preparation booklet

BORDERS

CROSSING

Kai Vermaas & Sandra Zoetelief

AIESEC

AIESEC CROSSING BORDERSKai Vermaas & Sandra Zoetelief

Dedicated to Afke

THIS BOOK BELONGS TO.....................................

Personal details Name ............................................... Address ............................................... Postal code ............................................... City ............................................... Country ............................................... Phone ............................................... E-mail ...............................................

Contact details AIESEC Netherlands Address ............................................... Postal code ............................................... City ............................................... Country ............................................... Phone ............................................... E-mail ............................................... Contact person ...............................................

Contact details AIESEC ......................... Address ............................................... Postal code ............................................... City ............................................... Country ............................................... Phone ............................................... E-mail ............................................... Contact person ...............................................

ColofonCopyright © 2015Authors: Kai Vermaas & Sandra ZoeteliefLay out: Myrthe OostenbachPhotography: Chris Konig & Kai Vermaas

Produced by: AIESEC The Netherlands

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mecha-nical methods, without the prior written permission of the publis-her, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

TABLE OF CONTENTSINTRODUCTION 14 Welcome 14 About AIESEC 14 About this book 16

YOUR JOURNEY 20Preparation 20 Goal setting 20 Where are you now? 38 Your talents 44

Abroad 54 Roadmaps 54 Problem solving 54 Effectivity 56 Mind-set 60 Kindness 64 Three good things 64 Exercise 66 Games 67 Fun exercises 71 Serious business 82 Rhythm 82 Huddle 85

YOUR RETURN 88Reintegration 88 Takeaway 88 Success? 91 Sharing 93 Personal 93 Professional 99

Acknowledgements 103About Kai and Sandra 104 References 106

INTRODUCTION

14

INTRODUCTION

WelcomeWelcome to this amazing book. Do you know why it is amazing? Because it’s all about YOU… And you are amazing, right?

Collect moments,Not things.

About AIESECAIESEC (originally a French acronym for Association internationale des etudiants en sciences economiques et commerciales) is a non-profit student organisation that aims to motivate students to develop leadership qualities. AIESEC was officially founded in 1948 in France after the war had shown that the world was in need of open-minded leaders, with the idealistic aim to make the world a less violent and more beautiful place.

Nowadays, we believe that if young people, from all over the world, get the opportunity to develop leadership qualities, they can have a positive impact on future society. AIESEC wants to support young people who are discovering what their strengths, dreams and goals in life are so that they can contribute to peace and fulfilment of humankind’s potential.

15

You are one of the lucky ones! You’ve chosen to go on an internship with AIESEC, which can help you to develop yourself to a responsible leader during your experience abroad. But what is actually meant by a ‘responsible leader’ within AIESEC?

Within AIESEC we think a responsible leader is a world citizen, self-aware, empowering others and is solution oriented.

In our opinion, a world citizen is a person that is aware of what is going on in the world and that enjoys taking an active role in society to make the world a better place for everyone.

Empowerment of others means the ability to communicate ideas clearly, engage in meaningful conversations with others, and to create opportunities of collaboration that encourage people to take action.

Self-awareness means the capacity to introspect and knowing yourself. Knowing yourself means that you know where you’re good at, what your weaknesses are, what is important to you and what you are passionate about. You are constantly exploring what you want to achieve in your life.

With a person that is solution oriented we mean that the person comes up with solutions for life’s challenges. Solution oriented people are flexible, pro-active and are willing to take necessary risks. When this person faces difficulties and falls down, he or she will always stand up again.

We believe that you can achieve this.

Now you know how we define leadership in within AIESEC, the next question is: How you can become a responsible leader during this experience?

We hope that this book can help you achieve this.

16

About this book

Congratulations with this book!! That you are the owner of this book means that you have decided to go to and live in another country for a while. You might have just finished your studies or decided to take a break. Probably you are looking for a new challenge in life. Maybe because you don’t like your present activities, but maybe you are already happy with your life, but you would like to go on a new adventure! Why you are making this trip doesn’t matter that much anymore. What is important is how you can get the most out of your journey!

You took a big step by choosing to go this trip by yourself! It will be an exciting, amazing, inspiring, but also a hard and challenging experience. That you are going on this trip alone does not necessarily mean that you will be lonely during your trip. Instead of worrying about being lonely sometimes, try to get the most out of being alone on this trip.

‘Be a loner. That gives you time to wonder, to search for

the truth. Have holy curiosity. Make your life worth living.’

– Albert Einstein

17

… We all know about the success of Einstein, so it seems a very good decision to go all by yourself!! ;-)

This book can be a guide on your journey both inside and out. It will be your personal project and… The best project you’ll ever work on is YOU! This book doesn’t tell you what to do in the future, it only helps you to reflect on your life and helps you to get to know yourself better by giving you some guidelines. You have to put time and energy in the exercises to make this work. If you do so, you can find out what you desire, what you want to achieve in life and how you can take the responsibility for your own happiness and future.

You’re very lucky, because being abroad will make this inner journey a bit easier than when you would stay at home. The distance will help you develop a helicopter view over your life.

So as a summary: this book is only about you! All you have to do is be honest to yourself and ENJOY the inner journey!

19

YOUR JOURNEY

20

Preparation

If you want to get the most out of your internship abroad, a good preparation is necessary. Luckily you have this book now to help you prepare. You might wonder how this book can help you to prepare for your adventure. Let me start by saying that this book won’t help you with packing your stuff or cleaning up your room before you go. Sorry about that, but it’s just physically impossible. However, we will help you prepare for your adventure with some helpful tips and tricks. We’re going to lead you to three important steps of preparation. If you go through these steps before you go abroad, you’ll get more out of your journey and you’ll be more confident in the new environment you’ll be in! Preparation is all about preparing you for this journey, not your bag or your environment, just you. All great things are created twice, first in your mind and after that in the real world. So let’s take a look at how you can prepare for the greatest journey of your life.

1. Goal settingLet the preparation begin! A good preparation starts at the end. That may sound a bit strange because you still have to start, but if you know what you want in the end, you’ll know what to do now. Just compare it with asking directions. It’s impossible to ask for the right directions if you don’t know where you want to go to. If you know where you want to go, you know which road you have to take. So, only when you know what you want to get out of your internship, you’ll know what to look for, you know which choices to make and which opportunities you’ll want to take. By doing this, your chance to get the most out of your internship drastically increases. Do you already know what you want to get out of your internship? Do you even know why you’re going on an internship? Let’s find out!

YOUR JOURNEY

21

Write down 5 reasons why you want to go on an internship:

22

Great! Now for every reason you’ve given, ask yourself why you want to do this. Write it down here:

23

… And now ask yourself again: Why do I want this? And write it down here:

24

There probably lies a deeper reason in the first answers you gave to the previous questions. Take a look at the answers you gave and find out if you can find this deeper reason. Maybe it even comes down to just one reason, great! Make it as simple as possible for yourself. This will help you focus during your trip. The better you know your true desire for going abroad, the easier it gets to actually achieve that.

