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Flow founde Irene and
Astrid in 2008 with the
very fit sue of FlowBACKGROUND PATTERNS
SHUTTERSTOCK
You can follow us on flowmagazine.com, (flow_magazine),
(Flow Magazine INT) and (Flow Magazine).[email protected] [email protected]What We Have Learned
We have been making Flow for over a decade
now. What has been a real eye-opener over the
past ten years is that there are extraordinary
and inspiring people all over the world who are
struggling with the same things as we are.
Because the Dutch Flow was followed by
English, French and German editions, we’ve
been meeting readers from other countries,
and we’ve learned that, around the world,
people want to worry less, live more slowly,
enjoy things more. Thanks to Flow (and yes,
also thanks to Instagram), we’ve come into
contact with a lot of different great illustrators
and writers. We’ve emailed with them, they’ve
come to our editorial office, and sometimes
we’ve met during one of our Flow trips to the
US, Japan and South Africa. It has given us
more confidence. Friendly, kind-hearted and
open-minded people live everywhere, which is
nice to keep in mind at a time like this, when
the world seems so complicated. The following
are the life lessons from Flow that we cherish.LIFE OUTSIDE YOUR COMFORT ZONE
CAN BE VERY GOOD. Learning new things
is fun and keeps life interesting. Dare a little
more, do something that scares you, but
choose goals you can reach.HAPPINESS IS FOUND IN SMALL
THINGS. Sometimes, we would think too big
and too impossibly. Life can be complicated
perhaps, but when you think of the small
things that make you happy—for example,
peeling an orange in one unbroken spiral—you
keep seeing the beautiful things which are
right there in front of you.YOU ALWAYS MISS MORE THAN YOU
EXPERIENCE. We write about it often in
Flow: the fear of missing out. But life is not
about what you could have done. Don’t be
led on by all that stuff on social media.STOP THINKING MORE OFTEN. If there
is anything that we’ve learned in recent years
it is that we are responsible in part for holding
onto our problems, fears and assumptions.
And we learned that you can flip that on its
head—but also that so many people are
walking around who have exactly the same
going on in their heads. As teenagers in high
school, we would have liked to have been
taught how to live life. So actually, we’re
making Flow for our own sakes, too. We are
never done learning, and we still learn from
every story.