Why we need to embrace culture shock | Kristofer Gilmour | TEDxTownsville

Summary

The speaker shares their experience of navigating culture shock while traveling through India and how it transformed into what they call 'culture comfort.' They emphasize embracing newness rather than fearing it, proposing a three-step process: wander aimlessly to immerse in local surroundings, engage in everyday tasks to become part of the environment, and reflect on experiences to understand personal growth. The approach highlights the importance of adjusting to unfamiliar situations with curiosity and optimism, allowing individuals to adapt, learn, and integrate into new cultures without the burden of culture shock.

Takeaways

• 🏍️ The speaker shares a story about an unintended journey through India, which led to an unexpected and valuable experience.
• 😨 Culture shock is described as the disorienting sensation when confronted with unfamiliar sights, sounds, and experiences in a new place.
• 🔍 Instead of resisting newness, the speaker suggests embracing it by using a three-step formula: *Flânerie* (wandering), embracing the space, and reflection.
• 👀 *Flânerie* (wandering) means taking time to observe surroundings without a specific goal, allowing unexpected insights to emerge.
• 📍 Step two, embracing space, involves participating in local daily activities to increase comfort and reduce the initial shock of unfamiliarity.
• 📝 Reflection is key to solidifying new experiences and understanding the process of cultural adaptation. Writing or journaling is encouraged.
• 🌍 The speaker highlights that culture shock isn’t just about traveling; it can happen in any new situation, such as starting a new job or joining a new community.
• 🧠 Overcoming culture shock involves recognizing its symptoms, embracing discomfort, and actively seeking to engage with the new environment.
• 💪 Stepping outside one’s comfort zone and confronting the fear of newness is necessary for building a sense of belonging.
• 🌟 The overall message is to approach new environments with curiosity, patience, and openness, viewing them as opportunities for growth and learning.

Q & A

What is the main theme of the speaker's message?

The speaker's message revolves around the experience of culture shock and how to transition from culture shock to 'culture comfort' by embracing new environments, immersing oneself in the unfamiliar, and reflecting on the experience.

How does the speaker describe the initial feeling of culture shock?

The speaker describes culture shock as overwhelming and disorienting, where sensory input like smells, sounds, and sights overload the brain, making it difficult to process the new environment. There's a feeling of being lost, confused, and disconnected from what’s familiar.

What analogy does the speaker use to describe trying to adapt old behaviors in a new culture?

The speaker compares it to trying to pedal a bike after the chain has come off. Despite wanting to do things the same way as at home, it might not work in a new environment, emphasizing the need for adaptation.

What are the three steps the speaker proposes to overcome culture shock?

The three steps are: 1) 'Flânerie' or wandering around and observing, 2) embracing the space around and engaging in everyday activities, and 3) reflection, which involves thinking about and learning from the experience.

Why does the speaker emphasize 'wandering' as the first step in dealing with culture shock?

Wandering allows people to observe their surroundings and absorb the new environment gradually. It helps to familiarize oneself with the place without the pressure of fitting in immediately, making it easier to transition from unfamiliarity to comfort.

What personal story does the speaker share to illustrate culture shock?

The speaker shares a story about living in Delhi and instinctively seeking out a supermarket for groceries, even though there were local ways to get milk and vegetables. This illustrates how people tend to revert to familiar behaviors in new environments, even when other, more convenient local options exist.

What is the significance of 'embracing the space' in the speaker’s approach?

'Embracing the space' involves engaging with the local environment and performing everyday tasks, like buying groceries or finding a coffee shop. This participation in daily activities helps to bridge the gap between newness and comfort, allowing for a gradual adjustment to the culture.

How does the speaker describe the relationship between newness and culture comfort?

The speaker explains that as the newness of an environment decreases through exposure and participation in daily norms, 'culture comfort' increases. Engaging with local practices helps in adjusting to the environment and building familiarity.

Why is reflection considered an essential step in overcoming culture shock?

Reflection allows individuals to step back and understand their experiences. It provides a broader perspective on how they are adjusting, helps challenge preconceived notions, and reveals that normalcy is not static but changeable.

How does the speaker suggest reflection should be done?

The speaker suggests using tools like journaling, blogging, or writing letters to friends and family to vividly describe experiences. This helps to digest and process the emotions and challenges of adapting to a new culture.

Outlines

00:00

🏍️ Embracing Culture Shock Through Personal Experience

The speaker begins by recounting an unexpected adventure in India, where a wrong turn on a motorbike ride shifted their journey. This unplanned experience sparked a reflection on culture shock, suggesting that we often view new environments through a lens of discomfort, searching for familiarity. The speaker proposes that rather than fear newness, we should explore how to adapt to these differences and accept that we may initially feel out of place. They introduce a formula for transitioning from 'newness' to 'familiarity' and encourage the audience to engage fully with their surroundings to overcome culture shock.

05:00

🌍 The Struggle and Avoidance of New Experiences

In this paragraph, the speaker describes the human instinct to avoid uncomfortable or unfamiliar activities when faced with a new environment. Despite knowing the local way of doing things, they admit to repeatedly seeking familiar options (like supermarkets), which contradicts the essence of their journey. This highlights a common response to newness—sticking to familiar patterns and avoiding challenges. The speaker encourages embracing the local culture and overcoming this instinct by adapting to new practices and perspectives. The speaker further explains that reflecting on and engaging with discomfort can be a key step in overcoming culture shock.

10:02

💡 Navigating Culture Shock Through Embracing Newness

The speaker emphasizes that overcoming culture shock is about timing and attitude. When faced with discomfort, one should rush toward new experiences rather than shy away. They compare culture shock to an everyday task at home, but in an unfamiliar environment, and argue that taking on simple, mundane tasks helps to build comfort. By exploring local customs, people can reduce their discomfort over time, increasing their 'culture comfort.' The speaker also suggests using these opportunities to build connections with the local community, which is essential for overcoming feelings of loneliness and frustration in new places.

📝 Reflecting and Adapting to New Environments

In this final part, the speaker introduces reflection as the crucial last step in adapting to a new culture. They explain that reflection, through journaling or writing to loved ones, helps one process experiences and see the broader journey of becoming comfortable in new environments. The speaker also notes that culture shock isn't exclusive to travel but can happen whenever someone is exposed to new situations, like starting a job or joining a new group. They advise embracing these new experiences with curiosity, following a three-step approach: observe, engage, and reflect, allowing for growth and adaptation without the burden of culture shock.

Keywords

💡Culture Shock

Culture shock is the feeling of disorientation experienced when encountering an unfamiliar environment, culture, or set of customs. In the video, it is described as the confusion and discomfort that arise when trying to navigate a new place, like the narrator’s initial struggle to find familiar points of reference in an unfamiliar city. The script addresses overcoming culture shock by adopting a mindset of openness and curiosity.

💡Newness

Newness refers to the experience of encountering something for the first time, whether it's a place, culture, or situation. The video highlights how newness can initially be overwhelming, as when the narrator describes the chaotic tornado of unfamiliar sights, sounds, and smells in a new city. The narrator encourages embracing this newness rather than fearing it.

💡Familiarity

Familiarity is the comfort that comes from recognizing or understanding something, such as a cultural norm or environment. In the video, the narrator talks about moving from the discomfort of newness to a state of culture comfort, where unfamiliar elements become more familiar over time through observation and participation in local practices.

💡Flânerie

Flânerie is a French term meaning to wander without a specific purpose, immersing oneself in one’s surroundings. The narrator introduces this concept as a strategy for overcoming culture shock—encouraging the viewer to walk around, observe, and absorb the environment in order to become familiar with the new place. This reflective wandering helps in transitioning from feeling lost to feeling more connected.

💡Reflection

Reflection refers to the act of looking back and analyzing an experience to gain understanding. In the video, the narrator emphasizes reflection as a tool for digesting and processing new experiences. Writing about or discussing these experiences helps to make sense of them, which is a key step in overcoming culture shock and becoming comfortable in a new environment.

💡Embracing the Space

Embracing the space means actively engaging with your surroundings and participating in everyday local activities. The video encourages embracing the space to conquer the fear of newness, as the narrator recalls their efforts to find local milk and vegetables instead of defaulting to familiar supermarkets. Engaging with local practices fosters a sense of belonging.

💡Process of Change

The process of change refers to the gradual adaptation to new environments or cultures, transitioning from unfamiliarity to comfort. The video presents this process as moving through stages—first feeling disoriented, then embracing the newness, and finally reflecting on and understanding the experience. The narrator introduces a 'formula' to map out this transition.

💡Community

Community in the video refers to the social connections and relationships that form as one becomes more involved in a new environment. The narrator discusses how engaging with local people and participating in daily norms leads to building relationships and feeling more integrated into the new culture. Community becomes the bridge to comfort in unfamiliar settings.

