Becoming an Expat, how moving out of your comfort zone makes great things happen!

Hi all

My wife wants to make decisions instantly whilst I like to sleep on them, whilst this works well for us you can make your decisions anyway you want. What I am a firm believer of is making decisions to take yourself outside of your comfort zone. Now I don't want you to put yourself in any danger , however by not making things hard for yourself in life every now and then can lead to boredom and a lack of improvement in your well being. Plus you will discover skills you never knew you had.

If I take you back 5 years, as a family we were deep in discussion about one of our leaps into the unknown!

Myself and Sharon had been married for 4 years and had a son together in 2010. Sharon had been working in Canary Wharf and I had been running my bespoke furniture company. Although Sharon managed to have 6 months of after the birth of Liam she was back to early morning starts and late finishes. I was waking Liam in the morning taking him to nursery and then running around trying to get stuff done at work to have the time to pick the little man back up again. We would get back home for a quick play then dinner, bath and bed and repeat. Weekends were a blur as we had all the chores to catch up on family to visit and not much time to just be together. So while on the outside things looked great, nice house, nice car and a happy family we ultimately did not see this as a sustainable way to live.

Being brought up in a little village in the UK this is what you were inspired to do, get a job, work hard , get married and have a family. Whilst this is a more than adequate way of life we were struggling to understand the end reward of working this hard, what was the point if we were missing out on time with Liam and family life together. Now I understand this is hardly a sob story but it is an concept I believe a lot of people struggle with. You need financial stability but at what cost? You want to do the best for your children's future but again at what cost?

In the midst of all this an opportunity had arose with a job for Sharon in Qatar. Sharon knew someone there who had been trying to persuade her to move out and help with an upcoming bank. We had flown out a couple of times to get a feel for the place and what it would be like to live there. As nice as the set up was it would mean a huge upheaval for the family, I would have to let go of my business and become full time Dad, we would be away from our support network and it could become a financial liability if it were not to work out. So the easy option was to say no, it always is!

However there was something greater pulling us there, this was the chance to create our little adventure, a chance for only one of us to work so we could have more time with Liam and as a family. There were too many thoughts about regret in 10 years time if we didn't go ahead. So with this in mind we said yes, Sharon resigned and I had to let my best friend and work partner know I was leaving him for the Middle East to become a full time Dad.( it actually took him a couple of weeks for him to believe me) Our house was rented out and all our belongings were packed up and shipped of to Qatar, and on 30th Jan 2013 we followed, the three of us and my new baby man bag full of nappies ready to go.

First couple of days in Qatar.

Now I will save more details for another day and I wont lie and say the first few weeks were easy, however we had prepared for the first 2 months to be awful with the settling in period, in reality it was all pretty easy. The main reason for this was all the other expats, back in the UK we were used to having to do things alone, you generally find a turned up nose in England if you ask for help so you end up not bothering. By moving away from friends and family and setting up in a new country people become transformed, because everyone is in the same situation and knows how difficult the decision to move was it makes everyone so friendly and helpful. Our network grew instantly offers from people we had only just met to come round for dinner, to show us around town, to bring Liam over for playdates and to help with all the local paperwork.

The decision has turned out to be the single most defining moment of our lives to date, if we had said no I do not know what or where we would be. I do know that we would not of been able to meet the most amazing people from every part of the globe and spend time learning about their cultures, we would not of been able to have as much time together, Sharon was now leaving for work at 8am and coming back by 4.30 with 42 days holiday to play with and weekends completely free as I was stay at home Dad, personally I would not of had the most amazing time with Liam, it has been the most rewarding and emotional experience being able to spend so much time with him and to watch him grow and we would not of been guests in a country I had barely heard before we went.

We have moved again in the last year and a half and now find ourselves in the United Arab Emirates which again is another wonderful country with so many new people to meet and share time with, I look forward to posting more on our expat adventures and my time as a full time Dad. I will leave you to think about the decisions you make and why stepping into the unknown and out of you comfort zone leads to great things.

I would love to hear from any one with similar tales,experiences or other big decisions they made out of their comfort zone wether it is work or play.

Have a good day.