Calm the noise: minimize decisions and feeling settled.
You’ve just landed. New place, new energy, but your head’s already spinning. Where do you even start? This blog isn’t about opening a bank account or registering your tax file number. It’s about calming the internal chaos that hits when everything around you is new. You can easily open up your favorite digital search assistant to help you with these things. Here, we will go a bit deeper into what happens inside you head and your body - and how a few tweaks can help you feel yourself more at home, fast.
The early rush
When I arrived in Melbourne, I came prepared to a certain degree. I had arranged an Airbnb for the first two weeks. I’d contacted a Dutch friend who’d already moved to Australia, and we agreed she’d help find a place before I arrived. But first, I moved into the AirBnB where I lived with a couple guys from India, above a Bosnian nightclub which gave a good dose of commotion especially on Saturday night. As soon as I had arrived, things started moving fast. I went to my new job pretty much straight away after landing. I filled my days with work, arranging things (bike, bank, clothes, the move) and the weekends with as many social things as I could right away.
Then comes the crash!
You could almost call it a trap. You feel energetic because everything is new, but under the surface, early stage fatigue is building. Indeed, by day 4 or 5, I crashed. I then needed several days where all I could do was sleep. And I think this fatigue was due to all the things I needed to process in these early stages.
Two golden rules
To make sure that you don’t crash in the early stages, I have two straightforward rules.
Rule one: minimize decisions. Take care of the basics only and note your defaults. With basics, I mean stuff that you need to stay alive and to get around; for example for food, transport, payments, and clothing. You can minimize your decisions about these basics by figuring out in advance where you can get food, how you will get to places (e.g. work, gym, shops), how you will pay for things, and what clothes you will wear. This will GREATLY reduce stress
Rule two: check in with yourself early. You can do this by small rituals (e.g. having a cup of tea, sitting in the sun, taking a deep breath). And here comes the kicker: when you check in and you note that you feel tired, you will need to hit the brake early.
Conclusion
So there it is. You’ve got the energy, now channel it wisely. Handle what matters, and remember these two golden rules. Next time, we’ll start building your personal grounding system
