Career change as an immigrant, mindfulness, Brazil vs Europe

Hi friends!

This issue of Discover with Jane newsletter is a weekend-style one. I love to talk about startups and marketing - but I’m also a champion of wellness, health and sport. Those who know me in person, know that outside my workplace I’m either on a running or a sailing practice, mostly :)

In this newsletter I’ve discussed stress, immigration, and attention to self with wellness expert Sarah Sachs.

Over the past 20 years, Sarah has been into the area of personal development and worked as a researcher for 8 years in the area of biochemistry and molecular biology.

In the past seven years, she had a lot of changes in her life, including a career transition & moving to two different countries — which gave Sarah a lot of opportunities to train adaptability, resilience, and distress management.

These changes presented Sarah with tools to cope with all these challenges, and I've asked jer to talk about stress, immigration experience and productivity for all kinds of professionals.

Let's see what her take on these topics is — in the question-answer format.

If you prefer watching or listening - here is this issue on YouTube.

Sarah's immigration planning and journey

Sarah is a Brazilian living in Italy. Here's her story about immigration.

— I decided to immigrate after spending one year (2013-2014) of my PhD in Germany. When I returned to Brazil, I realized I wanted to live for a time abroad. Me and my husband started to planning and to consider which part we want to go. After five years, in 2019, we moved to Portugal. So that was a lot of time to plan this immigration. And we have a lot of things that can make moving easier.

#1 is the language: In Brazil we speak Portuguese, so it's already easier to move.

#2 is contacts: We have contacts in Portugal, and it's a lot of easier to have someone that we know there.

#3 is countries’ agreements: Portugal and Brazil have some agreements. As a civil engineer my husband doesn't need to validate his graduation because Portugal and Brazil governments have these agreements.

— Could you please share the steps you took for your planning process?

— Here are all the things that made it easier for us to choose Portugal:

The language — if you have time to prepare yourself with the local language, it's very important to communicate well.

The process to get the visa — my husband has both citizenship, Italian and Brazilian. He doesn't need the visa, I have the right to be here also with a family visa.

Career — you need to see if you need to validate your certificate, your graduation, what the process is, can you do this or you will have to make a career transition.

Finances — do you have money to pay all this stuff? You will spend a lot of money when moving, learning how the country works.

Additionally, I think it's important to visit the country first to see if you like the place and people and what the way of living there is.

International career transition: from science in Brazil to wellness coaching in Europe

— You mentioned that you've had a career transition in your life. Could you please tell more about it and how you coped with it?

— I was a researcher. I did PhD and then two more years of postdoc in Brazil. At the same time I was learning and teaching the tools of De Rose method. And I was starting to feeling that I was not impacting people's life only with my research. So that was the main thing that made me want to change the career. And also there was no easy market for research in Brazil.

I did research in the university. There was a time with not too many positions to go and continue with my career. I still love science and I keep my studies by myself. But I thought that by making this transition to personal development I will find more purpose in my life to impact directly people to improve their lives.

So that was the main thing that made me go for a career change. It was eight years on that research, PhD. And then I just stopped it. But I don't think it was a loss of time, because I love science and I learned how to read science articles, how to have scientific thoughts. I learned how to share information better, how to translate a scientific difficult topic into a more easy one and to all kinds of audience.

Immigrant’s view on different countries

Slow life vs big city life

— You already mentioned that Europe is slow and both the North and the South Americas are faster and more business oriented. And being Brazilian, could you tell a little bit more about those differences? What did you think about it before you moved to Europe and what it turned out to be?

— I think it's also the period of your life. I'm married and I have a son. So I was looking for more quality of life, to live in a smaller city, be closer to the work, not spending a lot of time on traffic, eating better and local food, this kind of stuff.

America has the biggest cities and a lot of movement. You spend a lot of time on traffic, a lot of people, it's about less quality of life. And coming from Brazil, I also was looking for more security. in Brazil, security is also an issue. I want to have a safer place to live, not thinking about how to not stress myself every day with security — of me and my family. So that was important things to look for.

I was really happy when I moved because I found Europe slow. Sometimes I think it's too much. I lived for 30 years in Brazil and then moved to Europe. So I was not used to that slow life, but I can get used to it.

— So you are from a big city, right?

— I was born in a small city. When I turned 15 years old, I moved to a big city. I'm from Curitiba. It's South Brazil. It's near to São Paulo.

