Dubai - France - Riyadh, A personal journey

Dubai – France – Riyadh. Moving to France and Leaving Again – My Personal Journey

3 years and 3 months ago to the day I boarded a flight out of Dubai International Airport to move my life to the South of France after nearly 9 years in the Middle East. It was time - time for a change of pace and time to fulfil a dream I had harboured for 20 years.

Then, last week on the 3rd of the 3rd after a long 3 years and 3 months, I boarded my first long haul flight in what seemed like an eternity for an avid traveller, en route to Riyadh in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. A city in a country that I have never even set foot in before. Time, once again, for a change of pace.

I help my clients to write 5 -10 year plans and create their dream careers for a living – it’s something I started whilst living in France with the wonderful perspective of looking back on a decade in the corporate world in the Middle East. Sometimes cliengts remark upon how I must have my life so well thought through and planned out. Often I have to laugh at the sentiment because with all the best will in the world, life just happens. To quote Robert Burns: ‘The best laid plans o’ mice and men gang aft agley’.

As much as I am organized and I know what I want to do… my biggest lesson over the past 3 years has been quite simple – I have to learn to live more for the moment, breathe, be present and don’t rush into the future. It may sound like a cliché but it’s the truth and I believe it really helps me to see both sides of the scales when discussing future planning with clients. This realization has come, in no small part, as a result of the Covid pandemic which has pervaded our lives over the past 2 years but also as a result of many other of life’s tribulations – not one of which could have been foreseen. An all too common reminder that life is short, that one can’t always plan everything and having an open minded approach is super important.

When I think back I had a very specific to-do list of things to achieve whilst in France. Living the French life perhaps wasn’t what I set out to do, unlike the vast majority of expats there. This was actually my 3rd time living in France so I knew what I was doing. I knew the region, I knew some people and with a 5 year French degree under my belt I was familiar enough with the language. Coming to live in France wasn’t the culture shock it might have been.

Anyone who has ever lived in the likes of Dubai will know that life can be fast paced and all consuming. As a result, I felt like there were important things in life which I had bypassed for too long as a result of my focus leaning too far towards work. This is why France seemed like the best option.  Perhaps that’s why much of my work over the past few years has focused greatly on helping others to achieve their work/life balance. And perhaps that’s also why I know that you are solely in charge of that balance- nobody else – because I should have been more in control of it.

What did I set out to achieve?

1.       Buy a property as a future investment and to have a place to call home no matter what;

2.       Take the time to make said property into our own place and spend the time on a project which wasn’t office based to learn new skills and try something new;

3.       Create a way for said property to pay for itself if required;

4.       Start a business which could be a slow burner and something which would always be a back up plan no matter the circumstances and no matter the location;

5.       Ensure that the above investments provided us with the type of security you don’t necessarily have in the Middle East;

6.       Brush up on my French language which had long since lapsed;

7.       Refresh and recentre before taking on the next challenge, including doing yoga more routinely, balancing my auto-immune disorders and learning to eat well in a healthy and natural way.

I am overwhelmingly proud to be able to say that we achieved everything on this list and then some. There were also some very personal things on the list which I won’t go into but I can happily say that we also achieved what we set out to. The one thing I would say about it all is that it took much longer than initially predicted, but it took as long as it needed to take, as I said earlier often life decides the plan.

What else did we achieve in taking some time out?

1.       We learned a whole host of skills that could never have been learned in the office:

a)      Sustainable Gardening, Tree Felling, Seasonal Planting, Vegetable Growing, Plants & Flowers;

b)      Swimming Pool Maintenance;

c)       Mixing Paint, Preparing Surfaces and Painting, Plastering and Tiling;

d)      Roof Maintenance;

e)      Upholstery, Curtain Making, Tailoring;

f)        Interior Design, Furniture Upcycling, General Renovations;

g)       Budgeting and Household Economics;

h)      Social Media Management;

i)        And much more!

2.       We learned how to run a successful rental property business and everything that comes along with that;

3.       We learned how to navigate the extraordinary bureaucracy involved with living and working in France without the help of anyone else. This included setting up a French business and running it successfully – doing accounts, marketing, advertising, creating a network and new service offerings.

What happens next?

I tell my clients that they need to have good coping mechanisms in place before they embark upon the next step of their journeys. They need to sit down and understand which boundaries they are going to set. They need to have the clarity and the strength in order to be able to do that.

My life has changed a lot over the past three years and it is about to change considerably in the near future once again. With this comes uncertainty but having taken this time out I can honestly say that I know where my boundaries lie and I also have coping mechanisms that I didn’t before. Taking that time out has given me the opportunity to understand what those are: whether it’s spending time with my niece, doing yoga twice a week, cooking gluten free food, gardening or antiquing, I now know that these things give me great pleasure in life whereas before I would easily have said that I didn’t know what I enjoyed.

So now, as I move into the next phase of my life and career in a new country I look back over my 3 years in France with a mixture of emotions. I will never think of France as my home but my home is in France. We will return often and I will continue to run my business from there for the time being.

Many will sit and anxiously consider their next moves whilst I sit here and consider whether or not I have the strength to do this. We all do, you must harness the fear, grit your teeth, get up and go out. Today I will take my own advice and venture out into this new city alone for the first time, I will attempt to dress respectfully and speak a language I barely know. I have tipped myself out of my comfort zone once again. So if I can do it, so can you!

If you have moved to France, or indeed any another country, and you would like to share your story I would love to hear from you.

Please get in touch on yourconsultant@candehrconsultancy.com