It’s much easier to be positive about change when you feel in control of the change.
A year and a half ago, my husband and I decided to move our family from the San Francisco Bay Area to Sydney, Australia. The decision itself took about 4 months to finalize….and several cases of red wine J My husband is Australian and I am American. We met in Australia and I lived in Sydney for 2 ½ years before we moved to the San Francisco Bay Area. When we moved to the Bay Area the plan was to be there for 2 years and then decide which country we wanted to live in. 12 years later, as a married couple with 3 kids (ages 6, 3 & 2), we started to really think about what we wanted in life and where we wanted to live.
The exploration process in figuring out where we wanted to live was a lot of fun…thanks to the internet (and the red wine of course ;-)) We looked at several different options in the US and abroad, comparing cost of living, educational opportunities for our kids, culture, climate, etc. We put together a prioritized list of our requirements and one of the main drivers was being near immediate family since we wanted our kids to have close relationships with their extended family. In the end, we chose Sydney. The important thing about what I want to share in this blog post isn’t why we chose Sydney, but the fact that WE chose Sydney.
Since making that decision we sold our house in California, moved into a rental house, sold our 2 cars and shipped all of our belongings in a 40 ft. container to Australia. We said farewell to our fantastic life in California, all our wonderful US friends and family and set sail for Sydney (more on that later)!
In reflecting on this major life change, my biggest ah-ha is that both my husband and I were “All In!” regarding the decision to move to Sydney from the beginning and remained positive and supportive of each other all the way through. I believe this is because WE chose this path and were in agreement about why we wanted to move to Sydney. It was ours to make or break and we had no one else to blame. This is definitely not always the case in the work environment. But, if you can give people enough information so that they feel they have some control, I believe they will own the outcome much more so than if they feel they have no choice regarding the change.
We joke, but it’s closer to reality than a joke, that anything we do to set up our new lives in Australia takes at least 3 tries. We studied the Australian Medicare (healthcare) web site and thought we had everything we needed to apply. However, we ended up needing to go back twice before we got our official cards. Getting my Aussie Driver’s License took 3 attempts. But my favorite so far is my experience with trying to change my husband’s Aussie bank accounts to joint accounts including getting my own bank card for that account. It went suspiciously smooth during our first attempt. A few days later I got a letter from the bank saying they didn’t receive the second page of the application and asked me to resend it. I did. Still no bank card. A few weeks later I went into the bank branch to inquire about the delay. The teller said that a bank card was never requested and made the request. However, she told me that I could only get a debit card and not a combined debit and credit card because my name was not a legal Australian name. (When I got married, I added my maiden name as a second middle name.) I have 2 middle names. The teller said this was okay, but since I did not hyphenate the middle names, it was not considered a legal Australian name. With a straight face, she said my choice was to change my name to a legal Australian name or settle for just having a debit card (without the credit capabilities). OMG, you can’t be serious!!! I chose the latter!
Moving countries was definitely not easy. No particular task was that difficult. But when you put everything together, it was a big mountain to climb. Feeling like the decision to move countries was our decision made everything much easier to manage. We are now settled in Sydney and I think the most difficult part of the move is behind us. We will continue to push forward, drink lots of red wine and laugh :o)