— So, moving from Brazil to Europe I think most likely would be moving to a smaller city, as well. And you mentioned that it's a little bit too slow. So you get tired of super fast, but didn't you get tired of the super slow?

— No, sometimes when you are doing business, you want to be faster. Sometimes you are doing business and people take some time to answer and have their time. And my time is a little bit faster because I'm Brazilian. But I do not get tired of that. I can just adapt myself to this new reality.

Making connections in a new place

— On that journey, how did you go out and connect with actual people?

— When I was in Brazil, I connected easily because I knew people. I knew one that presents another person and then you meet another one. When you are in your own country, it's easier.

In Portugal, there is a lot of schools for the De Rose method. So I was in one of the schools and that also helped me to connect to people that are already interested in personal development.

Then in Portugal I also started a project about food: mindfulness eating, mindfulness cooking, teaching how people choose their food. And then I started to have social media. I wanted to share more information, so I started to do the blog, the articles.

In September last year I moved to Italy. I don't know many people yet. I have contacts at the school of my son and with the colleagues of my husband. Since I work online, I don't have this direct contact with people here yet. But I do this online thing, and I'm also planning to have a presentation here, because this is really important.

I think everybody could feel the importance of connecting after the pandemic. Even if we are connecting online, it's not the same. We need to have this presence, this real contact with persons to feel better, to have mental health. And I started with online, but I want to also make group here to have this presentation courses and workshops.

— So the personal connections still do matter in your culture?

— Yeah, it's a human thing for everybody. We need these personal connections.

Differences in lifestyle and communication

— Now we live in the north of Italy, in an autonomous region called South Tyrol, near the Austrian border. And here is a bilingual region, so they speak Italian and German, but more than 70 % of the population has German as the first language.

When we decided to move, we started to think about what we value the most. We thought about considering Canada also. But then we visited Canada to know how it was because we have never been there before. We didn't like the way of living because we were looking for a more slow style of life as Europe is. I think it's important to visit the country first to see if you like the place and people and how is the way to live there.

So America has a more accelerated style of life. And here in Europe it's more slow. And that was something that me and my husband like. So, then we decided to go to Europe.

Europe vs Brazil surprising differences

— What surprised you most in Europe?

— I had this one year experience in Germany. Germany is really organized and clean and direct and everything is in the right place. And then I moved to Portugal. Portugal is not as organized as Germany. I was a little bit surprised. I thought Europe is more clean, more organized, but no, Portugal and Italy are not so organized as Germany.

And another thing that I was surprised is the communication. Although we speak the same language, Portuguese, the way Portuguese people communicate is a bit different than Brazilians. Brazilians used to like to please the others. So we speak in a kinder way. If we have to say something bad, we look to say it in a good way or just don't say it.

In Portugal, they are direct. They go to the point. They say it as it is. So that was a little bit frustrating for me because it really takes you emotionally. You are used to one kind of communication and then you go direct to the point. That was a little bit surprising.

— How was it for you? How did you fit into that directness?

— We need to adapt. And I was always good at adapting, I think. But I also have some tools that I teach now.

Brazilian way of thinking is what we all need :)

— The Brazilian way of thinking that it's not working yet, but it will. It's a positive thinking. There's a popular saying that we always say, “I'm Brazilian, I don't give up. I never give up.”

— I think we should all be Brazilians a bit, especially in a new environment, because it really does take time.

— Yeah, yeah, sure. It is a good mindset to be, to have this positive thinking and always try and something will happen. May be now what you thought, but something good will happen.

Mindfulness and stress management

De Rose Method: breathing exercise for reducing stress and increasing focus

— I teach a method called “De Rose method”. This is a methodology that gives you tools and teaches you some habits, some concepts — that you need to have more quality of life, to know how to adapt, to know how to be resilient and how to manage your emotions, how to know yourself, relate to the others. I think this is the main thing for all humans: you need to know yourself to know how to relate to the others. So, we train how to adapt, be more resilient, and how to manage your stress.

#1 One technique that I think is the most important of all is to know how to breathe. Breathing exercises will give you some freedom to know how to manage your emotions, how to manage your stress. And when you do that, you can be more focused, you can have more clarity of your mind, you can take better decisions, it affects everything. You know how you will relate better with others if you know how to manage your emotions, your stress. So I think this is the best technique.

— When you say breathing exercises, do you mean that it should be some conscious process throughout the day or do you mean exercises?

