News from Stiftung Welt:Klasse

Hi imaginers,

as promised at our conference in February I’d like to give you some news about me and Stiftung Welt:Klasse project which I presented. It’s not a annoying obligation to do this: I’m happy to tell you, that the idea of Stiftung Welt:Klasse has become reality within the last year and we have really great feedback from the high school students which participated so far at our program in China and Thailand!! I’m happy that we’ve got sponsors, media reports and first awards…. but the most important is that the first students which went abroad came back with a lot of enthusiasm and positive energy!! It’s this feedback which motivates me enormously to go on with the project…

And also Imagine 2007 has it’s concrete impact on Stiftung Welt:Klasse: Ursel did a great job during summer to get started a partnership with a school in Bielefeld!! Thu Phong did amazing work preparing the 12 high school students for China! And finally Eva did the same for the students starting to Thailand

For detailed information you can have a look on www.stiftung-weltklasse.de (for the moment just in German)…  Or just contact me That’s it for the moment…

I wish you all merry christmas and an great and inspiring year 2008!!!

Best,
Matti

Output Values Session

Values-Session

One of the main targets of every personal development effort is to make our values more conscious. Only when we know what is important to us can we live them out in a conscious matter, and take them as guides, rather than being inflicted by random circumstances we cannot control. There are in my opinion two different types of values.

I call the first type VALUES FOR PRINCIPLES. These values can guide us in our daily behaviour. They are for example: Living with love and humour, pride, or to strive for excellence. The six AIESEC values are other good examples for this type (strive for excellence, living diversity, acting sustainably, demonstrating integrity etc.)
From these values, we can derive rules, or rather PRINCIPLES.

The second type of values that we have in life point us to our GOALS. Examples: Save the environment, create a family and care for them, help people to live more conscious lives, fight poverty, save the whales etc. If we know these values inside of us, we can extract a purpose in life, or for some people, even a VISION.

These two types can be compared with different cultures. The differences are not clear-cut in each aspect, but it makes sense to understand the difference, because we need different approaches to get to them. Ask a German businessman working in China whether he sees a difference in getting things done in the two cultures!

How can we then get to the first type of values, our principles?

Here are some different methods as keywords. They cannot be explained in detail here. For more information on them, lets get in contact.

1. People I admire- analyse the people around you. What do you admire on some of them? Look at your friends- why are they your friends? Which attribute is it about them that you value?
2. Reflect: When have I been passionate in life? When did I do something creative and productive with this passion? What was the passion about? I like this exercise a lot, because it reminds us that we have all created something special for us with our passion in the past. We can do so again.
3. Values-list: there are lists with different types of values. What we can do here is to cut them down one by one, so that there are just a few left at the end.
4. There are also other exercises like the Abigale: A story about how a girl sleeps with a guy just to get to the man she loves…quite controversial. Nobody is obviously right in this story, which makes it fun to discuss it. It can be a good start in values-discussions. You can download this exercise along with others here: http://www.training-youth.net/INTEGRATION/TY/Publications/tkits/tkit4/content.pdf

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5. Look at difficult decision you made in your past. Why did you make them? What were the principles you based your decision on?

These are some methods to get ourselves closer to our principles. What about the others, our goals?

1. Funeral- exercise: In this exercise, imagine you are at your own funeral. People that cared for you are holding speeches. What will they say about your character? What about the achievements you had in life?
2. News-scan: What kind of news are you most interested in when reading the papers or watching news? What strikes you to be most unjust? Collect the articles that you care about, and find out what it is that touches you in them.
3. Look at your own CV: Which of the things you did in the past were most important to you? Why? Which role did I play in there?
4. One of the easiest, but for me personally, most effective exercise: Sit down with a pen and paper (or a computer), and type this title: I dedicate my life to… then simply brainstorm. In the beginning, I wrote down the most obvious things. But when I continued and kept on writing, I eventually got to something that really touched me. This is when I knew: This is it.

These are just some methods, if you know more, please share. And if there are still questions, drop me a line. .-)

As a second step to the Principle-Values, I suggest to find out rules for everyday life. What can be my principles to ensure that I really live out these values? What does it mean for me to strive for excellence? Find out tangible rules for yourself. The question was asked how many values we should have. There is no universal answer to it. I believe that we should limit the number to the ones we can consciously follow. More important than the sheer number is the PRIORITY of the values. Values, in both cases, should have ranks. It makes decision-making in life a lot easier.
The second step to the Goal-Values then is to find out a Vision for our own lives: So what is it then that I want to dedicate my life to? Its not possible to be sure about it for the rest of our lives. But we can at least be as sure as we can be, for now.

Looking forward to discussions, Thu Phong.

Displaying Values

Dear all,

Imagine has been a powerful conference for many of us. The problem with conferences however, no matter how powerful they are, is that they are limited in scope- our everyday life catches up with us quickly. So if you made it to continue reading this blog, congrats for not letting the rat race catch up with you!

My entries this week will be around personal development. How can we live a more conscious life, make the right decisions for ourselves, plus find the energy to put them into motion? If you figured out the right formula for that, send it to me, and I will happy to post it here for you. .-) If not, I look for ward to some open discussion about this topic.

Maybe you remember that we had a session on Finding my Values in the Open Space Session. I am working on the output these days. Juliane helped me here by providing her notes as a photo-protocol -the flipchart go lost. But her notes looked more in order than my flipchart-writing anyway!
One question we discussed there was about displaying our values. When giving trainings on Personal Development, I notice that many people are reluctant to share their values with others after they wrote them down for themselves. And that is also the question I would like to ask you personally: If I asked you the question: What are the five most important things in your life right now- would you post them in this blog, for the world to read? Would you at least hesitate?
I believe that many of us still see our values as something we need to protect. As something vulnerable, that could hurt us if other people used them against us, or at least as something very private. Maybe we are also afraid to be misunderstood with something as fundamental as our values.

I believe however, that the leaders who had the biggest impact on society had one thing in common: They displayed their values openly. I also believe that the people we admire most are all people from which we believe that they live out their own values in their best way possible. Our values, then, are not a source for vulnerability- they do not need to be hidden and protected, but the need to be lived. For values are a source for strength. I strongly believe that we cannot change the world according to our values if we keep them private.

The world would be a much nicer place if all of us shouted around and lived our values, instead of trying to hide and protect them. What do you guys believe?

Thu Phong.

P.S. The most important values in my life right now:
1. Support my family
2. Helping others to develop their personality
3. Promote understanding amongst different cultures
4. Strive for a sustainable world

How about you?