Now let’s really go to the end of your trip. Try and imagine this: You’re on a plane, sitting in your comfortable seat with just enough room for your legs. You look outside the small window and you see the wings of the plain shimmering in the sunlight. You’re above the clouds and all you see is a bright blue sky and white clouds with the sun shining into your eyes. A really nice and attractive person is sitting right next to you. Bliss! This couldn’t be more perfect. You’re on your way home, with loads of memories and a big smile. You just had the most wonderful experience of your life. Now, on your way back home, while looking at the clouds, you start thinking about your adventure. Everything is passing again in your imagination… the good times you’ve had, the special people you met, the hard times, the lessons you’ve learned and all the things you’ve done.

Now close your eyes for a moment and try to imagine how you want to remember your trip. Imagine it as if you’ve already been abroad and you’ve had the best experience in your life.

25

Now write a letter to your present self as your future self who just came back from your trip. What do you hope you experienced during your time abroad? What message would you give to your present self?

28

You just made an imagination about your internship. This may have been a strange thing for you to do or maybe you enjoyed it, both are okay. This actually is an incredibly powerful technique most professional athletes and successful people use to accomplish awesome things. It’s works fairly simple. Scientific research shows that your mind isn’t able to see the difference between actually doing something and only imagining yourself doing something. So what you just did is preparing your mind for the journey you’re about to take. Of course you’ll still see a lot of new things on your trip that you can’t know at this moment, but that’s not the point. As we said before, to get the most out of your internship, you need to know what you want to get out of it.

We just need to take one more step to make sure you’ve got a great goal for this trip. Most of the times we recognize what we want through the way we feel when someone else has what you want. We usually call this jealousy. Now jealousy is usually considered as a negative emotion, but it’s actually only negative if you don’t want others to have something great. Jealousy is a very useful emotion if you want to discover what you want. Because if you use it this way, it shows what you desire and then you’ll go and get that too. There probably have been some people around you who have been on a journey abroad too. You’ve seen pictures on Facebook or you’ve heard the enthusiastic stories about their new experiences. Which things in those stories and pictures triggers you most? Which things made you a bit jealous?

29

Now ask yourself why these things made you jealous and write it down here:

Write five of them down here:

30

To find out what you want to get out of your internship, it can help if you put this in a bigger perspective. We often give very different answers when we look at challenges in another perspective. How will you look back on this internship if you put it in the perspective of your entire life? Mark Manson conceived seven questions that can help you to find your life purpose or as he says, to find out what you can do with your time that is important. Maybe these questions can make it a bit easierfor you to find out what you want in life and so what you want to get out of this journey.

#1 What is your favourite flavour of shit sandwich and does it come with an olive?

The idea of this question is that you will think of what unpleasant experiences you are able to handleto achieve your goals. If for example your dream is to work and live in a different country, are you able and willing to deal with the distance between you and your family and best friends to make your dream come true? Metaphorically, what shit sandwich do you want to eat? We all getserved one eventually.

31

#2 What is true about you today what would make your 8-year-old self cry?

Are there things in your life you stopped doing which you really enjoyed when you were a kid? What would be the explanation if someone asked you why you stopped? If you would tell your 8-year-old-self that you don’t draw anymore now, because you can’t make money doing that… The 8-year-old boy version of you would probably start crying.

32

#3 What makes you forget to eat and poop?

Try to not just look at the activities that keep you up all night, like gaming or watching series, but look at the cognitive principles behind those activities that enthrall you.

#4 How can you better embarrass yourself?

Before you are able to be good at something and to do something important, you must first suck at something and have no clue what you’re doing. That’s pretty obvious. And in order to suck at something and have no clue what you’re doing, you must embarrass yourself in some shape or form, often repeatedly. And most people try to avoid embarrassing themselves, namely because it sucks. Try to embrace embarrassment. Feeling foolish is part of the path to achieve something important, something meaningful.

33

#5 How you are going to save the world?

Find a problem you care about and start solving it. Obviously, you’re not going to fix the world’s problems by yourself. But you can contribute and make a difference. For example, you can buy an ice cream for a homeless person, say hi to your neighbours and or be a volunteer at the local football club. And that feeling of making a difference is ultimately what’s most important for your own happiness and fulfilment.

Especially when you are on a volunteer internship, this is the opportunity to make a difference.

34

#6 Gun to your head, if you had to leave the house a day, every day, where would you go and what would you do?

For many of us, the enemy is just old-fashioned complacency. We get into our routines. We distract ourselves. The couch is comfortable. The Doritos are cheesy. And nothing new happens.

Think about this, try to find your passion, get out of the house and make the best of your time!

35

#7 If you knew you were going to die one year from today, what would you do and how would you want to be remembered?

Most people freak out while thinking about the fact that they are going to die, but it can also be very inspiring, as Steve Jobs once said:

“When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: ‘If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.’ It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: ‘If today was the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?’ And whenever the answer has been ‘no’ for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you’re going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow you heart.”

36

Probably, you will get the picture where we’re going now. Take a look at everything you wrote down on the last few pages. All these things are an answer to what you want to get out of your internship. Keep in mind that the better you know what you want, the bigger the chance is that you’re going to get it! Now it’s time to take a look at all the information you wrote down and to bundle it in one sentence so you can easily remind yourself of what you want. When you look at all answers you gave on the previous pages, do you see some similarities between the subjects? Is there a connection between the answers? If you have to say what your main desire is, based on the questions you answered, what is it?

Congratulations! You’ve just ordered your desires for your internship. Yeah, you can just order desires! Desires are wonderful things! They motivate you, make you enthusiastic, they help you through bad times and most people are interested in the desires of others, maybe they’ll even help you!

Desires are often pretty vague and that’s okay, but here is the next step. To really achieve something and to be able to check if you’ve had a successful trip, a clear goal is more effective. So there’s only one thing left to do and that’s to transform your desires into a goal. A good goal adds two things to a desire: an end date and it has to be more concrete. It should be so concrete that you are able to cross it off your list like groceries on a shopping list. Let’s take as an example that you have the desire to develop yourself. How do you measure if you improved yourself? Just putting on a better looking shirt is an improvement to yourself but that’s probably not what you meant. On the other hand, you’re probably going to spend your entire life improving yourself so you won’t know when you succeeded or not.

37

That’s why goals work so well, you can measure whether you’ve succeeded or not. A goal for our example could be: When I get back from my internship I’ve learned two new skills in cooperating with others. It has an end date on which you could measure yourself.

Now it’s your turn, transform your main desire into a goal and write your goal down as if you’ve already achieved it: ‘‘On [date] I have [goal].’’

Well done, you set your goal for this internship. Remind yourself of your goal daily. As Napoleon Hill once said: The only difference between a millionaire and a billionaire is that a billionaire reads his/her goals twice a day.

38

2. Where are you now?The first step in every adventure is to know where you are going, the second step is to know where you are now. Knowing where you are is important for two reasons. The first reason is that where you are right now is your foundation. The second reason is that it is your starting point; it shows you where to begin.

FoundationYou’re still working on the preparation of your internship. This may seem as a lot of work, but I’ll promise you that it will pay off. Well begun is half done! Besides, this will help you to enjoy this inner journey. As we’ve said before, the best project you will ever work on is you!

When you’re going abroad, you leave a lot of things you normally count on behind, except for one thing: yourself. This may sound obvious, but it’s not. A lot of people get lonely abroad but since you bring yourself on this journey, you always have good companion with you. You can’t always rely on others in life and there probably will be some things on your adventure that go wrong. If you rely on and trust in yourself you can handle this. If you can do that, you can always go back to that foundation and start over from there. First, let’s get to know you:

39

Nice to meet you, you seem like an interesting person and I’d like to know more about you! But there’s one problem here. How you see yourself is pretty subjective and we only get to know one side of you.

