What Immigrants Can Learn from Derek Sivers’ “Useful Not True”
What do immigrants, Derek Sivers, and his latest book, Useful Not True, have in common? It turns out, quite a lot.
Hello, I'd really like to grow this email list. If you enjoy this newsletter, it would mean the world to Jola and I if you encouraged one friend/fellow immigrant/colleague to subscribe…Very likely, the the only thing you will get in return is warm fuzzy feelings, and if I can attribute it to you, I’d personally send you a thank you email.
Published mid-2024, Useful Not True isn’t about immigration. However, by asking the reader to take a harder look at their fixed notion of reality and embrace better perspectives, it touches on an issue newcomers face: how do I integrate into my new society?
As immigrants, learning and adjusting to our new home’s cultural nuances and norms requires reframing on our part. We also have to balance preserving our native culture while adopting a new one. This experience often leaves individuals feeling caught between two worlds. An in-betweener.
Sivers’ book becomes relevant in such situations. By sharing his story from spending most of his life in America to becoming a citizen of three countries, Derek offers perspectives that help address the feeling of being in between worlds.
Here are three lessons from the book that immigrants will find helpful.
1. Seeing Through Multiple Cultural Lenses
Sivers’ central premise is that our beliefs should be judged by their usefulness rather than their absolute truth. His thesis provides immigrants with a framework for dealing with the disconcerting fact that what was “obviously true” in your home country may be considered strange, wrong, or incomprehensible in your new country.
Sivers shares the story of a British woman in China who learned that being too polite, a habit she took for granted back home, could come in the way of building familial relationships. This story is a great example of how we must constantly thread between competing “truths” about appropriate behavior, communication styles, and social expectations.
Sivers’ approach is valuable because he suggests we needn’t declare one cultural perspective right and another wrong. Instead, we should ask: “Which perspective serves me better in this context?”
This framing allows us to adapt without feeling we’ve betrayed our origins.
2. Rewriting Your Immigration Story
“The past isn’t true,” Sivers claims, sharing how he misremembered a car accident for 18 years until a conversation with his mother revealed a different reality. We often carry complex emotional memories of our home country — some nostalgic, some painful, some both.
These memories shape our identity and can become limiting if we hold onto them as unchangeable facts. One way to tackle this mindset is Sivers’ technique of “re-editing your mind’s movies” by replaying your memories from different perspectives.
Consider the immigrant who remembers leaving home as a devastating loss. Following Sivers' approach, they might reframe this memory to highlight their courage, resourcefulness, and ability to start afresh. The facts haven't changed, but the meaning has shifted.
This approach isn't about denying difficult truths but choosing interpretations that empower rather than diminish. Our memories are interpretations, as Sivers demonstrates. Why not choose interpretations that help us move forward with strength and purpose?
3. Embracing Cultural Fluidity
Sivers tells a story about his Singaporean friend’s confusion when their American hosts said, “Help yourself to anything in the fridge.” What seemed like straightforward hospitality to the Americans appeared neglectful to someone from a culture where hosts actively attend to their guests’ needs.
Such cultural misunderstandings are common for immigrants.
Sivers’ metaphor of using different instruments for different life stages captures how immigrants can develop cultural versatility and handle this sort of cultural mishaps. Just as a musician might choose a flute for one piece and drums for another, we can learn to deploy different cultural tools in different contexts without experiencing this flexibility as disloyalty or confusion.
Cultural meanings aren’t fixed. They’re contextual, negotiable, and often arbitrary. Even if they initially appear non-negotiable, embracing cultural fluidity enables us to see them as social conventions that can be understood, respected, and sometimes gently bent.
Finding Your Own Useful Truths
The immigrant experience, like life, isn’t about finding one “true” way to belong but creating meaning in a journey that changes by the day. By embracing the change for what it is, we learn that we don’t have to have everything figured out at once.
Start small. Pick one cultural “truth” from your home country and experiment with a new approach. Notice what works. And try again.
What’s your first change going to be?