everydayinspiration

To Be Happier

I started this blog a little bit more than a month ago with a post on the importance of doing what you LOVE. It was my strategy to change my thought track from work-work-work, to reboot and to take a moment to appreciate all the beautiful things that were passing by with the speed of light. In a way, it was my own happiness project. Since then, I was keeping a promise I gave to myself to post at least once a week, usually on Mondays.

A lot of amazing things have happened. I have started taking pictures again. Not only that, I was actually going though them afterwards: editing, arranging, uploading here. With my edits, I wanted to do something more tailored than Picasa, my usual editing app, could offer, and I have downloaded Lightroom. I have played with my DSLR camera to see what it was capable of outside of the comfort zone of the auto mode. I got so excited about it that I have bought a new lens and upgraded my camera. Sharing my travel experiences made me live through them again, to my delight. Taking time to write and post pictures gave me this space for reflection which I was missing.

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What I learnt from travelling to 37 countries (and living in 9)

I have recently posted a teaser on stepping out of the comfort of the place you come from and setting a foot to wander the world. Here is my learning on what happens when you actually do.

Credit card, passport, phone. You will probably forget something somewhere. And most likely, more than once. As practice has it, any travel gap can be covered by a credit card, passport and a phone or a combination of the three. So make sure you hold on to these fundamentals. Everything else is replaceable. It is still useful to pack as few valuable as possible (and in some case, like when travelling to Brazil, to avoid taking any at all), to lock the few you take with you in a safe and to check the room before leaving the hotel for good. Knowing what is enough though will save you a lot of time (and peace of mind) when packing.

Follow your (photo) hunch. Places make first impressions, too. And these first impressions matter. So take pictures of whatever catches your eye. The palm trees will become a usual part of the scenery after a few days on an island, the magic of the Mediterranean sunsets will fade away after a few nights, so keep the memories of the things as you first see them. And remember: imperfect photo is better than no photo at all. In a few months, you might find things that you hated in this picture less dramatic. In a few years, they might become a source of a great story.

Some of the best travel memories happen at 6 am. I learnt it the hard way: waking up that early is the last thing I want to do on vacation. And it can be oh so worth it. My trip to Iguazu falls would never be even nearly as amazing without a 6 am plunge into the smooth surface of the swimming pool followed by the breakfast in the sunrise rays (and a walk to the falls in the only company of coati). One of my best pictures from Rio is its sunrise, which Louveteau and I captured on our last day in Latam when we could finally catch the sun after several days of clouds at the dawn.

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Living abroad: 10 things to start from

Start with a dream. And dream big. If you have ever considered moving, usually you know where you want to be. Make this dream personal. Add the most important element to the picture of the place you want to be: yourself. See yourself waking up to your city’s sun (or rain), walking its streets to work, taking its metro, doing groceries and catching the evening lights in a glass of wine on its terraces (or roof tops) after work.

Go where you want to go, not where you think you should. You already do a lot of things you have to do. Don’t add a choice of the place to live to this list. Sure, it doesn’t make sense to pack for Paris if you don’t speak any French (unless you have a plan on how to pay your bills while learning it). However, don’t chose a place with better salaries (cost of living and taxes are likely to be higher as well), better rankings in the list of best cities to live, life expectancy or any other more promising stats over the place you love. No rational considerations can replace the streets of the city that make your heart beat faster. So make sure you chose your goal with your heart. It is also a lot easier to overcome the difficulties of the first time (and some other times) when you genuinely love the place you are working to make your home.

Think papers. The biggest challenge of moving abroad is not documents, it’s the fear of change. Documents come second. Unless you are born with a lucky passport, decide what would be a condition of you being in the place of your dream. It does not have to be a complete solution, but you need a legitimate way to stay where you want to stay for at least six months. You will get more information (sometimes in unexpected places) when you get there.

Prepare to lose. In something, be it a job level, friends, income, commute time or the bagel you used to buy every morning on your way to work. Dreams are measured by what you are willing to let go of to make them happen, and planning for moving abroad is a good way to test your commitment to your goal. How much do you really want to live in this city? Once you have mapped the upcoming losses, embrace them. They will be oh so worth it.

Look for the graduates. If you contemplate the ways to do something, it is likely that someone else already did. They might tell you how. Find people already living your dream and invest in a relationship with them. Forums, as tempting shortcut as they sound, do not yield the best results. For some reason, collective wisdom in case of immigration becomes a collective panic, with often exaggerated tales of perils of every step, bureaucratic or not. People with real success stories are likely enjoying it now and don’t sit in forums to share the recipes of their success with others. So get to know them. And when you do, don’t jump on them with your questions. They probably get a lot of that. Get interested in their life. Find common themes. Buy them coffee. Be genuine. This way you will not only bypass the panic of the forums but can also find some real friends in the place you are going to.

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