💡Overcoming Fear

Overcoming fear refers to the act of facing the anxiety or discomfort associated with encountering the unknown. The narrator acknowledges that it is normal to fear newness but insists that the only way to truly integrate into a new culture is to confront that fear by engaging with the unfamiliar, whether it’s crossing a street or participating in local traditions.

💡Observing

Observing is the practice of carefully watching and taking in the details of a new environment without immediate judgment or action. The narrator advocates for observation as a crucial first step in adjusting to a new place. By simply observing how locals interact, dress, and go about their daily lives, the unfamiliar starts to become understandable, aiding in the cultural adjustment process.

Highlights

A personal experience of taking a wrong turn during a motorbike trip in India leads to unexpected cultural immersion.

The speaker introduces the concept of 'culture shock' and contrasts it with 'culture comfort.'

Culture shock occurs when we try to recreate familiar patterns of behavior in a new environment.

The speaker presents a three-step process to overcome culture shock: immersion, embracing the space, and reflection.

Step one, inspired by the French word 'Flânerie,' is about wandering and observing the world around you to become more familiar with a new environment.

A personal anecdote of instinctively seeking a supermarket in Delhi, even though locals purchased from street vendors, illustrates the resistance to newness.

Timing is crucial in managing culture shock—engaging with a new experience as soon as discomfort is felt helps bridge the gap.

Embracing the space around you and engaging in local tasks is key to becoming familiar with strangeness.

Engaging in everyday activities in a new place helps build culture comfort by offsetting newness and forming connections with the community.

Culture shock symptoms should be seen as opportunities to immerse oneself deeper into the new environment.

Step two emphasizes finding tasks that encourage exploration, like searching for a bookshop or the best coffee in town.

Step three focuses on reflection—journaling, writing, or scrapbooking helps process experiences and challenges personal definitions of normalcy.

Reflection allows individuals to see the process of becoming comfortable in new situations, making 'normal' a changeable concept.

Culture shock is not limited to travel but applies to any new situation, such as starting a job or joining a new community.

The mantra of 'observe it, do it, and then think about it' encourages active participation and curiosity in new environments, without the fear of shock.

