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    We’re co-creators of our life. That means, if y We’re co-creators of our life.

That means, if you don’t like your life, you have the freedom and power to change it.

👉🏼 If you don’t like your job…
👉🏼 If you’re burnt out and tired…
👉🏼 If you want more joy in your life…
👉🏼 If you want to travel the world…

…You (and only you) can change your current circumstances. This may feel intimidating, but it’s actually completely liberating. Take a deep breath!

How will you make a happy life? 🤍

#inspirationalvideos #inspirationalthoughts #travelreel #travelreelsoninstagram #travelquotes
    The crystal clear waters of St. Thomas, US Virgin The crystal clear waters of St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands. 🌺

📍Sapphire Beach & Magen’s Bay

#stthomasvirginislands #stthomasusvi #usvi #usvirginislands #visitusvi
    Who says you need to stay in hostels to travel on Who says you need to stay in hostels to travel on a budget ☝🏼

Although I have stayed in some nice hostels and tasted some delicious cheap street food throughout my life, this type of travel is for a VERY niche group of people.

So what about the rest of us? Those of us who love luxury travel and meaningful cultural experiences but also love comfort, security and convenience?

Here are a few of my favorite ways to luxury travel on a budget:

✔️Travel hacking flights.
✔️Using Google Flights to track down the cheapest flights.
✔️Booking 4/5-star hotels on Hotwire.
✔️Cruises (the newest addition to my budget travel tips)!

As always, I’m here to answer any budget travel questions you have (hmu in the comments or DMs). If you want to learn my exact strategy for how to travel on a budget, click the link in my bio. ✈️

#budgettravel #luxuryonabudget #travelonabudget #luxurytravel #travelreel
    I hear “indigo” is the brightest color of the I hear “indigo” is the brightest color of the wind. 🌬

Where will the wind take us next? (Hint: it’s one of the biggest cities in the US!! 🌃)

#travelerlife #travelbloggers #travelblogger
    7 days at sea with @royalcaribbean 🌊 We were o 7 days at sea with @royalcaribbean 🌊

We were on Royal Caribbean’s Oasis Of The Seas ship, and, let’s just say, there was no shortage of entertainment.

Between the free comedy shows, karaoke bars, Olympic-level figure skating, rock climbing, zip lining, surfing, pools, hot tubs, Broadway musicals and MORE, there’s no way you can be bored while on board.

Would you sail on Oasis? 🚢 

#royalcaribbean #oasisoftheseas #cruisetravel #cruisevacation #travelreel
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5 Benefits of Cultural Competence in Everyday Life

January 6, 2021

Over the past decade, we have seen the conversation of culture, cultural competence and cultural diversity grow exponentially. However, between experiences of cultural injustice, cultural appropriation and redefining patriotism, discussing the benefits of cultural competence has somehow begun to trigger feelings of a burden rather than of excitement or appreciation.

Before you roll your eyes and completely dismiss the idea of becoming culturally competent, know that there are, in fact, personal reasons to become culturally competent.

Here are the 5 personal benefits of cultural competence:

1. Job security.

In this day and age, you need cultural competence on your resume.

With a steady increase in globalization, companies will soon only be hiring individuals truly fit to work in a diverse environment. Large corporations, small businesses, healthcare providers, educators and freelancers alike are beginning to recognize the vitality of cultural competence.

With globalization comes unavoidable cross-cultural communication. With cross-cultural communication often comes misunderstandings, frustration and progress-less work.

Cultural competence allows you to communicate cross-culturally effectively, thus reducing misunderstandings and transforming you into a desirable, efficient, profitable employee.

2. Your work will become more efficient and effective.

As stated, when communicating with other cultures, conversations can quickly be misinterpreted and misunderstood. This leads to a variety of negative scenarios: task incompletion, task completion delay, taking offense, accidentally offending someone else, losing respect, losing authority and the list continues.

Tension then builds and effectively blocks work progress, leaving you and your team feeling unproductive and hopeless.

Cultural competence breaks the cycle of inefficiency by removing the barrier of communicating cross-culturally and propelling you to accomplish the vision at stake.

Even if you work in a monocultural environment, you were still raised in a different family with different peers from your coworkers. So, becoming culturally competent can help you avoid unnecessary misunderstandings here, too.

3. You gain control over your actions, reactions and emotions.

Nothing screams “freedom” like being able to recognize your culturally rooted emotional reactions that you didn’t even know existed.

Yes, that’s right. Every single action and reaction we take are constructs of (1) our conscience morality and (2) our home culture. We all have a conscience, but the ways in which we carry out our conscience are majorly influenced by how others around us do so.

Once you are able to recognize these cultural reactions, you can step back on the onset of a negative emotion (anger, frustration, hurt, fear, etc.) and ask yourself if you’re reacting to a moral issue or a cultural difference.

4. People will trust you more (inside and outside of work).

Trust is the foundational building block to essentially every aspect of life. Without some level of trust, no healthy relationships could exist, no products/services could ever be sold and functioning communities would cease to exist.

Mutual trust is imperative to survival.

Trust is one of the major benefits of cultural competence. The more you understand others, the better you can communicate with them. The better you can communicate with others, the less likely you are to accidentally frustrate or offend them.

The less frustration and offense, the more trust.

5. You become more persuasive.

Whether you’re pitching a huge corporate partnership in front of a panel of CEOs or just trying to convince your husband to do the dishes, persuasion is another critical element of everyday life.

