Ensure Your Move Overseas is a Success - Eliminate Your Negative Talk and Get Moving!

At any stage in life you can encounter feelings of self-doubt and lethargy. It is estimated that we each have between 5,000 and 15,000 negative thoughts a day, rearing their ugly heads most prevalently when we're feeling vulnerable.

Although moving and living abroad can be extremely exciting and often a positive step to make in life, it also brings with it new challenges that test you to your limit and can leave you doubting your capabilities.

Below is a five-step process to help you blast your negative thoughts out of your head and power yourself towards achieving successful outcomes:

Step 1 - Raise awareness

The vast majority of your thoughts and beliefs occur in your subconscious mind so you probably won't even be aware that you hold them.

Your beliefs trigger your behaviour, making you act in ways you deem appropriate. Unfortunately the subconscious mind does not differentiate between your negative and positive beliefs, treating them equally and regarding both as 'true'.

It is important to raise your conscious awareness of the negative beliefs you hold by actively listening out for them. Every time you say something negative about yourself or your abilities, how you look, how you feel, how you think you're perceived by others, make sure you write your exact thought down.

Step 2 - Seek evidence for your beliefs

As mentioned earlier, 'beliefs' are statements that you personally hold to be true. It is interesting then that in the main, your negative beliefs will not actually be true. Beliefs are formed over time and the views of influential people in your life - parents, siblings and teachers for example - can have a powerful impact on the beliefs you hold about yourself.

When looking at the list of negative beliefs you wrote in Step 1, seek evidence for truth in each one. If you can't find any rock-hard evidence that supports your belief then accept that it is not true, cross that belief off your list and move on. If you do have evidence that there is some truth in a negative belief, make a decision to do something about it by following the next steps.

Step 3 - Identify your inner gremlin

Sometimes a negative thought can manifest itself in the form of a critical inner voice that sticks its nose into your business throughout your day telling you that you can't do things. I call it a 'gremlin' because it's mischievous and tends not to serve you well.

When your gremlin next pops up, stop. Close your eyes and imagine where it is in your body. Is it in your stomach? In your head? In your left arm? Your initial reaction is usually the one to follow. Now you know where it is think about what it looks, sounds and feels like. Does it have a texture? Is it cold or warm? Does it have arms or legs? Does it shriek like a banshee or does it have a low, monotonous voice?

Now you're familiar with it, give it a name. When it pops up next time call it by your chosen name and change its voice to something that makes you laugh (perhaps Miss Piggy from The Muppets!). Raising your awareness of your inner gremlin is important but it's just as important to belittle it and choose to throw its negative chatter away.

Step 4 - Set positive affirmations

Now that you are more aware of your negative beliefs it's important to set a series of positive affirmations to change them, over time, into positive statements or beliefs you hold about yourself.

Take 'confidence' as an example. It would be impractical to go from saying "I am unconfident in social situations" to "I am uber-confident in all social situations". The stepping stone approach enables you to make small but regular adjustments to bridge the gap.

So "I am unconfident in social situations" becomes:

"I am confident around my family." to:

"I have a friendly face and warm personality." to:

"I like going to new social events with someone I know already."

Work with one affirmation at a time and repeat it out loud when you wake up to start your day positively and just before you go to bed to help your subconscious mind process your new belief whilst you sleep.

Once you feel comfortable and confident with your affirmation write a new, more stretching affirmation and restart the process. It takes time to change beliefs so you must repeat your affirmations daily, as often as you can.

In the case of 'confidence', over time you'll believe you're more confident and there'll be evidence to support you. As a consequence, you'll become more confident in how you act and engage with other people.

Step 5 - Become intentional

Intentionality is not a skill that everyone is born with but it can be learnt. It is a choice between choosing to be acted upon and acting for yourself.

Realising that a belief (and its resultant behaviour) does not serve you well is incredibly empowering. Now you have a choice to do something about it.

Being intentional means that you are choosing to be more confident, be more open-minded, be a better communicator, be better at budgeting - whatever it is, you are making a decision to think a new way and move yourself forwards.

Rebecca Wells is a coach who specialises in working with expatriates.
If you believe you could be happier or feel that you could achieve more either personally or professionally, visit her website:
http://www.clearhorizoncoaching.com
You'll find more articles like this one and further information about how coaching can help you move forwards.

Moving Costs - Eliminate the Surprises

When you are moving to a new home, whether you are going across the galaxy or just down the block, some charges are going to apply to both types of moves, whereas some costs will only apply to one. For example in the case above, the UFO cost will be quite dear!

The costs that will apply for both are the packing costs. You are going to be paying for things (whether it is through a moving company or if you purchased it yourself) such as:

Moving boxes,
Packing tape,
Specialist moving boxes,
Bubble wrap,
Furniture blankets,
Packing paper
And whatever else you might use for packing your belongings.

These will be used to protect your items when on the move, so they don't break or damage. These moving costs, however, can be cut if you don't move as many items. This could be a good chance to have a spring-cleaning and get rid of things you never use in order to save costs. Or if you are moving far away you could consider throwing away things like old furniture to buy new furniture when you arrive.

Another moving cost that will occur (although differently) with both moves is the travelling expenses. By that I mean the way it is travelled. You are going to be paying for a van or a moving truck if you are moving interstate or just locally, these will move your items to your new home. If you are moving overseas then you will be paying a lot more to use a container on a ship (up to $18,000). This price, similar to packing, also depends a lot on how many items you have. The usual suspects for moving abroad, like families, older folks, they do bring a lot of baggage so it will cost a lot. However, if you can cut down on your items you will save money in the size of the truck or the size of the shipping container.

The moving company itself organizes everything, whether it is a business move or a house move, but they don't do it for free unfortunately. These companies price everything up, purchase everything you need, organize the moving of your items and even move it for you. This can come at a big price. The best way to cut down this price is to do as much yourself as possible. This includes things like packing yourself, which is not possible by law with international moving, also renting a truck and driving it yourself; again, not possible for international moves. My personal opinion is to pack everything yourself, if allowed, then hire a moving company to do the entire heavy lifting. Your back will thank you. Seriously!

The cost of moving, all adds up if you do everything the way that moving companies want you to, however if you are clever like me, then you can save on some of the moving costs by cutting down on the amount of items you are shipping or driving to your new house, and trying to cut out the middle man whenever you can.

Good luck on your move!

Diane Pedreira runs a website devoted to personal and corporate relocation. Moving costs can be high; find out everything you need to know about moving truck rental [http://movingcompaniesinfo.net/moving-truck-rental/index.html].