Making progress

Professionally, things are going well with AIESEC Mexico. Sebastian and Cindy are working very hard to build new partnerships with big companies and satisfy our current partners. And I'm in contact with more and more alumni every day. One of the most important events for my area was the social alumni meeting that I organized this week. This is the first meeting that the national committee has organized for the alumni in more than a year and we had a good turnout, at least 30 people from all generations. I was actually quite surprised and happy. The only detail that I forgot was to ask for separate checks, so of course we (but mostly me) had to suffer the pain of getting money from everyone to pay the bill. But you live and learn. The next event with be perfect :-)

Personally, I've got quite a lot going on. One of the most intense experiences I've had so far in Mexico regarding my personal development was the feedback session that my team did last Saturday during our Team Days, which we spent in Acapulco by the way :-P But forget the beach for a minute and focus on my story...

So we all dug down deep and had one-on-one sharing where each person mentioned moments when they other person did something that they liked or didn't like. It was an incredibly eye-opening experience because, as Dani explained it to us, there are 4 types of things about yourself:
1. Things that you know and that other people know about you
2. Things that you know and that other people don't know about you
3. Things that you don't know but that other people do know about you
4. Things that you don't know about you and that other people also don't know about you

Number 3 is what's called the Blindspot and that's what we were working on when we gave our feedback to each person. Needless to say, all of us were shocked at how much we didn't know about the impact of some of our actions. It was a great session and I'm extremely impressed with the maturity of our team to carry out such a high level activity that requires seriousness and humility.

I'm also currently reading the book "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People". Despite having had the 7 Habits engrained in my head from my Tae Kwon Do classes, I want to really understand and bring myself to exercise these habits in my life.

Feelin' kinda blue

Not sure what's wrong with me but my mood has been rather grey lately. Of course I have theories considering everything that's been going on in the past few weeks but I couldn't put my finger on one thing and say "That's why I'm off-balance." And with the hours and days going by so fast I feel like a bystander watching life go by.

Back to work

Ahhhh life is crazy and we're back to working like dogs. I'm serious, I can't remember when I have ever worked so long and hard in my life! But the best part is that it's fun and we're enjoying the ride. This weekend the team is going for a team retreat to review our year plan and how we're doing so far. We'll also touch on the topic of the agenda for the next national conference in Veracruz. I have no idea where we're going yet because it's a secret until we arrive, but I'm expecting beach :-)

Quotes and thoughts from IC

(Yes, I'm home safe and sound, although not as healthy as I would like. But that's not what this post is about...)

I picked up or thought up a few things during and after the International Congress in Poland and I just wanted to share them:

"Life is growth. If we stop growing, technically and spiritually, we are as good as dead." - Morihei Ueshiba

You have to lose yourself before you can find yourself.

Work smarter, not harder.

Not everything can be perfect

Great vacation time, cool conference, amazing people, lots of fun.....but losing your passport can put a real crick in your plans. It's a terribly long and probably boring story about how my passport made it through two extra hands and two cities to finally find me at the airport, so I'll just say THANK YOU to my teammates who did everything they could to help me (Cindy, Sebastian, Argentina). Eventhough I still had to reschedule my return flight to Mexico they went out of their way to help me.

Now that I'm leaving on Saturday instead of yesterday I'm going to sightsee for one more day in Warsaw with a buddy of mine, Kike, who was on the organizing committee for the International Congress. Hopefully he can cheer me up and make me forgot about the whole situation.