We all know from high school English class that good rhetoric is a key component of a persuasive argument. What does good rhetoric consist of?

Common ground and an appeal to the audience.

So, what does good rhetoric have to do with cultural competence?

Cultural competence gives you the ability to better understand yourself in relation to other people. This means cultural competence gives you the ability to discover and communicate common ground in a way that appeals to your audience.

Therefore, cultural competence makes you more persuasive.

I won’t lie. Becoming culturally competent takes commitment, patience and practice, but the rewarding benefits of cultural competence prove worthy.

To begin your journey to become culturally competent today, subscribe below and be notified when new relevant articles are published.

5 personal benefits of becoming culturally competent in a globalized world | Indigo Sahara

By: Indigo Sahara

About Indigo Sahara

Indigo Sahara is a full-time travel blogger and photographer who has lived abroad twice, journeyed through 10+ countries and learned multiple languages. Since graduating with her master's degree, her goal now is to make travel accessible to all.

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Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Janet says

    February 2, 2021 at 10:51 am

    I particularly like “learn to be persuasive”. Perhaps because I’m studying law but you’ve written a brilliant piece, well done!

    Reply
    • February 3, 2021 at 1:17 am

      Haha! Thank you so much for your kind words. I’m so glad it resonates.

      Reply
  2. Youmna Rab says

    February 2, 2021 at 4:22 pm

    Great post! Cultural competence is so important not just at work but for our own personal self-development.

    Reply
    • February 3, 2021 at 1:16 am

      Exactly, thank you! Sometimes we get so caught up in the world around us that we forget how cultural competence impacts our personal growth, too.

      Reply
  3. Moira says

    February 2, 2021 at 9:14 pm

    I especially liked the last one about being more persuasive! Great note there, I definitely think that’s useful.

    Reply
    • February 3, 2021 at 1:13 am

      Absolutely, thank you! It truly goes to show how important cultural competence is in our own lives, too. Doesn’t it?

      Reply
  4. Susanne says

    February 3, 2021 at 7:48 pm

    Very insightful! And you definitely know how to apply your accumulated knowledge, too, as this blog post is 100% positively persuasive <3

    In March, I read a real page-turner on the topic at hand. It’s called The Culture Map by Erin Meyer. If you haven’t read it yet, I can truly recommend it.

    Love, Susanne

    Reply
    • February 4, 2021 at 6:32 pm

      Thank you so much, Susanne!

      I actually just recently read “The Culture Map” as well — brilliant piece. I truly admire Meyer’s work. She also has a personality test you can take online that tells you where you lie on all of the culture mapping spectrums (persuasion, task/relationship-orientation, time-orientation, etc.). It’s super insightful. I definitely recommend taking it!

      Reply
  5. BayRosemary says

    February 4, 2021 at 11:25 pm

    Yes, cultural competence is very important work. Glad you are sharing this in the world!

    Reply
    • February 5, 2021 at 8:33 pm

      Absolutely. It can be challenging, but it’s very important and worthwhile. Thank you for your kind words!

      Reply

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We’re co-creators of our life. That means, if y We’re co-creators of our life.

That means, if you don’t like your life, you have the freedom and power to change it.

👉🏼 If you don’t like your job…
👉🏼 If you’re burnt out and tired…
👉🏼 If you want more joy in your life…
👉🏼 If you want to travel the world…

…You (and only you) can change your current circumstances. This may feel intimidating, but it’s actually completely liberating. Take a deep breath!

How will you make a happy life? 🤍

#inspirationalvideos #inspirationalthoughts #travelreel #travelreelsoninstagram #travelquotes
The crystal clear waters of St. Thomas, US Virgin The crystal clear waters of St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands. 🌺

📍Sapphire Beach & Magen’s Bay

#stthomasvirginislands #stthomasusvi #usvi #usvirginislands #visitusvi
Who says you need to stay in hostels to travel on Who says you need to stay in hostels to travel on a budget ☝🏼

Although I have stayed in some nice hostels and tasted some delicious cheap street food throughout my life, this type of travel is for a VERY niche group of people.

So what about the rest of us? Those of us who love luxury travel and meaningful cultural experiences but also love comfort, security and convenience?

Here are a few of my favorite ways to luxury travel on a budget:

✔️Travel hacking flights.
✔️Using Google Flights to track down the cheapest flights.
✔️Booking 4/5-star hotels on Hotwire.
✔️Cruises (the newest addition to my budget travel tips)!

As always, I’m here to answer any budget travel questions you have (hmu in the comments or DMs). If you want to learn my exact strategy for how to travel on a budget, click the link in my bio. ✈️

#budgettravel #luxuryonabudget #travelonabudget #luxurytravel #travelreel
I hear “indigo” is the brightest color of the I hear “indigo” is the brightest color of the wind. 🌬

Where will the wind take us next? (Hint: it’s one of the biggest cities in the US!! 🌃)

#travelerlife #travelbloggers #travelblogger
7 days at sea with @royalcaribbean 🌊 We were o 7 days at sea with @royalcaribbean 🌊

We were on Royal Caribbean’s Oasis Of The Seas ship, and, let’s just say, there was no shortage of entertainment.

Between the free comedy shows, karaoke bars, Olympic-level figure skating, rock climbing, zip lining, surfing, pools, hot tubs, Broadway musicals and MORE, there’s no way you can be bored while on board.

Would you sail on Oasis? 🚢 

#royalcaribbean #oasisoftheseas #cruisetravel #cruisevacation #travelreel

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