On Wednesday, in my Cross Cultural Coaching class we discussed the idea of culture. Yesterday we discussed Truth and Fraud.

Both Beate and I seemed to have done a lot of reflecting on the subject of culture and cultural differences. She, a german woman living in Singapore, and I have both experienced being submersed in a different geographic culture.

The more we progressed with the discussion, however, the more we noticed that there is so much diversity in each cultural group we tried to grasp: nations, states, gender, etc. It boiled down to each person is her own culture.

What opportunities does dealing with and being open to diversity present?
We have the opportunity of discovering new possibilities of living according to our own culture, true to ourselves – living our own truth.

In these many groups that are elements of our lives, our identities, and our cultures, to which we belong outside of our one-person-culture are many ingrained ideas, norms, guidelines by which we judge ourselves and others, and which influence our behavior. These groups may be our family, our friends, our Saturday afternoon sport group, our work colleagues, or more broadly our age group, our gender, our nation.

It is necessary to be aware of these influences to understand and to deal with them. When we understand where our ideas and values come from, we can then decide if they are constructive to us in living according to our own culture, our own truth.

Be true to yourself–become aware, seek to understand, only then is it possible to define and move toward our own truth.

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