So ask five of your friends to fill out the ‘friends pages’. You remember those times you had to write in the friends book of your classmates?

THIS IS ME.....................................

My favorite thing(s) in the world: .......................................................................... .......................................................................... ..........................................................................

When I was a child I wanted to become: .......................................................................... .......................................................................... .......................................................................... This is something no one really knows about me: .......................................................................... .......................................................................... .......................................................................... Please wake me up for: .......................................................................... ..........................................................................

ME in three words: ..................... ........................ ......................

40

FRIENDS.....................................

How we met: Once upon a time ............................................. .......................................................................... .......................................................................... ..........................................................................

What I like most about our friendship: .......................................................................... .......................................................................... .......................................................................... ..........................................................................

My favorite thing(s) about you: .......................................................................... .......................................................................... .......................................................................... ..........................................................................

In this you are the best: .......................................................................... ..........................................................................

YOU in three words: ..................... ........................ ......................

41

FRIENDS.....................................






42

FRIENDS.....................................






43

FRIENDS.....................................






44

3. Your talentsWelcome back, did you have fun? It’s useful to know your talents because if you communicate these clearly, people will use your talents and they know for which tasks they can ask you. Especially in a situation of an internship where you have limited time it is important to be clear about your talents.

The first step to discovering your talents is to look at the positive things about yourself. Write down five talents:

1.2.3.4.5.

The second step is to take a look at your negative characteristics. These characteristics are actually also talents. Every talent has a so called “dark-side” and those are the negative things about you. For example being chaotic is the dark-side of creativity, being arrogant is the dark-side of being out-going and so on. The talents and dark-sides of thesetalents are connected to each other and can’t exist separately from each other. But when you focus solely on the dark-side, your talents can become a nuisance. That’s why we’re going to transform your negative characteristics to their positive counterparts. The first thing you have to do is to think about five of your dark-side talents and write them down.

1.2.3.4.5.

45

Now, think of the positive side of these talents and change them in their positive counterparts. If this is hard for you, you can help yourself by exaggerating your dark-side talents.

The positive side of the five dark-side talents:

Well done, we’re almost at the core of your talents! Now it’s time to combine your transformed talents with your positive talents and bring them back to just five talents in total. I know you have a lot more talents than just five, but by bringing them back to just five talents it’s easier to tell other people what you’re good at. The clearer you communicate your talents, the better people can make use of your talents and together you can achieve awesome things.

The combined talents:

46

LikesTalents are the things that you’re good at. They are meaningful wherever you’re going to work. Although it’s nice to do things you’re good at, your talents aren’t necessarily the things you like to do the most. Hopefully, one of your goals for your internship is do things you like to do. To make you aware of the importance of doing what you like to do the most: scientific research has shown that people who like what they do are more effective and have less motivational problems. So let’s write down a list things you like to do:

Now, let’s do the same as we did concerning your talents. Take a look at the list you made of things you like to do and bring these back to just five “likes”. As it is with talents, this makes it easier for you to communicate what you like. Fill them in in the model you see below next to your talents. You’ll see that there’s an overlap in the figure, which is symbolic for the overlap between your talents and the things you like to do. Where your talents meet your likes, is the most inspiring place you can work in. You probably won’t be able to only do work that combines your talents and your likes, but remember that you’re most valuable when you do.

Talent Like

1. 1. 2. 2. 3. 3. 4. 4. 5. 5.

47

Core valuesKnowing what your talents are and what you like to do is very good starting point. Now, you’re almost ready to start your adventure. There’s one more thing you can do to discover about yourself that will help you make choices along the way, and every journey starts with these choices. But which are the right choices and which are not? The answer is: it depends on who you are. There are no objective right or wrong choices, just choices that are right or wrong for you. That’s why you’re going to work on your personal checklist. This list consists four or five words that describe who you are and what you think is most important. We call these words core-values. If a choice is in conflict with your core-values, you’re probably going to regret that choice. If a choice is in favor of your core-values, you won’t regret it in the end, because it fits who you are. Another benefit of knowing your core-values is that you can easily give others an idea of what’s important to you. If others know this, it is easier for them to work with you and get to know you.

In order to find out what your core-values are, you need the ans-wers you wrote down earlier. Take a look at how people described you in one word on the friends’ pages and do the same thing you did with your talents. First look for overlap between the words. Then bring them back to just five categories, if you have the feeling there’s a value missing or that the words are not in line with your own idea then it’s totally fine to just add your own values. The reason why we gave you the assignment to ask the people around you is that core-values should be values that describe who you really are, instead of values that describe who you want to be. This is a crucialdifference, if you want to know who you really are right now. Try to be honest with yourself.

48

To help you figure out, here’s a list of core values. First, select 15 values, than 10 out of the 15 selected and end with 5 core values.

Love Independence SecurityFreedom Braveness HarmonyIntegrity Adventure ChallengeHonesty Respect Comfort Pleasure Quality OpennessCreativity Warmth RiskIntelligence Authenticity ControleSharing Sincerity RankProfessionality Intimacy VitalityHealth Success PowerFun Spontaneity TrustDurability Playfulness OriginalityCommitment Flexibility HumorGrowth Appreciation BeautyHelpfulness Order ModestySex Passion RestContribution Empathy TogetherDiscovering Positivity

Optional: your own additional core values

49

The same words can have totally different meanings for different people. That’s one of the beauties of language and the reason why we’re going to add your personal norm to the selected core-values. A norm is a short sentence, which defines the meaning of the value for you. If for example a core-value is “creativity” the norm can be “everything is the result of creation.” Maybe this is something very different than what you mean with creativity and that’s what makes your core-values personal. So let’s make your core-values personal by adding your own norm to all your values:

Value: Norm:

Value: Norm:

Value: Norm:

Great! You’ve created a very complete and useful overview of your foundation. Now you’re able to describe yourself in just a few words. This is the starting point for your journey. You’re about to cross boarders. Not only geographically, but also your own boarders. Some things will help you to develop yourself and give you a wider perspective. This is what is meant by “going out of your comfort zone”.

50

Your comfort zone is a combination of all things you are comfortable with. By going out of your comfort zone you can add things (that are very exciting) to your comfort zone. This will help to make exciting things comfortable too. This will result in less anxiety for new experiences and more self-esteem. That’s relaxed right?! There’s a difference between things that are exciting and things that are really scary. Finding out what your core-values are, can help you in making the difference between these two.

Some things just don’t fit with who you are. These actions are not out of your comfort zone, they’re just not you. This is what we meant with scary. If you hold on to and trust on your foundation in every situation, this will help you stay close to who you are. The best thing you can do is expand you comfort zone within your core-values. This will make you happier and more congruent with who you really are. So if you want to check if something is exciting or scary, check your core-values. To make it easier, it looks like this:

Take a look at everything you wrote down in this chapter. You’re doing great! We now know where you want to go and where you

are now. Let the journey begin!

Comfort zone

Core values

52

ABROADABROAD

54

ABROAD

Finally, you are here! You looked forward to this trip for a while. Hopefully you will get out this experience what you hoped for. To help you to deal with hard things during your stay, you will find some roadmaps below.

