Motivating myself: what is the best way to do it?

112th day in Latvia.

All these days I have been as powerful as I could have been at my daily work in AIESEC. I had my ups and downs, and had learnt a few things necessary for me. A few of them are managerial operations, cultural sensitivity, personal effectivenes, resilience.

I am recapturing August activities when I just had arrived here, and how I was approaching my work, my new friends, my environment and myself. The hottest words that month were "Experiment. Try new things out.Don't limit yourself".

September was full of operational stuff- you want to get result from your 8 hours sitting in the office? Stand up, go and do your work then. It was also the time of educating people on how to manage workload. It has been the time of a high sense of ownership for all activities in AIESEC in Latvia, mainly in member recruitment. It has been the time for another new activity for me: outlining the National Training Seminar (NTS) with all its pros and cons, and then delivering it in mid Oct. The vocabulary in Sep was mainly about "Risk management. Upfront planning. Maturity".

In October I have bonded myself with AIESEC in Lithuania while facilitating at their National Conference (NatCo). Surprisingly, during Lithuanian NatCo I was celebrating my 3rd year in AIESEC as I have had my first AIESEC conference on 23-25 Oct 2007 in my home committee AIESEC in Almaty, Kazakhstan. NatCo has also showed me some simple lessons, e.g. sleeping bag can be as warm as my home blanket, conferences in schools are perfect premises for cutting costs in the budget, and I have known how AIESEC in Lithuania hosts parties during national conferences. Vocabulary has reminded me connotations of "Inspiration. Leadership.Resources"

Right after our NTS 5 fresh members of AIESEC in Riga has tasted their first successes and failures in organizing Train the Trainers (TtT) national conference for our members. It has been a memorable time for all of us I reckon: guys had only 2 weeks to raise the venue for the conference and for hosting delegates, to find financial support, to promote the conference, to build their team, etc. Yes, TtT experience had its peaks of a big growth for all of us, and one of the biggest lessons I carry out from those 2 weeks is Crisis management. I felt really proud for TtT team and Mara, the Organising Committee President (OCP) who stepped up for a short term project but had done her best, and I assume, she has learnt a lot from the experience.

Final picture after 3 days of learning how to be a good trainer
International table: Krista, Latvia, Assel, Kazakhstan, Laura, Denmark, Seb, Germany, Silvia, Romania

Meanwhile, I was also preparing for TtT to deliver in AIESEC in Lithuania, which has been last weekend right after our TtT. 2 similar conferences/seminars in content but slightly different in its execution. Nevertheless, if at our TtT I had learnt how to be very much flexible in preparing for the conference, not to panic and be innovative, in Lithuania I had experienced again co-facilitating, AND I learnt that female's training team is not the worst case scenario :) I had a few worries that all of the trainers for Lithuanian TtT are girls, and we would confront in viewpoints, in team work, we would just waste our time in discussing some fluffy stuff. For instance, we spent about 7 or 8 hours at pre-meeting in discsussing questions, which we have been discussing via emails for a month! This is why I love working with men: they are brief in decision making, precise enough and time for them is money. However, for a 100th time I have witnessed how wrong my judgements can be: in the end our trainers' team, comprised of black haired girls, Dominika from AIESEC in Slovakia, Ezster from AIESEC in Hungary, Sasha from AIESEC in Russia and me, has spent enormous time together in chatting, co-facilitating, sightseeing, and caring about each other. Lithuanian Train the Trainers conference has been my 4th and final conference in 2009 that enriched me positively.

Dominika, my co-FACI. I value our pair work a lot

Ezster who blossomed in the last minutes of conference in Vilnius, Lithuania

Sasha and I: our talks before-during-after conference

have fulfilled me enormously.

I have already forgotten how important it is to feel confidence, to show it, to value and love yourself. These 3, 5 months have been more as a race. Time race, mental race, emotions' race. I have completely forgotten about myself, somehow forgotten about family; what's more, I gave up the idea of what I will be doing in 7 months. I have been urging myself, "Come on! You need to decide as soon as possible what you will be doing in summer 2010. Your term in AIESEC in Latvia will finish soon, but you need to be sure at least what you want to experience in the future, what you envision for yourself in 10 years, in 20 years, in 30 years". And then, one day I said to myself, "Stop! If you can't answer simple questions now, if you can't orientate yourself to summer 2010, you better not do it at all. Eventually, you will understand what experience you wish to have. For now, just pause. Do smart choices, not fashionable ones" I guess AIESECers will understand what I mean by these questions. Nov-Dec is a time when many applications are out for applying for Member Committee Presidents/Member Committee Vice Presidents positions in the whole AIESEC network. It is the time full of brainstorming, data analysis, prognosis, sleepless nights in filling the application forms, and loads of other work. However, I am not doing any of these activities. The answer is clear, I still have not decided what my 2010-2011 year looks like. I have a vision of my life in 5 -7 years' time but I have nothing yet for the next year. Yet. Perhaps, forthcoming physical meeting of Talent Management Unit (TMU), the Global Support Team in AIESEC, will guide me for the decision that is to be made. Vocabulary for Nov is about personal effectiveness, inner strength, strictness, collective intelligence.

A little bit of sweet memories ...