Self Cultural Analysis - Example Based on Personal Experience

Culture is created from social environment defined as the religion, norms, values and behavior, beliefs and tradition that is distributed by each individual in a group however in different way by every individual. For an example, addressing elderly people by their name is regarded as common thing in some countries however; it is considered as a rude behavior and tradition in Nepalese culture and also considered those who do not value their behavior do not respect their culture. Cultural self-awareness is the process to understand own culture, values, norms, beliefs and attitudes and how these things have influenced our self. Cultural self-awareness is important for a person because it plays a responsibility of many factors such a person’s life. And also when people want to interact with others of different cultures based on their background. In such circumstances cultural self-awareness plays an important role in continuing the values that people believe in and respect. I think Cultural self-awareness is the beginning process to improve our cultural intelligence of an individual. However, this is self cultural analysis example essay is going to explore the concept of how cultural self-awareness is connected to cultural intelligence. Furthermore, my experience will follow.

I came from small country Nepal where culture, religion and respect mean a lot to us. People in Nepal are generally very neighborly, curious and enjoy speaking to people from other country. In our culture, we believe human connection is very needful. Moving to Australia for further study was my dream and biggest challenge. Being overseas student it was difficult for me to adjust in Australian culture and tradition. In our country neighbor are like family to us we share our opinion, celebrate festivals together, and invite them for dinner and family get-together. People in Australia they are not as much as familiar to third culture people comparing to Australian neighbor they even have no idea who is living next door. They just smile and just greet you. I have been living in my apartment for 3 years and I am pretty sure my neighbor has no idea who is living next to them. However, I managed to adjust myself from this type of situation and managed to live with small Nepalese surrounding. But whenever I make Nepalese food I make sure to offer them, which makes me happy. It is all about my cultural intelligence that I was able to expand from cultural awareness. Being third culture and living in Australia, it’s shaping my behaviors and me by roles and norms. It has exposed many cultures and way of life and viewing Australian culture.

Cultural intelligence is referred the skills of people who can balance quickly, with minimal stress, when they can interconnect highly in culture other than the ones where they were socialized. Most of the Australian follow Christianity and also people from different country in my workplace are Christian while I am Hindu. Whenever there is work related meeting or get-together in my work place there is often beef that are mostly served and which is common in Australian society. Whenever they used to serve beef in front of me I used to feel sick and become nauseas and I could not stand whoever is eating in front of me. However, I am trying myself to balance from this kind of situation and now its ok to eat beef in front of me. Because of the increased adaptability cultures, national knowledge infrastructures have to be opened and recreate. People from different country with their cultural aspect created a new form of knowledge. People have different perception of interpreting and evaluating things in different way. Sometimes stepping outside of our cultural boundaries in order to realize the influence that our culture has on our behavior.

Cultural self-awareness consistently helps to improve cultural intelligence for managing cultural shocks. Culture shock is the state of uncomfortable situation faced by an individual from different cultural when they travel to unfamiliar environment when they are not familiar to their local customs, language, and acceptable behavior. Culture shock occurs when people interact with different group of a very different culture and experience a loss of control. This happens when they cannot understand or accept the behavior of the people from the other culture. Then they feel confused and develop both physical and psychological symptoms. He have described some symptoms that can occur in person with cultural shock are homesick, anger, depression, headache, embarrassment and sever attack like suicidal attempts. Therefore, it is important to adopt cultural intelligence that was develop by cultural self- awareness is important to adjust in this type of situation. In order to be familiar to new community, it is impetuously necessary to have common purpose, beliefs, desire, knowledge and common understanding. For example talking about cultural shock, Australian accent is very fast and they use very short word or sentence to talk. Working as customer service it was very difficult for me to understand their sentence because English is not my first language and moreover they used slang word while talking, which was hardest thing for me to adopt. That experience was cultural shock for me because when I talk to them I used to get embarrassed about my accent. That was my cultural shock experience in Australia, however now I have surrounded myself with Australian friends at work and in university that is developing my English and getting familiar with Australian. I started finding healthy distraction rather like watching more English shows and movies that help my understanding towards Australian accent and their slang word. It is all because of the cultural intelligence that I was able to build up with cultural awareness. Now I can understand their accent and I am able to speak with them without hesitation and I feel a lot better.

In conclusion, the essay has demonstrated an understanding of the cultural self-awareness and cultural intelligence that has extended through my cultural experience, knowledge and behavior towards other culture. This relationship that connected to experience, behavior and knowledge has also given awareness about the reasons for my behavior and how can this be adopted in order to behave culturally. Being able to adopt other cultural awareness helped me to comprehend awareness toward multi-cultural community.

References

• Quappe, S. & Cantatore, G. (2005). What is Cultural Awareness, anyway? How do I build it?
• Spencer-Oatey, H. (2012). What is Culture? A compilation of quotations: GlobalPad Core Concepts.
• Russell, K.M. (2011). Growing up a third culture kid: A sociological self-exploration, Human Architecture: Journal of the Sociology of Self-Knowledge, 9(1), 29-42.
• Brislin, R., Worthley, R, & Macnab, B (2006). Cultural intelligence: Understanding behaviors that serve people's goals. Group & Organization Management, 31(1), 40-55.