15 – A New Life – 30 Days at a Time

Pat Frank, in his immortal book Alas, Babylon, described a character’s morning routine as “unvaried and efficient”. It took a nuclear Armageddon to change it. Becoming an expat and starting a new life with new habits is not quite that dramatic but I urge you to look at that early-morning stumbling into a new kitchen in a new home in a new country as a golden opportunity to shake up your own morning routine.

Ralph Linton, one of the pioneer sociologists, supposedly said, “Most of the business of living can be conducted on a basis of habit, with little need for intelligence and none for special gifts.” Thus, benefiting from Mr. Linton’s observation, when we are in situations that require major changes in our life, such as becoming an expat, we can also uncover positive opportunities for building new habits, better habits.

An expat is given a golden opportunity while starting a new life in a new country. That new life begins with a new living space. Like a new continent to explore and settle, an empty new home is a delightful invitation to decorate and arrange to fit your needs, express your interests, and exhibit your trophies and mementos from the past. It is a pleasant sensation to leisurely consider what will go to each shelf, drawer, and horizontal surface as you unpack. But this opportunity goes beyond thoughtfully choosing what to put on each shelf and into each drawer. Yes, what begins as pure necessity may be followed by the joyful epiphany that we can consciously choose to reinvent our whole life.

Actually, changing habits is not even the first step; it must be preceded by the realization that most of our life is composed of mindless habits. Becoming an expat is also an opportunity to change how we think. Throughout most of our day, we are not making deliberate, present-tense choices. In almost every action, we are controlled by our habits; we are operating on autopilot. Thinking is hard work; habits eliminate the need for thinking. They are the greatest labor-saving device since rationalizations. Do you have to think about how to brush your teeth or button a shirt? No, these are habitual motions, performed without thinking. We execute the same actions, over and over; that’s what habits are for… to eliminate the time for thinking about routine matters. But this also means performing those actions - perhaps for years - without taking time to justify them or ask if there might be a better way.

But, if habits are so great, why should we want to change? It is much easier to follow our usual routine, something that does not require thinking. For most of us, like Pat Frank’s character, nothing changes, including our habitual ways of thinking, until something major forces us to change – something like stepping off a plane and entering a foreign country as an expat. However, rather than lament a lost lifestyle, we should rejoice. Embrace the enlightenment when we realize that we have the power to change. Now, we can carefully evaluate our habits, then decide if we want to continue living as before or if we should shift to a superior set of actions by making a few thoughtful changes. In most cases, such self-examination results in changes we wish to make.

But, even when changing is our choice, this is a serious business. We are forming new habits about new actions and, ultimately, a new lifestyle. To ease the shock, I propose making this transition in baby steps. Although you can do it at any time and any place, stepping off that plane as an expat is an obvious time to begin making a series of experiments. Rather than make a permanent commitment to a new habit, make provisional changes – a 30-Day test, if you will. Tell yourself that these changes are only proposed, temporary measures for a trial period. At the end of the 30 days, you can decide what to continue and what to abandon. Much less pressure, much less thinking, many fewer reservations. Change your lifestyle in 30-day baby steps.

One such trial was when I stopped drinking coffee for 30 days. It was an interesting experience. It made me realize how much coffee I was drinking. It also made me realize how habitual this was. Since that 30-day trial, I have returned to drinking coffee but not as much as before - and, now that I am much more conscious of it, with more enjoyment. It is now a choice with a perfectly viable alternative morning routine (abstaining or alternate forms of caffeine) which I explored during the 30 coffee-free days. This is only a small example of the habits that fill our entire day. Most of them, we are not even aware of. As I said, habits replace thinking.

As an expat, these 30-day tests will be experiences with real-world consequences. Reflection and review are fine but this test requires taking action, not just thinking. We have a motto in my state of Missouri: Show me. That means, “Don’t just tell me with words, show me with action”. Or, as my father used to say, “Until somebody puts some money on the table, all you have is talk.” Stepping off that plane into your new expat life is a great time to change habits that you may have maintained for years.

Going even deeper, our way of thinking is also habitual. Most people are completely unaware that we have the ability to change how we think. Prompted by the excellent book 30 Days by Marc Reklau, I began other 30-day experiments. One early 30-Day test was to limit myself to three hours per day of computer time. Once underway, I realized that, over the years, I had gradually increased the amount of time I was sitting at my desk each day. My day was largely spent working on the computer. It had degenerated into too much screen time, too much intensity while struggling with details and complications, and too much swivel-chair spread. I also realized working on the computer inherently involves a certain degree of stress and frustration – because the dern things almost never perform exactly as they are supposed to. I used to joke that my digital devices were conspiring to make me crazy. It is a joke, right?

Working on my computer only three hours a day revealed several unexpected benefits. When I was limited to only three hours per day, I was forced to carefully choose which activities I would work on that day. Prioritizing was critical. This time limit also emphasized the need for efficiency since I had only three hours available. A bonus of limiting myself to three hours of computer time daily: I had more time for other non-digital activities that had been neglected. Now I had more time for my family, for cooking and baking, for cleaning and organizing, reading good books - even for going fishing with my son.

What about you? What habits have become part of your life – perhaps over many years – which are candidates for modification or even elimination? What do you perform every day without thinking? What habitual activity have you made part of your routine without realizing it was still a choice? Even more important, how might your life be changed – perhaps significantly improved – if you changed or dropped some of your habits? Everything we learned, we might have learned differently – and it’s never too late to adopt some alternatives. Becoming an expat and building a new lifestyle will require forming new habits. Why not choose them consciously, rather than by botch-and-fumble evolution?

And don’t forget to explore some of your other habitual ways of thinking – about solving problems, about relationships, about self-discipline, about expectations, about career, etc. Such an examination might lead to attitude changes on the same order of magnitude as the physical change from stepping off a plane and becoming an expat. Bon Voyage!