It is interesting to find out that a lot of people seem to be surprised by our courage to make the choice to follow our Sun. In this blog, we would like to share why it is possible to Follow your Sun, to turn your dream into reality. Not just ‘somewhere in the future’, but right here and right now. There are a couple of questions that we often receive, and by answering these questions we love to take you on our journey. Note that everyone’s Sun is different and that things that are important to us, don’t necessarily have to be the same for you:
You’re traveling again, why do you choose to leave all the time?
The past years both of us traveled a lot, each year at least a couple of months. Sometimes people wonder why we travel over and over again and are curious to the reasons behind this. Is there something we are looking for in another place? We don’t feel that’s the case. By surrounding yourself in a different environment than the one you’re used to, you are pushing your boundaries and broadening your horizon. There is so much we can learn from different cultures, other norms, values and traditions. Traveling opens up your mind, instead of narrowing it down by being too much attached to your own perspective. We don’t travel to ‘find’ ourselves, because we feel that wherever you go, you will always take yourself with you. In a different environment this often becomes even more clear. If you tend to see the positive side of things in The Netherlands, then this won’t change somewhere else. And the same goes for the opposite: if normally you are used to focus on obstacles and problems, this will probably also be the case when you are abroad. Who you are doesn’t change, it just becomes more clear. This creates opportunities to grow and develop yourself.
Besides this we believe that the process of (temporarily) leaving home is extremely valuable in itself. By creating distance, literally, valuable situations unfold. Claudia de Breij, a Dutch singer and comedian, beautifully describes what then happens in one of her songs:
Every time you leave, it feels good
I like to miss you
It’s alright when you leave
Because when I miss you
I realize how wonderful it is
That you exist
Temporary goodbyes make us more aware of what our loved ones mean to us, and at those moments we tend to express this to the other. When something of someone is always there, there is the chance of forgetting the value of it. By taking distance you create deeper relationships and you will realize how blessed we are with being in each other’s lives. In this way, distance creates more connection. We are grateful to experience this each and every time again.
As the start of Follow your Sun, we consciously decided to create this distance. Before developing our own workshops, we wanted to make time and space to learn. There’s already so much going on in this field, that we love to get inspired by others who already learned lessons we can take into account ourselves as well. Also, according to us, a period of rest and minimal planning is essential to a creative process like Follow your Sun. When there is space for new ideas and unexpected developments, they will naturally come by. This doesn’t work like this when there are a lot of other things that ask our time and attention. Again a reason for us to spend 10 weeks abroad. We do realize that this is a choice that a lot of people can’t make, or don’t dare or want to make, and that this perhaps is something that makes us unique. However, we truly believe that the personal investment that we put into Follow your Sun so far, will pay back in the future in various ways.
How do you collect the means to finance this all?
More than once people asked us how we are able to finance all these trips. This made us realize that people might believe that traveling costs a lot of money. Actually, this doesn’t always have to be the case. Therefore, we’d like to share some tips that might help you if you like to travel cheaper, longer or more:
- Try to minimize your costs in your home country: A) Calculate how much money you normally spend on rent in your home country, and reserve this budget for accommodation abroad. B) Make sure you (temporarily) stop any subscriptions that you don’t need abroad. C) Sublet your house or room to make sure you don’t need to pay double rent. Even for a short period (for example less than a month) this is often possible by using your own network or Facebook groups.
- Choose your destination wisely. For example, South East Asia (from our own experience especially Thailand and Indonesia) are relatively cheap. Also Nicaragua, Peru, Bolivia, Colombia and Guatemala are cheap options. On the contrary, traveling through Africa, Europe, Australia, Myanmar and Belize are generally more expensive.
- Remind yourself that extensive trips are relatively cheaper than short holidays. If you have more time and flexibility, you will spend less on transportation costs. And, divided over a couple of months, a plane ticket of 500 euro’s is actually not even that expensive.
- Try to book your ticket in advance, about three months to six weeks before departure. www.skyscanner.nl is a useful comparative website. A cheap ticket often means that you need to transfer once or more, which obviously increases your travel time. However, this doesn’t need to be a problem if you have more time anyway.
- For some of you this might need no explanation but for others it does: try to keep an eye on costs that you normally spend on clothes, other material things, festivals and dinners. Sometimes you have to choose, which means you might have to miss some parties in order to be able to pay that ticket.
- Bargain! In most countries this is part of the culture, and especially for taxi rides and touristic tours the prices are generally too high. We experienced that when you spend some time on bargaining (make it a fun game!), you can save up to about 50% of the costs.
- And last but now least: allow yourself to relax, to truly enjoy without the need to do or plan anything. Giving yourself time off is critical in our busy lives and eventually this will give you the renewed energy and inspiration you need to go on.
Very courageous of you that you dare to follow your dreams, where does that trust of being able to realize your dreams come from?
After founding Follow your Sun, we received almost only positive and encouraging replies. It’s a wonderful to hear that most people acknowledge the need of following your own Sun and are supporting us in doing this. Most of you call us brave or courageous for deciding to quite our current jobs and to dedicate all our time, attention and energy to Follow your Sun. Of course we also encounter challenges, but the feeling of this being the only thing we truly want is for us the most important, making the decision an obvious one.
We found out that this decision feels so obvious and natural to us, because it is completely aligned with our core values. We believe that discovering these values for yourself is extremely important. It enables you to evaluate if the life you live at the moment fits with your personality and purpose. To give an example of our own core values: we try to make choices that provide us with freedom, flexibility, adventure, own responsibility, cooperation, connection, creativity and fun. For us, it is important to be able to decide ourselves to which mission we commit ourselves, when we work, where we work and with whom. If you add up all of this, founding our own organization is the thing that we needed to do. This is our Sun.
As we mentioned before: this Sun is – and should be – different for everyone. If your core values are security, regularity and stability, doing what we do would probably not fit your purpose. And that’s exactly what it is all about. The fact that we are all different – that everyone has their own Sun – is amazing. In the end, we will achieve the most if everyone is their authentic self. But before we can guide others in this process, we believe it is essential to find out ourselves first what it means to follow our Sun. Practice what we preach! And that’s exactly what we are doing at the moment.
Our trust in Follow your Sun trust derives from the belief that if we receive so much happiness from following our Sun, this must be the same to others. Our energy shines, and we see that positive vibe coming back to us at the same time. The fact that both of us believe so strongly in this mission increases our trust. We keep telling each other that we wouldn’t be able to do this on our own. We are super grateful for this and can’t wait to inspire others to go on this fantastic journey. Set your intentions, create your life, follow your Sun!
Lots of love from Java,
Myrthe & Kiymet
P.S. Corresponding to our core value of flexibility, here’s an overview of our flex work spaces so far:
