Migration and Expatriate Coaching

Personal Emigration Planner excerpt

Exercise three – Setting Integration Goals

Some of your long term goals above will be about the future and here you are going to focus on what short term goals you also need to accomplish to establish yourself, in the first few months of landing. We are going to create a list of these goals to help you get established and integrated into your new community.

Take a few minutes to think about how you would describe being fully settled, integrated, and established in your new area. Write down your definition of what being integrated would mean to you.

• What do you notice that shows you that you have established yourself?
• What are you seeing, hearing, or feeling at this point?
• What is happening that tells you that you are fully settled?
• What are you saying to yourself?
• What are you doing?

Using your definition what goals does this give you? Use the following questions to help you create smart integration goals:

• Write down each goal into one sentence you can easily keep in your mind:
• If it is in the negative take a few moments to re-phrase it in positive terms:
• When do you want to be in this position? It must be realistic, in a week, a month, a year?
• How challenging or exciting is it to achieve this goal? If it’s too challenging break it down into an element you can achieve within he timescale. If it’s not challenging enough you may lose interest. Do you need to add anything to make it more challenging?
• How will you know you have achieved your goal, is there a measurement you can use?

Where do you have control or influence with regard to this goal?