Transcripts

I was riding a motorbike across India in

July last year when the magic of a very

unintended experience took control of my

plan I was actually heading towards

Pakistan at the time I took a wrong turn

somewhere and found myself on this road

and that was excellent and it gave me an

idea we're going to walk through

experiencing culture shock and arrive at

what I call culture comfort I'm going to

describe how I got to being okay with

this situation I'm gonna introduce you

to a formula that maps out the change

process of newness to familiarity but

first let's do a bit of immersion close

your eyes if you like and consider this

scene it's a new city it's nighttime too

perhaps

your eyes are shifting from side to side

moving with your head and neck but

actually seeing very little the messages

from the retin they aren't making it to

the right part of the brain because the

brain is too busy trying to digest the

smells and sounds and sights that are

thrust about you in a chaotic tornado of

newness all the while the brain is

trying desperately to maintain the

age-old task of fitting in while

knowingly standing out the eyes again

shifting looking for a point of

reference of familiarity something to

grasp on and return order to our systems

we're lost or alone we're confused and

then we've got it it's to go across the

street of course towards the Sun vent

undated coca-cola sign sitting tilted

over the doorway shabby sure but

recognizable does this sound like it

could be culture shock is that vaguely

familiar with something you might

understand as as culture shock but we're

asking does it have to be this way we

tend to assume when we arrive that what

we know is the norm and everything going

on about us which were not familiar with

in any given situation is the oddity I'm

going to throw it out there and say

we're a little afraid of newness I think

that's okay so what can we do to

overcome it what can we do to throw it

out the window and conquer that fear of

newness when we encounter a new place we

tend to concentrate on how it may be

different to what we know this is a

useful way to compare and contrast

lifestyles and practices short

interestingly it's not what causes

culture shock a real shock comes later

when we tried to recreate patterns of

behavior from home like trying to pedal

a bike even after the chain has come off

you keep wanting to do things the way

you have that's something to think that

it might not work so well in the new

place so let's take the time to watch do

and then think about how to achieve the

same goals but in a local way so I

propose these three steps to put the

proverbial chain back on our bikes

first of all follow the French example

intro in Flannery Flannery

it means wandering while wandering step

to embrace the space around us and do

everyday things and finally reflection

or use this as a tool to wrap it all

together and create understanding so

first of all step one as soon as we

arrive in a new place go outside go for

a walk sit down have a coffee or drink

and observe the world around you a

French verb that this is Flannery

and translates vaguely to simple

dawdling it encourages the magic of the

unknown experience to occur we have to

allow time for our surroundings to Osmos

the size with our psyche because people

places and things are not often how they

appear at first glance

so let's rather take the time to think

about making ourselves more familiar

with difference so we can become a true

part of our new scene this photo was

taken by a friend of mine outside of our

apartment in Delhi last year

I'm gonna use it to illustrate how I

didn't do this

I needed to buy some milk and veggies I

knew two things I knew that a man I

passed up and down the street each

morning with a goat selling milk and I

knew that veggies were sold down the

square each night but for one month I

inherently and instinctively went to

find a supermarket I found myself asking

later why would I do this and I know

that the locals do it another way and I

think what this shows us is that a

common response to a new environment is

to avoid the difficult and unusual

activities we get so caught up in the

gut-wrenching turmoil of billion feeling

alone and without our usual securities

about us that we get forgotten the

reason why we embarked on the journey

why we stepped out from the door that

day to begin the new adventure

we've lost our motivation and we've

misplaced our inspiration here managing

this part of the culture shock

experience is essentially a question of

timing is that as soon as we feel the

twang of discomfort as soon as we see

the sight of the challenge on the

horizon we should rush towards the

encounter with an optimistic spirit as

sooner we engage with a new experience

it will act as a symbol of willingness

and welcoming to our surroundings and

people will notice the effort that we've

made and the novelty of doing something

you will become the bridge to belonging

without new place we have to want to

experience the shock of culture and we

can do this by embracing the space

around us this part is the most fun step

to I promise you but the first before we

go into it I want you to put yourself in

the mindset when you have a task to

achieve a mission to accomplish at home

something annoying and silly like trying

to find the right battery for the car

key you're out to the shops for a quick

check you've got a vague idea where to

go we end up spending the whole day

going to five or six different places

and getting a bunch of stuff you didn't

need

imagine doing that and a totally new and

unfamiliar environment with no idea and

none of you usual securities or

guidances around you does it bring an

adventurous smile to your face to become

comfortable with newness and familiar

with strangeness we have to give

ourselves something to do go find the

milk figure out how to dress like a

local explorer intrepid I found looking

for the biggest bookshop in town all the

best coffee is usually a good way to

achieve this step embracing our space

creates this newness comfort paradigm

whereas a newness to a situation over

time decreases our culture comfort

correspondingly and necessarily

increases as we participate in the daily

norms of a place will offset the newness

by exposure to the context and dynamics

of the situation and we'll also meet

people but this part is crucial because

will begin to form that relationship

with community so it's important to

recognize the symptoms of culture shock

because it is these that we must seize

upon and the Wackness the kickstart we

need when things are new and we're still

uncomfortable we internalize our

loneliness we stay away from others and

things that are frustrating things that

are new about that place suddenly become

more frustrating but it's these that we

must seize upon because if we throw

ourselves in the casserole of culture

that surrounds us we'll become

distracted by the effort and emerge out

the other side energized by that

challenge and so we move into reflection

reflective practice requires us to step

back from a situation and recognize that

a challenging experience is all part of

a process and it is the hardest process

we can imagine self change basic

reflection is writing things down

journaling scrapbooking blogging writing

to family and friends the important part

is to really get into descriptions and

write vividly because this helps to

digest

experiences but why is this the final

step because reflection allows us to see

the big picture it allows us to see the

process of becoming comfortable it

allows us to see and challenge our own

benchmarks of normalcy it in fact

reveals that normal is not a static

frame of mind and it is in fact

changeable culture shock is not

exclusive to a travel experience and it

is in fact applicable to whenever and

wherever you've exposed yourself to a

new situation think about the time you

started a new job or joined a new church

I began at a new gym you ask yourself

you always ask yourself it's part of the

human condition will they like me am I

going to fit in are they gonna think I'm

a bit weird perhaps even worse maybe

they're going to be a bit weirder than I

thought when we first met I want you to

consider this mantra observe it do it

and then think about it we have to

consciously put ourselves into position

to become aware of the space around us

with no filter but curiosity we have

absolutely nothing to lose

go next to a new place actively follow

these steps throw yourself into the

heartbeat of that place and see what

happens be intrepid about newness and

confront culture without the burden of

shock

you