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 ...

Should the world start thinking about its future?

... Or does the world already think about it?

I have recently come across one video that quickly shifted me back to Kazakhstan and its future, and then of course questions were directed towards in general. Yes, I am thinking in a very narrow route, first referring to my country and then globally.

In the video the author Hopkins questions about Transition to a world without oil. A very much relevant video I'd say. While I was watching it, I was inquiring myself on: what does our nation think about it? How do people in Kazakhstan plan to live in case we have no oil?

If I look at Kazakhstan's development for the past 10-12 years, it is the time of our actual growth. The development plan "Kazakhstan 2030" prioritizes where the country will put its biggest efforts, what focuses are relevant in every year, decade since 1997 when it was introduced. The economic growth is visible everywhere as well as you can notice a big GAP between the rich and the poor. For instance, I always laugh when I look at the statistics: average salary of a Kazakhstani employee is usually high than it is in fact. According to different media sources like this or you can search here I'd bet wages in the oil rich West region are higher than in the Central or Eastern part. Additionally, living standards are totally different from region to region. What's more, is that if the Parliament announces about increase for 20-25% in teachers', medical staff and other budget personnel pockets' 2-3 months ahead, prices for food, public utilities, transport, etc rise immediately!

Ok, back to the point. The video I recommend you to watch here should be one of the hot topics discussed in Kazakhstani schools with youngsters, should attract our attention now when it's not too late- we need to start thinking about the world without oil. We rely on our natural resources a lot: yes, we all know that the Caspian sea is still under research, yes, we have enough plentiful supplies of oil and gas for at least 30-40 years... Excuse me, what will be after 2030?

The country is still a big exporter of non renewable resources. However, I am glad to read in the news and observe some of the new trends for the state such as focus on education, focus on Innovation centres, focus for fostering the development of Health care system, Socio-economic areas. On the contrary, I again doubt a lot that this development starts blossoming only when the Government pushes local admins to or when there is a public case of revealing a true situation with some politicians engaged into bribery.

I still have a lot of questions, and I will be glad if anyone could share with me thoughts on the future of the world either with or without oil storages.

Time VS Qality:2

"Nothing you do for children is ever wasted. They seem not to
notice us, hovering, averting our eyes, and they seldom offer
thanks, but what we do for them is never wasted."

Time VS Quality

100th day in Latvia

1/3 of my time is already gone. How has it been: successful or I still need more time for that, bright or too much gloomy colours, friendly or angry, sunny or rainy, Riga based or home-thoughts- based?

This week I devote to self analysis for better understanding of what I am and what I want in life, how I progress and what I still did not obtain from past experiences. I need to analyse positive and negative moments happened here, in the Baltics for the past 3 months. I desperately need it, I think. I have lost enough time just because being in that 'time race'. Enough!

Tugan zherim- Kazakhstan

Menin Kazakhstanym. Sagyndym seni.

My Kazakhstan. I miss you.

I have come across this feeling today.

I have recently been asked about my country a lot: last weekend during one of the national seminars in AIESEC in Latvia - Train the Trainers- I spent a few hours in the early morning telling about peoples in Kazakhstan, about our history and traditions, about current life and what our people look like. I was talking and talking for ages how it feels to be a Kazakhstani citizen, what our education system possesses and lacks of to be competitive in a globalized world, how politics functions in Kazakhstan and how bureacracy "has its best days", etc.

At one glimpse it seems that when you are away you start criticizing your country a lot. Yes, you see what works successfully and what doesn't when you are home, but somehow you don't talk about it a lot, unless you watch the news every hour and compare it to the world news. But here in Latvia I am somehow being asked quite often about my country, and I start to notice I should not just blame the government for not successful processes in the country. Success depends a lot on how people act.

But I wanna talk now about those first feelings of missing home country. It's not homesickness yet. I remember I first was missing Kazakhstan with its smell and taste a lot this year in March in Bucharest while attending AIESEC international conference EuroXpro. This conference is designed for new Member Committees'(MC) (in other words, National Board of AIESEC country) teams to get a global picture of what the organization strives for, what each MC member needs to know/understand/gain to perform at his best for his country and organization's stable growth, and of course for networking. Though the conference lasted only 6 days, and then we had 2 days of study tour in Transilvania (Central Romania) I had been terribly missing my home country and Kazakhstani people. The reason for that could be time: on March 22 we celebrate Nauryz- Muslim New Year, and the whole country goes "wild": we prepare Nauryz kozhe (which is tradtional soup with 7 ingredients; 7 is a very magic number for Kazakh/ nomadic people, as well as for other nations), we cook baursaki - a Kazakh type of bread, we organize different street festivals, national song competitions called Aitys, we celebrate change of seasons- from cold winter to fresh warm happy spring. We celebrate a birth of a New Year. So for the first time in my life I missed Nauryz this March, and for me it was very much painful. I had never thought I'd feel that way. In order to kill that homesickness and tears (yes, I even cried a bit!) I was skyping with my brother, adn when he told me they were preparing Beshbarmak- a national traditional dish with horse meat and solty dough- Oh! I felt worse and worse! So did Saltanat- current Vice President Finance of AIESEC in Kazakhstan. So at 5am we were preparing a video about Nauryz and how we celebrate it in Kazakhstan in order to show at the morning plenary on EuroXpro's last day. It was a very special moment for Salta and me, and we were damn happy when we shared with other AIESECers from 38 countries- more than 200 people- part of our culture.