1. Roadmaps

Problem solvingHere you find steps to solve every problem that comes on your way. There are two parts to every problem: a part that you can influence and a part where you have no influence. It looks like this:

The trick with problem solving is to focus only on the part you can influence. If you find out which part you have influence on, you can follow our problem solving steps. The first step in solving problems is a decision you have to make. In every case there are two options: either you accept it or you change it. First decide what you’re going to do. Accept what you can’t change and change what you can’t accept. When you’ve made the decision to change something, first ask yourself who can help you to solve this problem. In most cases you don’t have to solve problems on your own. You will solve problems much easier if you ask for help and by doing it together. The last step of problem solving is not to worry about the entire process.

Influence

Problem

55

Start with the first step you can take right now. Write it down and do it. Then think of the next first step and do that. It’s like a walking, one step at a time. Solving your problem step by step will go gradually and before you know it, the problem is solved. To make it visual, whenever you have a problem, walk through this model:

What’s your problem?

Can you change it?

No Yes

Accept it Can someone help?

What’s the first step?

Start

56

Effectivity

Do you need help working more effectively? Stephen Covey made a list of ‘the seven habits of highly effective people’. These habits will help you to get things done. First I’m curious if you know the difference between effectivity and efficiency?

Efficiency is about doing things right, effectivity is about doing the right things. It’s more important to do the right things than doing things right. Doing things right can improve the process but then the focus is not on getting the desired result. For example you can invent 1000 new and improved ways to climb a ladder, but the most important thing is that the ladder is up against the right wall. Doing the right things is focusing on the desired result. Check yourself on these seven habits and what you can learn from each habit. Changing your behaviour concerning these seven habits will definitely increase your effectivity.

1. Be proactiveBeing active can be in two ways: pro-active and re-active. Reactivity means responding to the situation. Proactivity is actively making the most out of a situation. People who are proactive take responsibility for their own life. Reactive people wait until they’re told what to do. Proactivity is a state of mind, which can help you to have influence on every situation you come across. If you want to be proactive, focus on the things you can influence and actively make the best out of the situation. You can decide if you want to be proactive or if you want to be reactive, it’s your own choice.

2. Start with the end in mindIt’s not without reason that your preparation started with goal setting. Goal setting is the best way to work effective. If you don’t know where you want to go, you don’t know what you

57

have to do. If you don’t know where you have to go next, just remind yourself of the goal you want to achieve or set up a new one.

3. First things firstIf you’ve set your goal, decide what’s the first thing you can do. Then just take the first step, without thinking further. Don’t try to get the entire picture of all the steps you still have to take. People are horrible in predicting the future. That is one of the reasons why plans are changing so often along the way. Focus on your first step and the next step will reveal itself if you finished the first step. Then take the next step and the next and the next….

4. Think win-winWhen working together with others there are four ways of thin-king:

win-winwin-loselose-winlose-lose

Every situation where one stakeholder is losing is a bad one on the long term. There is always a way to work together where everybody wins. This is why it’s important to start collaboration with a conversation about the intentions of both parties. Try and figure out what the others intention to win is and tell what your desired win is. If you can come to a win-win situation, everybody is happy. This is the foundation to a fruitful collaboration and will help prevent a lot of misunderstandings and thereby bad outcome.

58

5. Seek first to understand, then to be understoodThis is a habit you really want to have. Most of the time we’re busy trying to be understood, when both parties do this, nobody listens. If you first seek to understand and really listen, you will know what’s going on. When the other feels understood, he or she will be open to really understand you. When everybody feels understood it’s possible to have a real conversation about what’s going on. And a big bonus: people will like you a lot more if you seek first to understand and then try to be understood. This doesn’t mean that what you want to say isn’t important, on the contrary! If you’re not understood that’s a bad situation too. So never end a conversation without being understood yourself. Remember: win-win.

6. SynergyWhen people work together in a synergetic way, people transcend themselves and the result will be better than when someone does it on his own. There are two conditions that influence synergy: positivity and perspective. The model below shows how it works:

Perspective

Posi

tivi

ty Shitty Hard work

SynergyAll fun,no work

59

7. Sharpen the sawThis habit is called this way because when you use a saw for a while it will become blunt. You can continue to use the saw when it’s blunt but you will have to work a lot harder to get the same result and it will take more time. The best thing you can do is invest some time in sharpening your saw. For a saw this is a logical conclusion but we are rarely doing the same for ourselves. Often we keep working until we’re blunt. Consequently, you have to work harder and longer to get the same result. This is not effective at all. So investing some time in sharpening yourself is of paramount importance to be as effective as possible. Step out of your focus bubble and do something else, here are three scientifically proven activities that help to sharpen your body and mind:

1. ExerciseTake a walk, practice a sport with some people, do something physically active. This will improve your blood circulation, which will give you energy and increases your creativity.

2. MeditateMeditation clears your mind and relaxes your body. It’s not hard or hippy to meditate. Just find a quite spot somewhere and concentrate on your breathing. Try to take deep breaths in your belly and lower the volume of your thoughts. Everyone can do this.

3. Journal Take some time off to write in a journal. This helps your mind to give all of your new experiences a place and makes room for new experiences. Journaling also helps you create memories and puts things in perspective. If you want to do this daily there a two things you can write down that will make you happier and more effective: - Your most meaningful experience of the day- Three things of the day you’re grateful for.

60

Mind-setAll things are created twice, once in your mind and then in real life. This is why a positive mind-set is the best tool you can get, but not the easiest. Most people criticize themselves all day long. It’s not so strange that most objections are in your mind and not in the outside world. People who say they can’t, can’t. People who say they can, can. It’s as simple as that. Psychologists researched this phenomenon and came up with a simple model how a mind-set works.

Events trigger thoughts, thoughts make you feel a certain way, feeling makes you behave a certain way and behavior makes new events. Change starts with changing your thought and that gives you influence on your mind-set. For example, if you think you can’t do it. It can make you feel helpless, this makes you to behave passive and then you’re not able to succeed. This will make you believe you really can’t do it, which will make you feel even worse, etcetera. You’re in a negative spiral. But if you keep thinking you can, you feel capable, which makes you behave effective and that enhances the chances of actually succeeding. It probably won’t work the first time you want to change a negative thought into a positive one, just remember that the mind is like a muscle and you have to train your brain. Exercise positive thought, do a mental work-out. But first you need to create a positive thought out of your negative thought. These are the steps you need to take:

1. What is your thought?2. Is it absolutely true? (Quick hint, it never is!)3. How do you behave when you believe that thought?4. How do you want to behave?5. Which thought will help you?

Event

Feeling

ThoughtBehavior

61

Train your helping thought until you really believe it, it will help you into a positive mind-set. Positive minds create positive even-ts. Negative minds create negative events. This is why it’s impor-tant to help yourself get and attain a positive mind-set. Happy work-out!

The best travel buddy is a happy one!

As you’ve probably already noticed it is the aim of this book to prepare you in the best way possible for the trip of your life. We’ve already talked a lot about ways to get to know yourself, but there is another thing that will truly help you abroad: Happiness. This may sound a bit soft. In the past years scientific research on the psychology of happiness is increasing. Psychology was mostly aimed at reducing stress and mental illnes, this didn’t work out as well as hoped. The solution to decrease stress turned out to be to focus on the opposite: happiness. Below you find an overview of the effects of both:

Stress Happiness1. Decreases creativity Increases creativity2. Decreases innovativity Increases innovativity3. Decreases motivation Increases motivation4. Decreases social interaction Increases social interaction5. Decreases positive emotions Increases positive emotions6. Increases negative emotions Decreases negative emotions7. Decreases resilience Increases resilience8. Increases anxiety Decreases anxiety

Happiness really is useful when you are abroad. You can better deal with new situations. It helps you to see more possibilities and you will be of more value to others. You will probably agree with me that happy people are more fun to hang out with so by becoming happier, you get more social too!

