Before you came to MIT, you had plans about how you wanted to spend your time in Boston. You were going to find a job, start a degree program, figure out your next career step, have a baby, become fluent in English. Maybe you did some research and you set your goals. You think to yourself, I'll give myself a certain amount of time to settle in, and then in 3 months, 6 months, or one year, I'll have reached my goal. You arrive and start working towards that goal. But for some reason, when that deadline arrives, you haven't reached your goal or achieved your plan to the standard you expected. You're surprised and saddened by the fact you, who have been successful in so many things in your past, haven't accomplished what you set out to do. Depression and frustration and anger can set in, and you're not sure what to do and how to move forward.

Someone once told me that hope is a dangerous drug. That sentiment seemed a little harsh to me at the time. Hope is definitely powerful and it can keep us moving forward even when things aren't going our way. Wishing things were different than they are can be motivating, but can also be paralyzing. Especially when what we are wishing for is out of our control - like the weather or the visa that doesn't allow you to work or the day your spouse will graduate.

Put your own expectations and deadlines on top of that hope and then things can get really tough. Those deadlines can wreak havoc in our brains, our emotions and our relationships.

But the fact is that you invented that deadline, often before you even arrived in Boston. You didn't take into account the new information you got from your new environment. Maybe in your country is takes 3 weeks to find a job, but in the US it can take much longer. You didn't realize how long it would take to format your resume in the American style and that building a network is an extremely important and time-consuming aspect of the job search. You didn't know that your field has very few opportunities in the Boston area and now you have to think about changing industries. Or maybe English classes are much more expensive than you anticipated and you didn't realize that you would arrive in Boston after many of the registration dates had already passed.

You learned all of that, but you didn't reassess whether the goal deadline you set was reasonable in this new environment. So now you are caught off guard and you feel like you've failed. All of a sudden you're 3 months into your time at MIT, and your English hasn’t improved as much you thought it would and you're still not working. And you feel miserable.

So now what?

Instead of focusing on what didn't happen and the deadline you didn't reach, take some time to think about what you did accomplish. It is so easy to remain perpetually dissatisfied with your level of fluency in English, but what exactly do you mean by "improving your English"?  How will you know when you've reached your goal of improved English? How do you measure this? Not having a specific outcome in mind can make it really difficult to figure out when you've achieved that goal.

At the moment you HAVE made some improvements, instead of patting yourself on the back for moving up in the Intermediate level class, you're immediately discouraged that you aren't an advanced speaker yet.  I'm here to tell you that you will never be a native speaker of English and there is a good chance that you will never be completely satisfied with your fluency in English. To some extent, you'll always be worried about your accent or your grammar or your lack of idioms. So instead of beating yourself up about it, take some time to look back and congratulate yourself on how far you've come. Are you speaking better English than when you first arrived? Of course you are. Sometimes it takes a visit from friends and family from home to make you realize how far you have advanced.

Acknowledge what is in your control and what isn't. Acknowledge that your plans and expectations may not have been realistic and be willing to adjust them. You're not getting graded on this. It is perfectly okay to change your mind, to redefine your plans and expectations, and to start all over from the beginning. What you're trying to do is hard. You have taken a big leap of faith, give yourself some time to adjust. Go easy on yourself.

In America, we value the attempt over the result, even if the result is failure. We respect those who keep trying against the odds, those who are willing to make mistakes and learn from them. There are plenty of Americans who start over (it's in our DNA). People move to California to create a new life, they declare bankruptcy and start with a clean slate, they go back to school at age 40 or 50 to start a whole new career.

You are building a life and a career from scratch in a new country - it isn't easy. As Ran Keren so concisely captured in his Master's thesis: you are trying to build a new life while you are dealing with "an unclear future, the unease of temporality (your situation being temporary) and dependency on your partner". Making plans and reaching goals can feel futile. So while you are working towards your bigger goals, be sure to have something fun in your life. Or set a goal that allows you to more easily track your progress; like running 2 miles or learning to bake an American apple pie or reading the entire Harry Potter series in Spanish. Enjoy those small successes as you work towards more elusive goals like finding a job or less easily defined ones, like improving your English.

My mantra for job seekers and others making a big transition is "It's tough out there, it's not your fault, you are not alone." There are many people who wouldn't dare to move to a new country. So instead of beating yourself up for not achieving your goals within those self-imposed deadlines, take a moment to congratulate yourself on daring to be different and for choosing love and adventure. As tough as it is now, I don't think you'll regret it.