Culture Shock USA - How to Deal With Culture Shock - Part IV

This is part IV in series "Culture Shock USA: How to Deal With Culture Shock ".  This is a final of the four parts of this series.  In part IV, we shift our focus on how to deal with fear and nervousness that result from culture shock.

Dealing with Fear and Nervousness

It is very important to deal with all your fears before you start creating your American dream life. Fear takes away the commitment from actions. When actions are taken under the shadow of fear, they lack commitment, and anything that lacks total commitment is not going to get you the desired outcome.

Fear is one of the most common emotions experienced by people when they arrive in a foreign country. Fear of unknown is one of the worst forms of fears we experience. Before I get into how to deal with fear, its important for you to know that the act of moving to a foreign country and a new culture, by itself, takes a lot of courage and I respect you for taking that first step. Continuing to make decisions and take actions with that same courage is exactly what you need to do.

What is fear? Fear can be simply defined as follows:

F - False

E - Evidence

A - Appearing

R - Real

Napoleon Hill, author of bestselling success book "Think and Grow Rich", writes in his book that indecision, doubt, and fear are the three biggest enemies to success. Oftentimes, the cause of fear is lack of ability to take action.

A doubtful mind lacks the ability to take actions.

Indecision and doubt combined together turns into a powerful negative force of fear.

Fear of the unknown can be resolved by making decisions and taking actions. Decisions and actions are the driving force of life. One common habit among the most successful people all around the world is their habit of making decisions promptly, and changing these decisions slowly, if the change is needed at all in the first place.

We tend to associate fear with pain. Tony Robbins, in his best selling book, "Awaken the giant within', writes about how pain and pleasure are the two most controlling forces of life.

"The secret of success is learning how to use pain and pleasure instead of having pain and pleasure use you. If you do that, you're in control of your life. If you don't, life controls you".

- Anthony Robbins

The same applies to fear. If you don't control your fear, your fear will control you.

Read that again.

If you don't control your fear, your fear will control you

Your fears can either paralyze you or it can excite you. Susan Jeffers, author of "Feel the Fear and Do it Anyway", discusses in her book how fear, when converted to sweet anticipation, can excite you to take actions. Fear, a negative emotion, can be converted to a powerful positive emotion of power from the perspective of anticipation and challenge.

Learning about American culture and American systems take massive action. Taking massive action is a great way to learn about something new in life. It is so easy to understand how action leads to success once you read the following:

Success is an outcome of good judgment.

Good judgment comes from experience.

Experience comes from massive action.

Massive action comes from failure to succeed at first attempt.

Think about it. If you never failed, you would have never gained valuable experience. Without experience, one cannot develop good judgment. Without sound judgment, success is impossible. It is very clear from this that failure inevitably leads to success, if you stay persistent and committed.

Thomas Edison struggled to develop an electric light-bulb for months and months. He was interviewed by a young reporter who boldly asked Mr. Edison if he felt like a failure and if he thought he should just give up by now. Perplexed, Edison replied, "Young man, why would I feel like a failure? And why would I ever give up? I now know definitively over 9,000 ways that an electric light bulb will not work. Success is almost in my grasp." And shortly after that, and over 10,000 attempts, Edison invented the light bulb.

Often times, fear is nothing but the lack of experience. Not having done something can make us feel fearful about doing it the first time. If you are afraid of doing something, for instance driving on freeway, have someone teach you how to drive on the freeway. As you will learn more about it, get more knowledge, it won't be an unknown anymore.

Competence gives you confidence, which in turn gives you massive competence. Gain competence in the areas of your fear. If you are shy, gain competence on starting and maintaining conversations (covered in Chapter 5). This competence will give you confidence and that in turn will increase your competence. This can be applied to any other area.

In next few chapters, I am going to share with you exact details of what kind of actions you need to take in order to create and live your American dream life, but before that, it is very important that you clear you mind of all the fears and doubts.

Burn the Ships

It is very natural for you to miss your native culture and country the most in your moments of struggle. During these moments of struggle, the feeling of fear gets mixed with sweet memories of home and limits your courage to take actions with total commitment. I've seen people give up before they succeed. I've seen people make decisions of returning back home before giving there 100 % effort in creating there American dream life. The truth is - anyone can create and live his American Dream life in this American land of dreams and fortune.

Hernan Cortes, a great Spanish conqueror, was able to win the conquest of Aztec Empire by doing something unimaginable. He was getting ready to fight the war in which enemy's army outnumbered his army significantly and it was almost impossible for him to beat his enemy in the war. He and his army sailed to enemy's land, and once they got there, he ordered his army to destroy the ships in which they had arrived. There was no way for them to go back home unless they win the war. Having destroyed the ships in which they had arrived, he and his soldiers knew that they had no choice - either they would win, or they would die. His army, knowing that they had no choice but to win, fought with total passion. They ultimately won the battle that made the history.

Anyone who takes action with total commitment to success can achieve the results against all the odds. However, if you pursue several paths at the same time, you may not be totally committed to one particular outcome. This might weaken your actions, and ultimately steer you away from your most desired outcome - the outcome of creating your American Dream life.

With these, we conclude the article series "Culture Shock USA: How to Deal With Culture Shock".  Hope the information presented in this series has helped you create a successful transition into American culture.