— Yeah, we do it unconsciously. When we are children, we do it correctly. When we get older, we just learn it because we have stress, we have a lot of trauma, we have a lot of things happening and we start having this short and quick breathing, more like a chest breathing when you are stressful and when you have a hard emotion, a strong emotion like fear or anger. We need to relearn how to breathe as we do when we were children.

So the first thing is to make a pause, make your breathing conscious and pay attention to it. And then when you do this a lot of time and do a lot of pauses during your day, your unconscious breathing will start to be more like the one you had as a child.

— So this is process of conscious breathing should be throughout the day, not only like five minutes a day?

— You can do that because as a habit, you need to have a time, a schedule, appointment to do. Because if you don't have this appointment, this time that you do the exercise for five minutes daily, you will not start, you will not change it. So you need to start with that. And you can also do some exercises like five minutes, 10 minutes, 30 minutes, whatever you want. An exercise to improve your breathing or to oxygenize your body more, to have more focus. You can do this as an exercise, but you need to start with the conscious breathing with five minutes.

— So if I want to start like really small with only five minutes and not a big effort to build this new habit, what do I do?

— Yeah, that was the ideal thing to start with five minutes daily. So let's do it. Put your hands on your abdomen and you will inhale. Okay, inhale and feel your abdomen going out. And when you exhale, the abdomen goes in.

When we move the abdomen, the diaphragm moves and that makes you breathe more air. So it's really important to move your abdomen when you're breathing. When you feel that you can move your abdomen, then you can go further, you can go to your rib cage. Put your hands on your rib cage. Inhale — and you will feel your rib cage expands laterally. And then exhale, you feel this movement. And you can also see that this movement is shorter than the abdomen. Abdomen moves more than this part of the rib cage.

Then we go to the third part that is the chest. Some people just use this part. So you inhale and the chest goes up. Exhale, chest goes down.

So now let's put all together. So we're starting with abdomen. Inhale — abdomen out, rib cage expands, chest goes up. And then when chest goes down, rib cage contracts, and also abdomen contracts — this is the whole movement. We call it complete breathing using all the muscles you have to do your breathing.

Don't do anything else. Just pay attention to your breathing and pay attention on all your muscles to expand the most your thoracic cage. Then you will have more air and you will breathe better. Always with your nostrils.

What happens when you have a deep breath is that you activate your parasympathetic nervous system that helps you to manage stress. So your heart beating slows down and your blood pressure goes down. So you have this more calm body. And if you are calm, you can think better.

— So would you recommend doing this in the morning or evening? Or maybe in the middle of the day?

— In my experience, I suggest you wake up and you do it. Because if you just live for another time, you will not have the time, you will not remember and you won't do it. When you feel that you need a break in the middle of the day, sometimes you have a really stressful day, you need a pause in the middle of the day, do it in the middle of the day. If you cannot sleep well, you are really stressful and thinking a lot of things, do it before you go to bed.

Attention and mindfulness for every day

— The “Rose method” and your method in your consultation are a lot about paying attention to different parts. Could you tell us more about the paying attention part? How does a person pay attention to their health and well-being?

— That's also training because we are always looking for outside, looking for outside information, other people, your job, every time you are looking outside. And you need time to look inside, looking inside yourself.

The previous breathing exercise is a really nice exercise to pay attention to yourself. You start to pay attention to your breathing, your emotions, your thoughts and everything. People call it mindfulness. This breathing exercise is a mindfulness exercise. So everything that puts your attention onto your body, your thoughts, your emotions is a mindfulness exercise.

You can practise it on your daily tasks. For example, when you are eating, you pay attention to your food, the taste, the smell, the texture, and not looking at your phone.

I know that we have a lot of things to do. Sometimes we try to use our time the best we can and we listen to stuff and do a lot of things. But it's also important during your day to have a time to just do one thing at a time. Just pay attention to yourself. Let's say, you pay attention to your muscles and your breathing when you are doing your run. You can choose one time, one thing that you do during your day to just pay attention to the present day. Be there. Just be there.

This will improve your self-consciousness because you're paying attention to your body or the way you're breathing. It's a mindfulness exercise.

The underappreciated area of stress and emotion management

— So you consult on a lot of things in wellness. But from working with clients, what would you say is the most underappreciated or underserved area? Like, what are people usually lacking in their life?

— It depends. Each person is different.

