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Wednesday, January 10, 2007

Answering some questions

Am I living my life as I want to? Are the things, which I am doing, relevant? Wouldn't it be smarter to do something else?

Those are some questions, which pop up to my mind time-to-time. I guess, everyone answers these questions for himself/herself sometimes.

Do you really work for such a salary? Wouldn'it be better to build up your career? Why don't you have time for us?

Those are some questions, which the other people have been asking me.

Recently I wrote two different e-mails to two completely different people. I would quote some parts of them, which ARE the answer to all of these questions.

"My personal vision, which I put into the words, is "Every day of my life, I want to make myself and other people around me smile. I want to make people having smile on their faces because they feel good, because they have a-ha moments, because they feel self-fulfillment. These smiles should be there because of my meaningful activities, my behaviour and my attitude. I follow my personal principles and never refuse of them in any kind of situation".

Working full-time in AIESEC gives me opportunity to put my vision into reality every day. I wake up at 7:15-8:15 and I feel good. Because I know that I am going to AIESEC office and I will be dealing with highly meaningful things. Meaningful for me and for the others."
And another one.

"I feel very empowered and thankful to the God or to the fate or to whatever/whoever that I am doing what I am doing. It's just as simple as it is."
Yesterday I had a meeting with one of our project managers, Kristi, who is managing project with budget over 1.000.000 EEK (more than 70.000 EUR). I am the final responsible for all this money.

The day before yesterday and today I had two meetings with two completely different people, who I am both mentor for. Being a mentor is amazing concept! One of these people pictures himself in the future as entrepreneur and respected specialist. Another one dreams about improving the world and helping as many as she can. Two different dreams. Two different ways. And I have privilige, I have luck, I have blessing to be the one, who is guiding both of them through it. Actually "guiding" means here nothing more than just listening and asking the right questions - no rocket science. But what can be more intime, more personal and more sacred than listening to the vision, dreams and fears of other person? I will repeat - I feel blessed having this opportunity.

Tomorrow I am going to my favourite town in Estonia - Tartu. I will have 7 meetings during one day. All of them are with the members of AIESEC in Tartu. All of them concern completely different topics. But all of them are very important. Am I not lucky having opportunity to have impact on 7 different people during one day?

Last Friday I met with one of our corporate partners represented by ambitious and successful CEO of one company. Having meeting with him for about one hour just re-assured me once more that Estonia has a lot of great people, who are driving our society and our economy.

During past few days I wrote and received e-mails from my colleagues from about 6 different countries, all of whom are leading their AIESEC national chapters. How many people in my age can say that they have colleagues in 96 countries of the world and they know more or less all 96 of them?

Meeting in Rotterdam in December was great. It is funny that I discovered once again that live music can touch me very much, if I really like it. After intensive meetings we went out to some cafes of pubs with my international colleagues in the evenings. Once we went to jazz-cafe and there were live-performances by amateur bands. It was hard to concentrate on conversations around - the music was so beautiful! At one moment I just sat down separately on the other table and listened to performances completely alone. Just me and the sounds of music. World is amazing place to live.

What does it mean to lead a team of 8 people, 4 out of which you see practically every day? It requires a lot of patience, gratitide, inneral strength and understanding. It is similar to growing a tree - you need to be patienet, grateful, strong and understanding in order to wait for the fruits for several years. You can destroy the tree by just one too strong hit. But you can enhance its growth by giving needed vitamines, needed power. The ones, who have been growing trees (I did it with my father long time ago) would probably understand me.

Me with people, who have a big meaning for me at this point of my life