This evening was one of the most remarkable ones for me as we had spent it with some members of AIESEC in Latvia. On Oct 16-18 AIESEC in Latvia had its first National Training Seminar (NTS) with new members in a peaceful Cesis- a small historical town not far from Riga. At NTS we had a cool "competition"- members voted for others according to a Global Competency Model's (GCM) criteria we have in AIESEC: Active Learner (AL), Social Responsible (SR), Entrepreneurial (E) and Culturally Sensitive(CS). According to GCM we select young people who want to join AIESEC as well as when AIESECers apply for different leadership positions within the organization. So, durinng 3 days at NTS 50 new members voted for their peers, and in the end we had 5 people who were acknowledged as AL, SR, E, CS, and these new members got an "award" of dinner with MC AIESEC in Latvia. Well, this evening MC dinner eventually happened at MC flat: we were preparing with Jake and Liza cleaning the apartment :), cooking Rizotto and tasting a new bottle of wine, having talks in between with Liiga- the first one who came to our flat. The other guys came an hour later as they were attending a Selling skills training organized by AIESEC in Riga and one of the alumni. Finally, when we all gathered together it was about 8pm.

*Just a perfect example of a get together event back in Kazakhstan: if you book your meeting with friends, relatives and even sometimes with business men for 6pm, you'll have people come at 7.30-8pm. And it is quite normal for us- we already got used to such time culture. So, it is good to know in advance about timing habits in Kazakhstan before you start your business there :) *

...continuing
So, this evening was more or less full of jokes: we started a conversation about Kazakhstan (!), compared how in the ancient times marriage culture in Latvia was similar to Kazakh's. The conversation started with Romans' question on whether it is true or not that even nowadays a girl has her future fiancee 'booked' by her parents in advance. Well, yes, it happens in the southern part as it is a part of our culture and historical traditions. We continued on talking about Kazakh people in general- I shared some history of Kazakh khans and the tribes we belong to. For instance, every Kazakh must know his roots and his 7 past generations. So this evening was pretty much about my country for me again, and I think sharing different facts on Central Asia and Kazakhstan for the past month or so made me missing my peoples in Kazakhstan a lot!!

Jake serving Rizotto

AIESEC in Latvia 09-10 members:
Romans,Mara,me,Janis (L-R, 1st row) Jake,Liiga,Liza (L-R, 2nd row)

I was making a few conclusions about these talks. Here are a few of them:
Patriotism - Almost all Kazakhstani people are proud about our motherland. Yes, there is something that needs improvement in state's life, but there is also many positive and good things . However, I do not notice here in Latvia people's such proud feedback. I understand, the state is in a difficult economic situation, the jobs and salaries are cut, competitive human capital moves out from the country to the UK, Irealnd and other western countries, but here is something positive too!

Tolerance- Kazakhstan is one a very few former Soviet states that is comprised of more than 100 nations and natioanalities for a long time. We had Germans, Koreans, Ukrainians, Georgians, Jewish, Belorussians, Lithuanians, Latvians, etc sent to Kazakh Soviet Republic during 20th century. During WWII or the Great National War (1941-1945) every Soviet family shared their shelter, food and clothes, adn family warmth with different nations. Is it a correct way to say or not, but owing to that War our people learnt how to be culturally tolerant, and help whenever others are in need. On the contrary, situation in Latvia between Latvians and Russians is a very controvercial one. The government or who(???) divides a very small population (less than 2 m inhabitants) into I'd say privileged and non-privileged. There is still a big deal of "true-Latvians" and "fake-Latvians born in the years of USSR" who can get a citizenship. I am sorry but I do not understand this system.

History/Traditions- I'd bet almost every Kazakhstani young person knows about our history and culture quite well. History of Kazakhstan is one of compulsory subjects a school student has to pass while entering Univerisity. However, results of tests prove the opposite fact sometimes. As for traditions, I really like that many families in Kazakhstan celebrate different cultural events no matter what natioanality they are. Of course, I can't say for all 16 m inhabitants of one of the biggest countries in the world- we rank 9th place in the world- but I am pretty sure about my friends' families and my international colleagues living in Almaty. As for personal experience in Latvia so far- I was not introduced different perspectives on Latvian past by people here. Mostly, it was either me reading about Latvia from various sources, or my team mate Liza sharing some viewpoints on Latvia's past.

Hospitality- Every Kazakh family would host/invite for dinner/invite for other family/not family related events internationals. I guess it is in our blood to share the best with others. I have worked with many internationals during University years and after, and many of them were mentioning this feature as the first one that came to their mind. Of course, I agree there are lots and lots of processes that are not as developed as in the West, or that our people do business not according to again, some Western ways. But hospitality is the trait our people do not lack of! Unfrtunately, I haven't witnessed it here in Latvia. I remember, I was expecting for a long time I'd get a chance to have a welcome party in AIESEC in Latvia for the sake of get-together time and also introducing Central Asia and Kazakhstan to Latvians. Sounds funny and sad but I haven't had it yet, though I am here already for 3rd month.

Wow, this post turns out as a quite long and quite random one. However, the purpose of this post was to outline some things that do exist in my country which I really miss, and which, unfortunately, I haven't seen in Latvia a lot. But I am staying positive- I still have 7 months to spend here. Who knows what the future prepared for me- maybe my spring 2010 posts will be brighter? *Though the future is shaped by me but probably is being prepared by God*