Sometimes people don't worry about their food. And sometimes people think that just making a run a week, once a week is enough for body health. But it's not. Now the recent papers, researchers found that we need to move a lot of times during the day because we are used to be here in front of the computer the whole day. So you spend eight hours sitting and then you will run for 30 minutes. That's not the best. Okay, it's good. You are doing something. But the best will be, one hour here and then move your body a little bit.

Some people don't know how to manage emotions. I think this is the hardest one to manage stress, manage emotions. It's work that you will do for the whole life.

— Yeah, the stress and emotion management is hard because with exercise and food it's more or less clear. But with the stress management, what does it really start with? Like what do I do if I decide to pay attention to that one?

— You need to have a method or something, someone that helps you to do that because it's all about self-awareness. Pay attention to yourself. You need to understand why you feel that emotion, what triggers that emotion. Something that can trigger your anger or sadness in another person triggers nothing. So why this happened to you? You need to be aware of that. You can use mindfulness, psychologists, another therapist, but you need to find something that you like to pay attention to yourself and develop self-acknowledgement.

It's not easy. I started 20 years ago and I'm still working on it. I need to work on this my whole life to know how to manage this and do it all the time.

— Can you share what helps you personally to maintain that journey?

— I have tried some therapy, some psychologists, but I didn't find one that I really could connect. So for me, it was not a method that we use. But as I started “De Rose” method really young, when I was 17 years old, I have this as a lifestyle. So I really connect with the method and I use all the tools since I was 17. So this was something that I liked.

Tools for self-awareness: exercise, breathing, and mindfulness

— And so what are the key tools that you are using for yourself?

— It's the exercise, it's breathing. Also to work on my body and pay attention. It's mindfulness. Everything I do, I do pay attention to myself, to my body, or focus my thoughts on what I'm doing and guiding my conscience for what I want. So I'm always trying to be more aware of what I'm doing. So that gives me the consciousness to know, “Okay, I'm getting angry because he said something that affects my ego." And I do these internal dialogue, “I felt angry, I felt sad and okay.”

After the moment has passed, I think, “Okay, why did I get so sad? Okay, that happens and that is linked with that”. So I do my own therapy on my mind. Because I'm aware, because I'm always paying attention to the things in myself. And that's a training.

You can also use a journal. I tried also, but I'm not a good writer. And I feel myself stupid writing something that I'm just thinking. It's not working for me, but studies say that when you're writing, you can think better and you can make more connections about what you're writing. So it's a good method. Just write what you feel, what you're thinking, what happened, and then you can understand the situation better.

— We live in the world that forgets everything. We forget 80-90 % of everything that we ever do and especially think because the thoughts flow in the mind so quickly. What if with the AI we live in a world that doesn't forget, that we keep all our memories, all of our thoughts from the past, and we can really compare, we can really learn from those past thoughts. What do you think about that, especially being a biochemist and a wellness expert?

— We forget a lot because the brain is not unlimited. To be more effective, to work better, we need to forget something to have more information. And because we are not paying attention, we are always distracted with a lot of things. If you are not paying attention, you will not remember it.

So what makes you remember something is when something activates your emotions or something that is new that you need to pay attention. So this kind of stuff you will remember.

And also when you have something, a situation, and then you store the memory, that memory is not the same as what you have lived because it's the memory. So it's already processed, it's different.

If me and you are living thorught something, having a moment, I would describe it one way, you would describe it in another way. Because we lived differently.

Further resources for exploring the topic

— Could you share the resources, like books or maybe links or maybe your own materials that people could read to understand more about this topic?

— Sure. About the “De Rose” method, there are some books that are in English. Most are in Portuguese, but you can access on https://www.deroseebooks.com/. There are some samples you can read and also some ebooks to buy.

Another platform is called https://intellivitahub.com/en/. I have a blog when I share this kind of stuff and techniques, science and everything I know. I try to post once a month, but there is a lot of material already there on my blog and also on LinkedIn. I have the same articles on LinkedIn.

There's one book about breathing that's really interesting — “Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art” by James Nestor.

And I'm also open to answer if you need to connect, and ask for more specific things, you can always send me a message and I will help.

So today we have talked about the wellness approaches, tried some breathing exercises, also discussed the immigration and different ways of thinking in Brazil versus Europe.

It was really fun discussing the different ways of managing stress, of managing your own wellness. And as Sarah mentioned, the key is to pay attention to yourself.

Taker care and pay attention to yourselves.

Have a great weekend!

Jane