62

The best kind of people are the ones that come into your life, and make you see the sunwhere you once saw clouds. The people that believe in you so much, you start to believe in you too.The people that love you,simply for being you. The once in a lifetime

kind of people.

64

Going to an unknown country can be a very stressful experience and one of the solutions for stress is: HAPPINESS. Achieving happiness is not just deciding not to be stressed anymore. That’s why we want to give you four short and simple to use happiness exercises which can help you become happier and thereby can prepare you for challenging situations.

KindnessPerhaps one of the easiest and best ways to become happy yourself is by making others happy. Doing something good for another (no matter how big or small), will give yourself and the other a boost in happiness. The only condition to achieve this boost is that you’re giving unconditionally, i.e. without expecting something in return. It is a random act of kindness. You can train yourself in doing this. Just start by asking yourself what you can do right now to make someone else happy. This can be very easy, send someone a nice text message or buy cupcakes for your roommate. It can be anything, no matter how big or small.

Three good thingsReminding yourself of the good things that are happening around you will give you a more positive view of your world. Good things happen as often as bad things, but most people pay more attention to bad things. If you focus on good things you start to see more good things. Whatever you focus on becomes bigger. So it’s a better idea to focus on the good things instead of the bad things. An easy way to start doing this is an exercise called “Three good things”. Every night before you go to bed, write down three good things about that day. Buy a nice notebook for this exercise or make room for it on your smartphone, whatever works best for you.

MeditationThis one may sound a bit fluffy but wait until you hear the benefits! Meditation probably reminds you of monks in Asia. It

65

is proven to be effective and is now also coming up in the west. Research on what all successful people had in common, showed that they all meditate. A CEO even said: I meditate 10 minutes every day and on busy days I meditate for an hour!

Meditation calms the mind and body by sitting still and breathing deeply. This allows your brain to process what you’ve experienced and thereby gives you better focus on the task at hand. Breathing deeply will help you take up more oxygen which will give your whole body an energy boost. Try it! When you feel a bit tired, sit straight and take five deep breaths and you’ll probably feel a lot better. When you’re experiencing negative emotions, take a break, breathe and allow yourself to calm down. Emotions only last for eight seconds (after that, it will become behavior) and by using meditation, you’ll get rid of those bad emotions in no time. Meditation is also great for your productivity and results, one research study even showed that students who meditate score higher on tests than students that don’t meditate. So if you want to improve your grades, don’t work too hard and stress out, but meditate!

There are a lot of possible ways to meditate from very advanced versions to versions that are accessible for everyone and you can do easily. We want to teach you the most basic version so you can use it during your trip. Sit down in a chair in a fairly quiet environment. Close your eyes, put both feet on the floor and place both hands on your belly. Try and breathe deeply. When you inhale, push your belly into your hands. Just focus on your breathing. If you get stuck on thoughts, try and focus on your breath in your belly again. Take as much breaths as needed to make you feel calm.

A lot of great apps can help you meditate and they really make meditation easy. We recommend the app called Calm™. With help of this down to earth app, meditation can take between

66

two minutes and half an hour. It will teach you how to meditate and after that it will help you keep calm.

ExerciseYeah it really works! Practicing a sport or working out is not only great for your body but also for your mind. It gets the blood flowing and that literally cleans up your brain and body. It also boosts your endurance. Not only endurance for being able to run for greater distances, but also to get through your day with more energy. When you feel drowsy and sleepy your productivity drops and you can get a bit moody. Through frequent exercises you will get more energy, more endurance and a more positive and clear mind. So get off your lazy ass and work out!

“We don’t stop playing, because we grow old. We grew old, because we stopped playing.”

– George Bernard Shaw

67

GamesWhen you are traveling, you will meet many different people. Sometimes it’s hard to really connect with a person you just met. Of course there are a lot of drinking games you can play to get to know each other ;-). The ones below don’t include alcohol (you can always add alcohol to it of course), but will help you to get to know each other a bit better.

#1 First impressions Requisites: Pen and paper + Tape

Everyone puts a paper on his/her back. Everyone walks around in the room and writes down his/her first impression on the back of the person. When you’re done, you can talk about the first impressions with each other.

First impressions

68

#2 Sharing secretsRequisites: Pen and paper + Bowl

Everyone writes down a secret of himself/herself on a paper and puts it in a bowl. One after another grabs one of the papers out of the bowl and reads it out loud. Everyone has to guess who they think the secret is about.

* * *

Traveling is fantastic, but sometimes you have to wait a bit longer for things than you would have to back home. Below, a few more ideas for games you can play if you have to wait for your flight, during a bus trip or while chilling at the beach or at the campfire. The most fun thing is, you don’t need special materials, so you can play anywhere!

* * *

#3 who is the man? Requisites: Pen and paper + Bowl (or a cup)

This game is known to make people very competitive, so choose your teammate wisely, because you will end up wanting to win!

To play this game you need some paper, a anything where you can put in the little pieces of paper. On the little pieces of paper you write down names of people, these people can be real like the Queen of England and Beyoncé, but also may be fictional like Donald Duck or Cinderella. You can write as many names as you want, depending on how big your group is and how long you want to play the game.

After you have finished writing down names, you divide the group up in teams of two (or three, depending on how many

69

people are playing). As mentioned above, think about who you want to have in your team because you want to get a hold on as many little pieces of paper as you can in the three rounds to come! Document in round 2 and 3 how many names you have guessed, count them up together and define a winner!

Round 1 – One team member describes the name on the piece of paper to the other team member? Snap het niet. While doing this it is not allowed to use words with a capital, the name of a country, names of people that might have a connection to the name on the piece of paper and no titles of books or music. You get 30 seconds and you go on until all the names are out of the bowl/hat/cup! If the team member guesses right the team gets the piece of paper. Remember, after 30 seconds the bowl/hat/cup moves on to the next team, so be fast and clever! The round is finished when all names are guessed.

Round 2 – This round is similar to the first round, only now the name of the person on the piece of paper must be described with only one word. Good luck! Each team will get 30 seconds per time again, but put a time limit on the total for round 2, depending on how many teams are playing.

Round 3 – The third round is without using language to clarify who is on that piece of paper but you need to act it out, show the others you are the best actors! Same as in round 2, agree on a time limit!

Round 4 – This round is only designed for the real die-hards.. To describe the person on the piece of paper you are only allowed to use sounds. So no words, not your body, just your voice and the sound you think belongs to the name on the paper. Get ready for a long night, because this might take a while to guess…

70

#4 “Dopje dopje” Requisites: Pen and paper + 1 Cup + 3 Bottle caps + 1 Bowl or hat

This game is one of the favorites of the OGX team of AIESEC Amsterdam! Gather everyone around because this game is played best with as many people as possible.

To play this game you need some paper and a pen, something to put in the pieces of paper and a bowl or hat to roll the 3 bottle caps.

