6 Ways Experteering Can Help You Reach Your Full Potential

Are you proud of your career? Do you still see yourself doing the same thing in the next 5 years? What about 15 years from now?

According to recent studies, approximately 52.3% of Americans are unhappy with their jobs. If you find yourself included in this 52 percent, maybe it’s time to reassess your life journey… because believe it or not, life isn’t just about getting a paycheck.

Life is meant to be lived, it’s meant to be explored… it’s best experienced when you’re living out of your comfort zone, opening you to new opportunities to thrive in more ways you could ever imagine.

“I had recently left my teaching career, which I had been doing for ten years. After that I experimented with travel writing and also did some freelance work with an education company, but neither fully aligned my passion for writing and education and I was looking for something next. I was open to the idea of something big… something new… and that’s when I came to MovingWorlds.” (Erin Dowd, 2015 Experteer — read her story on MovingWorlds)

Not only is Experteering a perfect way to reignite your passion for life and your career, but it also provides you with a unique opportunity to expand your experience. It challenges you to see things from a different perspective, increases your self-awareness, helps you develop self-confidence while becoming more innovative, increases your problem solving abilities, and teaches you how to deal with ambiguity. So stop choosing to be content with your life and career, and choose to go Experteering.

It’ll change your life… promise.

1. Experteering Challenges You to See Things from a Different Perspective

It is human nature to cling to perspectives that are comfortable to us. Primarily because at this stage in our lives and careers, we’ve had plenty of experiences that have molded our thoughts on life and work. But just like anything else in life, in order to see things from a new perspective, we need to encounter something that inspires us… something that impacts our lives in such a way to do so.

When you go Experteering abroad, every aspect of life is foreign: You’re out of your comfort zone, in a different culture, eating different food, experiencing new intellectual challenges and people. All of these alterations can be intimidating at first, but they are tremendously rewarding. Experteering plants you in these new/ foreign situations, so that the only way for you to adapt is to innately see things differently. It makes you more malleable, ignites creativity, and creates room to acknowledge and respect all forms of differences in life.

2. Experteering Increases Self-Awareness

Choosing to become self-aware is a bold move. When you become an Experteer, you begin to acknowledge your strengths and weakness when working with new groups. You notice how you react in difficult or uncomfortable situations. You learn to create new boundaries, to tear some old ones down, and learn how to communicate in a cross-cultural setting.

The level of self-awareness that comes from Experteering is unparalleled, and through the unearthing of this new and heightened definition of self, you create room for new life lessons to come your way. In turn, becoming one step closer towards reaching your full potential.

3. Experteering Develops Self-Confidence

Us silly human beings… we’re so hard on ourselves. We’re constantly doubting our potential, questioning our knowledge, disbelieving our abilities, or belittling our beauty.

But the cool thing about life is that there are countless opportunities for us to build self-confidence, we just have to notice when the opportunities arise, and pounce on them when they make themselves visible.

Experteering is one of those life opportunities that have the ability to teach us how to tap into our pre-existing, internal reservoir of confidence… and it does so in 3 ways.

First: Inspiration. As an Experteer, you share your knowledge with the organization you’re paired with, giving them the tools they need to be successful and sustainable independently. What’s more inspirational than being a catalyst for others to reach their full potential?

Second: Impact. The work you do as an Experteer truly makes a sustainable impact within the community you work and the people you collaborate with. Knowing without a doubt that your work truly makes a difference has an incalculable ability to increase your self-confidence.

Third: Leadership. As an Experteer, your leadership skills will be pushed to the max. You’ll be responsible for spearheading projects, managing multiple tasks and motivating people around you. Developing and or further polishing your leadership abilities also increases your self-confidence, making Experteering a win-win for all.

4. Experteering Helps You Become More Innovative

The difficult part about becoming an expert in your field is that you get into a routine. You know processes’ inside and out, forwards and backwards. You can explain your topic simply, and your system of going about things soon becomes second nature.

With this comfort comes the potential to become blinded to different ways of doing your job. We tend to get comfortable where we’re planted after a while, but it’s always good to shake things up a little bit to ensure you get a 360-degree view of the way we do things.

Experteering abroad rips up your roots and replants you in unfamiliar soil. You work with new people, in a new country, on a new project, and get to see another side of your work that you probably weren’t exposed to previously. In turn, you learn new tips and tricks on how to do your job; you become more innovative!

5. Experteering Increases Your Problem-Solving Abilities

Problems are an inevitable part of work and life. Usually when a problem comes up at work, you know how to handle it. Maybe you send the issue to another member of your team for help, or, maybe you just know how to fix the issue on your own. Either way, there is always a solution nearby to help you move into the next stage of your work.

However, when you’re Experteering abroad, problems don’t necessarily have an automatic solution or process engrained in a structure to follow. You’re expected to do more with less. This forces you to come up with brand new ways to communicate, while learning how to solve problems you’ve never encountered before.

By being placed in this type of situation, you’re able to tap into your creative side to come up with new, impactful ideas that solve real problems. You will work in a resource constrained environment and will achieve more than you think is possible; these experiences will maximize your ability to be a better problem-solver once you return home.

6. Experteering Increases Your Ability to Deal With Ambiguity

Oh, the dreaded daily grind. You know what I’m talking about. That rut that we tend to fall into when things get cozy, and routine settles in? Yeah, that thing. Of course it’s comfortable, but sooner or later you find yourself unenthused at the idea of taking on new opportunities you once would have jumped for. The word “no” becomes an all too familiar term in your vocabulary, replacing the once popular choice of “yes”.

But when you go Experteering, you don’t have that same daily grind. You have a different team, new projects, fresh goals, unusual challenges, and of course, a diverse set of expectations. That in and of itself has the ability to be initially overwhelming. When you’re overwhelmed and out of your comfort zone, you focus on what’s in front of you, and in the focus comes incredible personal growth.

Experteering not only teaches you how to find direction in ambiguity, but it makes uncertainty fun. It teaches you to be creative and to roll with the punches, making you a more resilient person and employee along the way. But most importantly, it teaches you that you have the potential to do anything you set your mind to, only if you choose to create room in your mind and life to do so.

So there it is. The MovingWorlds promise on how Experteering can make a positive impact in your life and help you reach your full-potential. Always remember that this life is yours for the taking; so take chances, be scared, choose to continue to be challenged, and strive to be the best version of yourself that you can possibly be.

Want to learn a little more? Check out these links below:

1. A Better Way to Volunteer Overseas – Go Experteering
2. ‘Voluntourism’ Can’t Solve Big Problems, That’s Where ‘Experteers’ Come In
3. When Experts Volunteer, Good Happens