice, if this life here is the life you should be living. I will help you find the answers to these deep questions that spin in your mind and cause a lot of confusion and feeling lost. If you need help with this, please reach out to me. I was in that space for many years, so I really understand what it's like. You can hire me for one-to-one sessions and to do that, go to the description of the show schedule a free consultation. This is where we will talk for about 45 minutes and you will tell me what you need help with and if I can help you I will explain exactly how I would do that. Okay, my friends, this is it. Have a wonderful, beautiful day and I will talk to you next time.