To start off this game everyone who is playing should write down at least 5 assignments. This can be anything, let your imagination flow! Switch t-shirts with the person left of you, lick someone’s ear, drink three beers in a row, do a survival track over all the cars close to you, just anything you can think of! When everyone has done this put all the assignments in the bowl or cup, or whatever you have found to put the pieces of paper in.

Someone starts the game by rolling the three bottle caps in a bowl. If, for example, two of the bottle caps are facing down and one is facing up and the next persons rolls the same this person needs to do an assignment. If the person does not roll the same as the first person, person number 3 can have a go, this goes on until someone has done an assignment.

Have fun!

And... Don’t forget to bring play cards, light weighted and very much fun!

71

Fun exercises

#1 Map of the world

Cross off the places you have been to. Of course, include the places you visit during your amazing AIESEC adventure.

X P

laces I have b

een to

72

#2 Memories

My favorite AIESEC memories:

73

#3 Sharing

If I could invite 3 people (dead or alive) for 5 hours to show them my AIESEC experience, they would be: …, because …

74

#4 Picture moment

This place is where I spent most of my time reading and writing in this book:

75

#5 Contradictions

Draw a circle or a square around the option which suits you best after your AIESEC experience:

Private Public

Scared Brave

The sun The moon

Fate Coincidence

Together Alone

Travelling Staying at home

Personal Growth Playing it safe

Going out Staying in

Lazy Energetic

Optimistic Pessimistic

Future Past

Games to win Games for fun

76

#6 Listen to your environment

Listen to the sounds around you. Are they different than at home? Try to draw them together in the blank space. Compare it to what you hear when you are back home.

High-pitched sounds – circles

Low-pitched sounds – straight lines

Human voices – small dots

Machine sounds – fast scribble

Traffic sounds – lines that stop and start

Ocean sounds – little waves

Animal sounds – squares

The wind – big waves

Love sounds – hearts

77

#7 Draw your feelings

1. Start with a simple drawing on the following blank page, this could be anything. Think of something you always draw during class. 2. Every day for your AIESEC experience, add a little drawing to the following page. You can experience with different materials and techniques. Use your imagination. 3. Try to draw the change you feel within.

79

#8 Foreign Food

Think about the best thing you ate abroad. Create this recipe by what you think the dish was made off. Attempt something you have never done before.

RECIPE

Ingredients Amount Directions

RECIPE

Ingredients Amount Directions

80

#9 Intercultural handshake

Create a series of thumbprints with all the people you meet during your AIESEC experience. By putting all the thumbprints together you will create one or multiple handshakes, showing that all different cultures can be at peace with each other.

81

#10 Dictionary

Try to find a dictionary of the language that people speak around you right now. Try to combine their words with your native language, create a new language that anyone can speak (or just you and your friends).

82

3. Serious business

RhythmThe key to lasting success is rhythm. Rhythm creates habits of successful actions and if they become habits you are creating a positive and effective lifestyle. This is why we start creating a rhythm for your internship. First start with writing down your goal for the internship in this section:

Now subdivide your time abroad in four quartiles. Let’s call them Q1, Q2, Q3 and Q4. At the end of each quartile you’re going to take time for yourself and look back at the past quartile. You’ll evaluate your progress and look at the possibilities for improvement. Here is the blueprint for your quarterly meeting with yourself. First answer the four questions and be as honest to yourself as as possible. Then make a bullet point overview of the things your going to start with, the things your going to stop doing (and stop them right away) and the things you’ll continue to do.

1. What did you accomplish?

2. What didn’t you accomplish?

83

3. What did you learn?

4. What is your focus for the next quartile?

5. Start

6. Stop

7. Continue

Next you’ll fill in the score graph below. This provides a measure for your progress towards your goal. Note that this will need a goal that’s measurable.

....................................................................................................Score Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4

.............................

84

This is your quarterly rhythm. Next is your weekly rhythm. At the end of every week have a meeting with yourself and write down the following things:

1. Good news

2. Bullet point your progress on the score graph

3. What is finished next week?

4. Where am I stuck and who can help me?

5. One word closing of the week

85

To make yourself very concrete and effective you’re also going to adopt a daily planning and evaluation rhythm. Every day when you wake up you have to do two things. First remind yourself of your goal, read it aloud. Then you decide the three things that you’ve done at the end of the day. If you do this daily, you’ve subdivided your big goal into achievable bits and everyday you’ll get closer to achieving your goal.

HuddleSometimes it will be confronting, spending so much time thin-king about who you are, what you want to achieve in life and how you want to be. There’s a sunny side, you won’t have to do this alone. We even advise you to choose someone on your internship to talk to (or you can talk to someone back home about this). Choose someone who is fun to talk to and also productive, that can maybe even serve as a role model. Then pick a fixed time in the week where you will have your huddle. A huddle is a structured meeting where you tell each other your plans and help each other out if needed.

There are two underlying mechanisms that make this method powerful: the first is that people usually tell themselves excuses if they don’t achieve a goal set before. If you have to share this with another person, it’s harder to tell a good excuse and therefore you tend to be more persuasive in achieving the goals. The second reason is that the combined intelligence of two per-sons creates a synergetic unit in which ideas can add. 1+1=11. The structure for your huddle is the same structure as your weekly meeting. You can even choose to replace your weekly rhythm by a huddle if you think things through just before the huddle.

87

YOUR RETURN

88

YOUR RETURN

Reintegration

Take awayWelcome back! We hope you’ve had an amazing experience and you learned a lot. Now you’re back there’s just one chapter left in this book: Reintegration. Don’t worry you won’t have to do an exam to check if you still fit in here. What we are going to do is to help you evaluate your exchange in a fun and constructive way. This chapter exists of three parts. First we’re going to take a look at what you took home from your internship, than at what you’ve learned and what you want to remember. Then we’re going to look back at the preparation and do a check-up. We’re going to end this book with some tools to help you share your experience. This is useful, because most people find it very hard to share what they experienced abroad. This part will be a short guideline to share your experience as well on a personal and a professional level.

Let’s start by looking back at the journey you took. How are you coming back? Are you changed? Did you learn new things? And what can you do with these new experiences to enhance your life here? In order to get to the answers we’re going to evaluate your trip in five steps.

Step 1. What did you accomplish on your internship?

89

Step 2. What didn’t you accomplish on your internship? What didn’t go as planned? What went wrong? Since this can be a painful question, add what lesson you can take from this.

Step 3. What did you learn?

Step 4. What would you rather have done differently?

Step 5. What do you want to take home with you?

90

Evaluating your internship is very important and hopefully you had fun doing it. It anchors the journey in your mind which makes it easier for you to remember it on the long term. Maybe you even want to actually make some lasting changes in your life here. If that’s the case just evaluating is not enough, the only way to really make a change is by taking actions. If you keep on doing these actions you won’t slip back into your old habits and you’ll teach yourself new habits. That’s why it helps to translate your lessons learned into actions.

We’re going to subdivide into three kinds of actions. The first is “start”, these are actions you weren’t doing before but which you want to start doing. The second is “stop”, these are actions which you want to stop doing. Write them down and quit them right away, no stalling. There’s never going to be the right time to quit something and remember that quitting something is actually starting something new. To quit smoking, is to start living healthy. To quit stalling, is to begin working effectively. Etcetera. The last one is continue, these are actions that are helpful and thus actions you want to keep. It’s important to acknowledge these actions because that anchors your brain to continue doing this.

Start

Continue

Stop

91

Success?Before you went on your internship abroad, you set a goal for you internship. We’re very excited if you consider your internship as a success. The definition of success we use here is simply if you’ve accomplished the goal you’ve set yourself. So let’s take a look at your goal:

Did you accomplish this goal?

Also because every memory could be a success let’s take a look at the highlight of your trip by making your Internship Greatest Hits:

My best experience:

The weirdest thing about my internship country:

The weirdest thing I did on my internship:

92

My most treasured moment:

Most beautiful picture:

Greatest breakthrough:

Most awesome person I’ve met:

93

Sharing

1. PersonalNow you’re back you hopefully have a shitload of fun stories that you want to share with your friends and family. This must be a great feeling, but often it’s hard to share this feeling with the people around you. That’s probably not because they are not interested in your experiences, but because it’s hard for them to imagine to your stories because they haven’t had the same experience. This can be very disappointing to you. You just came back from an amazing trip, you feel like a renewed version of yourself, but everyone around you seems to be the same and it seems that they lack interest in your stories. First lesson: this has nothing to do with you. To help you to prevent disappoint-ments like this, luckily there are ways to keep the people around you interested in your stories and your developments:

inspire them. To inspire you, the story below serves as an illustration for your next exercise (p. 96).

* * * What we can learn from Ghanaians

Personal story by Sandra

A few years ago, I took a break from University, because I felt that everything in my life was passing so fast. I wanted to take some time off to find out what I really wanted to do in the futu-re before continuing studying. I decided to go abroad to work on a development project and I stayed in Ghana for six months.

If you decide to go to a developing country, there’s always a dilemma. The dilemma for me was if we, as Western people, do have the right opinion about development of countries such as Ghana. Sometimes we judge too easily about Africa and find the life circumstances of African families sad. We think we have to help (sometimes in a patronizing way). On the other hand people look happy; they don’t stress too much, because time is

94

such a different concept than it is here in Europe; and they don’tcomplain that much about ‘small things’. For example, an electricity outage in a big city in the Netherlands is front-page news and would be very distressing, but it is daily business in Ghana. You would only hear people say: ‘ohhh lights off again’.

Today, in the Netherlands a lot of people are stressed. In many cases this is not because of ‘real problems’, but because we have to work hard, finish our studies as fast as we can, we must have the newest smartphones and we also need to have a social life, do sports, spend time with our families and even a lot more. There’s high pressure to get the best out of our lives. I doubt if this is the way to get the best out of our lives. Shortly after my stay in Ghana, a friend of me sent a picture of an article in the Spits Newspaper, February 2013: ‘Live like a Ghanaian’ and that’s what I want to tell you: we can really learn from Ghanaians.

In this story I want to take you with me to Ghana. I’ll tell you about one of my first days in Ghana. It was a very hot day, like most days are in Sub-Saharan Africa. The trip to the company was already challenging, because I had to find the right trotro (public transport bus) in a very busy and crowded station. I was very happy that I arrived on time at the company, because I had an appointment with the director and his wife, but the manager and his wife kept me waiting for at least two hours. During my stay in Ghana, I learned that this was not an exceptional situation in there. In Ghana time is a concept that is influenced by people. Things happen if the right people are together in the right place. Agreements based upon time don’t really exist. Most problems concerning planning are due to a bad infrastructure. Ghanaians spend a lot of time waiting for public transport, work, money and food, but they don’t look stressed at al. Ghanaians see beauty all around them and they pay attention to it, they don’t stress that much about time and go by foot much more

95

and more often than we do. Ghanaian elderly have less heart and vascular diseases than Dutch people. I think that if we could be more relaxed, we could be healthier and happier. We should learn to handle the time passing, without being stressed about the consequences. If we don’t succeed in something on time or if something doesn’t work out the way we planned it. If you can’t make it today, do it tomorrow.

The most important lessons I learned during my journey, is that being open-minded to other cultures can help you a lot; that stressing about time will not help you dealing with your problems and makes you unhappy.

Try to open up your eyes and see all the beauty around you, be open-minded and take lessons from other cultures, before judging about them!

* * *

96

There’s a big difference between sharing what you’ve done and inspiring others. Most people who came back from their internship try their best to be as detailed as possible in telling what they’ve done. For you this feels important, but for the listener it can be really hard to pay attention to all details, because he/she wasn’t there. In this manner, relating to the story is hard for the listener and he/she will not get the bigger picture of what you’re saying. Eventually this becomes boring. As said before, this has nothing to do with you or your experiences, just the way in which you share your stories. The first thing you can change is your goal in telling your stories. The goal is not to be complete and detailed, but to be interesting. Interesting stories are fun to listen to and by sharing them you might inspire others to go on an internship as well. If your goal is to be interesting, you can apply other rules to change the story telling process. Most people only talk about what they’ve done. This is the core of what you want to tell, but not the start. First you have to introduce what you want to say in order to get people to listen to you. If you do this right it will help people to relate to your story and if they can relate, their memory and attention rises. Let’s first talk about the structure of your story. This is the same structure as every movie and every book, but we rarely use for our own stories:

> Introduction (why did you do it?)

> Core (how did you do it?)

> End (what did you learn?)

IntroductionWithout a proper introduction a story is wasted. The goal in the introduction of a story is to let the audience set an expectation/a picture in their mind about your story. In this way they can relate to your story and listen to you. Before people want to listen to you with their full attention three questions

97

should be answered in your story introduction, before you can continue to the core of your story. If you know these questions, you make it easy for yourself when you implement this in your story-telling. If you do this part right, your audience will definitely want to know what’s coming next. Do you want to know the questions? Here you go:

1. Why is this story interesting? (what did you learn)2. Why is this story interesting to me? (as a listener)3. What is the picture? (put them in the situation)

This may feel a bit strange to begin with, but take a look at movies, this is what you will see the first 10 minutes of every movie. Everybody decides whether they want to continue watching the movie in the first 10 minutes. If these three questions are not answered, you stop watching and you’ll probably say it’s a shitty movie. So first think about what makes your story interesting.

Then you have to consider which audience you have in front of you. You’ll probably tell your story a bit differently to your parents than you tell it to your best friends. So why is your story interesting for your particular audience?

98

Now put them in the situation. Paint a picture of how it looks, you can do this verbally and talk about the surroundings and how the place of your story looked. Or you can use pictures to illustrate your story. This is a great way to sort out your pictu-res to help you to tell the story you want to tell.

CoreWhen you’ve introduced the story you want to tell, you’re ready to talk about the core. You’ll probably feel a bit more comfortable with this part because most of the time we only talk about this part. But there’s one big lesson to be learned from how writers tell stories in books. In this part people want to know what you did and how you did it. Because for you it’s in the past the most logical way to tell your story is in the past tense. But if you take a good look at a book, it’s always told in the present tense. This is because the audience doesn’t know the story yet, for them it’s all new. So the easiest way to tell your story is by guiding your audience through your journey as if you’re experiencing everything for the first time. This sounds harder than it is. The best advice is to use the present tense and use a chronological order to your story. If you do this right, your audience will be at the edge of their seat. Again, make this part interesting and not too complete. This is the most fun way to share for you and your audience.

EndOf course your journey has to end somewhere. The easiest way to end a story is a wrap-up. You take your most important lesson and share it with your audience, this is called a take-away message. The easiest way to do this is by using this sentence or a variant of it: If there’s one thing I’ve learned on my journey it’s this…

Now your story is inspiring and you’re ready to get applause and smiles and praise. Take a bow!

99

2. ProfessionalAn internship can be a big advantage later in your professional career. You can make use of it when you’re applying for a job and to connect with people who are similar minded. If you want to connect with people who are similar minded, the same rules apply as in the previous chapter on how to make an interesting story. But for use on your CV and application it’s a little different. Just putting an internship on your CV won’t help improve your chances that much. This is because you send your resume to a stranger. This stranger won’t know what you did on your internship and why you chose to do it. For all they know you just spent all your time on a nice beach getting a tan. The trick is to approach your CV as you would approach the references in scientific research. In scientific research you don’t put in every source you can find, you use the references to illustrate a certain point. In the same way you should use your internship on your CV. Which point can you illustrate by using your internship as a reference?

Be sure to put this point on your resume. And don’t just write down: Internship - AIESEC. Add some information about what you’ve done, what you’ve learned and why you did this internship. This will help recruiters create a picture of what kind of person you are and what you can do. An internship as such is meaningless, what you write down will give it meaning.

100

The same holds true for application interviews. Before your interview, make sure that you’ve got some examples which illustrate your value to the company. Maybe you can use your experiences during your internship to illustrate some points why you will be valuable and why they should hire you. When you do this in the right way the internship can make a difference in your professional career.

Congratulations!

You made it to the end of this book and therefore you can be very proud! You put energy in developing yourself and hopefully this will lead to beautiful things in the future.

Now, you can re-read the letter to yourself and reflect on the things you wrote down. Did you achieve the things that you wrote as your future self? It doesn’t matter so much if you didn’t achieve the things you wrote down, especially if you achieved other, unexpected things while being abroad.

Hopefully you’ve had an amazing experience abroad!

103

Acknowledgements

Without you I’m nothing

In this book we tried to convince you to put energy in yourself, because you’re the most important person in your life. On the other hand... Who are you without the people around you that help you out when you need it?

First, we would like to give a special thanks to the whole Outgoing Exchange Team of AIESEC Amsterdam. The idea of this book was born within the team and therefore, without the OGX-team this book wouldn’t exist.

We would also like to give a big thanks to Myrthe. Without you this book would be boring. You made it shine!

Without Sandra’s dad Hans for language corrections, her roommate Irene for mental support, Kai’s girlfriend Sabine and our AIESEC colleagues Daantje, Claartje and Stefanie, this book wouldn’t be as complete as we find it right now. We would like to thank you for this!

For the pictures, the credits go to Chris Konig (www.chriskonig.nl).

104

About Kai and Sandra

About Sandra

Hi, I’m Sandra. I’m a medical student and I’m in the board of AIESEC Amsterdam until July 2015. Next to my studies I travelled to countries such as Tunisia and Ghana to volunteer, to Suriname for an internship and to many other countries for roundtrips. While traveling, I found that it was easier to get a helicopter view over my life, to reflect on the past and to dream about the future. Especially when a terrible accident happened in Ghana, I realised how important it is to get to know yourself, so you can count on yourself in uncertain situations. One of the main reasons why I wanted to join the board of AIESEC was to help other students to develop themselves while traveling and to support them to get the most out of their time abroad. The idea of this book was born when I was having a brainstorm session together with my friend Daantje and decided that I wanted to realize it. Luckily I got in touch with Kai and he was as enthusiastic as I was, so we worked it out. If it would only help one person to get the best out of his/her trip, I would be happy.

If you ever want to get in touch with me to share your experiences or to ask questions, you can always contact me on [email protected]. Enjoy your trip!

Sandra

105

About Kai

Hi, I’m Kai. I’m the leader of my company The Super Students. Together with my team I help students to discover who they are and what they want, so they can make a positive and valuable difference for themselves and others. That’s why we write books and give workshops for students. This all started in my year as a member of AIESEC. There I learned a lot about how improving yourself can make your life a lot easier and more fun. When you’re happy, you meet more happy people and that makes you even happier. Now as an AIESEC alumnus I wanted to give something back to AIESEC. This is why I immediately said yes when Sandra asked me to co-write this book for you. Internships can really broaden your view of the world and yourself. If I made even a little contribution to that, my goal is met.

If you ever want to get in touch with me, you can always contact me on [email protected]. I’d love to hear your stories! Have loads of fun and an amazing experience abroad!

Kai

106

ReferencesAchor, S. (2010) The Happiness Advantage. Virgin Books.Achor, S. (2013) Before Happiness. Virgin Books.Brown, B. (2010) The gifts of imperfection. Gotham books.Brown, B. (2012) Daring greatly. Gotham books.Bynes, R. (2006) The secret. TS ProductionCialdini, R. (1984) Influence. Harper Collins.Collins, J.C. (2001). Good to great. Why some companies make the leap… and others don’t. Harper Business.Covey, S.R. (2004). The 7 habits of highly effective people. Free Press.Covey, S.R. (2005). The 8th habit. From effectiveness to greatness. Free Press.De Kock, D. en Grol, M. (2011). Succes door eigen creatie. Spectrum.De Kock, D. en Vergeer, A. (2012) 365 Dagen Succesvol. Spectrum.Evans, J. (2012) Philosophy for life and other dangerous situations. Rider books.Gunster, B. (2005). Ja-maar, wat als alles lukt? Bruna uitgevers.Gunster, B. (2008) Huh?! Bruna uitgevers.Harnish, V. (2002). Mastering the Rockefeller Habits. What you must do to increase the value of your fast-growth firm. Select Books.Hill, N. (2010). Think and Grow Rich. Nederlandse editie voor de 21ste eeuw. Succesboeken.nl.Manson, M. (2015). 7 Strange Questions That Help You Find Your Life Purpose. Accessed on March 30th, 2015: http://markmanson. net/life-purpose#.4jdnhw:FYTC Robbins, A. (1986) Unlimited power. Free PressRobbins, A. (1982) Awaken the giant within. Free Press.Sinek, S. (2009) Start with why. Penguin Group.Smith, K. (2010). Wreck this Journal. Penguin UK.Streckely, J. (2008). The Big Five for Life. Vervul je 5 grootste levenswensen. Ankh Hermes.Tiggelaar, B. (2005) Dromen, durven, doen. Spectrum.Tiggelaar, B. (2011) Dit wordt jouw jaar! Spectrum.Tiggelaar, B. (2012) MBA in een dag. Tyler Roland Press.

Are you about to go on an internship abroad? And do you want to make it an unforgettable journey? That’s what this book is all about! When you’re going to explore another part of the world you’re literally expanding your horizon. You are about to cross some borders, both geographically and personally.

This book is written with the purpose to help you to get the most out of your journey. This won’t help you pack your bag, but it will help you prepare yourself. When you’re abroad, this book will be there for you along the way. For the fun moments, tough moments and for the great memories. And when you’re back home again, this book will help you remember your journey for the rest of your life. That’s why we’ll give you a lot of useful tips, some great stories and loads of inspiration all bundled up in one book. And the best thing is: you get the chance to finish this book by adding your own experiences, answers, thoughts and more to it’s pages. Are you as excited as we are? Let’s go on an adventure!

preparation booklet

Documents