Monday 10 November 2014

The reason why you should travel


Imagine yourself as an exceptionally posh, globe-trotting diva. Your conversation is full of adventure and you exude a well-bred confidence which intrigues everyone with whom you chat. Your style is impeccable and your beauty cosmopolitan. Who’s that girl? Well, it could be you! You can achieve this transformation by setting your sights on becoming well-traveled. Traveling demands that you absorb life in a different way because you break away from your usual routines. Journeys to distant locations (and even those that aren’t so distant) enlighten, expand and challenge our minds – building our intelligence and feeding our curiosity.

The number one thing holding many people back from traveling the way they’d like to is their finances. The hard truth about travel is that it can be expensive. There are ways to save on your flights and accommodations such register yourself for an airline membership club where u can earn mileage. I always choose KLM Flying Blue to collect my air mileage points. As a trustworthy airline, KLM offers wide range of cities, online shopping, network club as KLUB AFRICA n KLUB CHINA, hotels partnership , car rental companies and much more. I enjoy benefit from Leaders Club benefit that offered by Leading Hotel of the world. As their Unlimited Membership Cardholder, I am able to get access to various airport lounges, baggage concierge service, chauffeur pick-up service from most of the airports around the world.

Most of us have dreams of traveling to exotic lands and seeing all that the world has to offer. For many, though, the process of planning, booking and actually taking a vacation or work trip is elusive. If that sounds familiar, you might be wondering where to start. I want to share with you my top seven keys to becoming a world-class traveler. This post isn’t about smartphone apps to download, travel guides to read or flight and hotel websites. This post is all about the fundamentals of adjusting your mentality to create the life of travel you’ve dreamed of.

1. Create your travel dream list.

If you’re ready to don your globe-trotting gear, the first step you can take is making a dream travel list. Document the places you want to see and your travel fantasies and turn them into legitimate future plans. Pull out your travel journal (or a notebook if you don’t have one yet) and begin to list all of the places to which you’d like to travel.

List any specific sights you dream of seeing. You’re just writing a list, so there’s no pressure. Don’t worry if you’re not sure how it will happen. For you, the list might include the Eiffel Tower, the Grand Canyon, the Mona Lisa, or the Statue of Liberty. When I created my travel dream list, it revealed what type of traveler I was. Your list will do the same for you. You might be a fashionista, a foodie, an art connoisseur, or an extreme adventurer. Whatever your bent, it will shine through.

Periodically take out your travel list and review what you have written. As new interests arise, add them to your list. The creation of this list marks the beginning of your new life with travel and fun adventures.

Ivanka Trump knows about the power of travel. She said “In both business and personal life, I’ve always found that travel inspires me more than anything else I do. Evidence of the languages, cultures, scenery, food, and design sensibilities that I discover all over the world can be found in every piece of my jewelry.”

2. Maintain travel files.

At this stage, you are getting pretty serious about enjoying a life full of extraordinary travel experiences. It’s time to do what the pros do! Purchase colorful, loose file folders or an accordion file. Label each folder with a destination on your list. Now, start collecting data on your dream trips. If you come across an informative article about an outstanding restaurant in a city you plan to visit, clip it and put it into your files. If a friend gets to one your dream destinations before you do, have them bring back postcards or literature and put them in your file.

If you do a lot of your travel reading online, you can keep travel ‘files’ on Pinterest as well. Create a board for each of your dream destinations and pin relevant photos, tips, guides and reviews as your come across them.

Working on your travel files prepares you for an opportunity that doesn’t exist yer, but believe me, preparation is never lost time. Due to your diligence, many of your dreams will come to pass sooner than you ever thought they would.

Dwight Eisenhower said “Plans are nothing, planning is everything.” Create your files and start planning this week!

3. Keep a travel journal.

As your travel dreams come true, the travel journal is an essential tool to document the wonders of your experiences. Journalizing is an extremely effective technique to pull together your thoughts and ideas. It improves your experiences by providing an accurate account of your memories.

My travel journal is so interesting to read through and look at! It’s almost become a picture book because I take so many pics and paste prints into my journal in addition to what I write. Aside from writing, you can include photos, ticket stubs, room keys or even a receipt from a special purchase. It’s a great place to keep the names of your favorite waiters, hotel staff and concierge as well. By using your own travel journal, you will be accumulating valuable information – thereby enhancing the quality of future trips.

The great St. Augustine said “The World is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page.”

4. Create a travel scrapbook.

This is like your travel journal, but not as intimate. This more of a coffee-table book for everyone to see. It shouldn’t contain your secret thoughts, inner discoveries of breakthrough ideas. Instead, pack it with photos and small captions that highlight your trips. If you only keep your photos in your phone or on your computer, you probably won’t go back and look at them very often. Having a beautiful, physical recording of your travels can be a great way to spend time with family, or a sophisticated conversation-starter when you have company. With a little effort, your scrapbook can blossom into an outstanding documentary of your travels.

Margaret Russell, Editor in Chief of Archictectural Digest, said it well: “The glories of traveling abroad can be grasped not just by the hands, but by all senses.”

5. ALWAYS have your camera

To be without your camera is a travel catastrophe. Some things can never be described, retold or recreated. When you’re traveling, use a real camera. Some smartphones have pretty good cameras. These are fine for taking selfies and everyday use around your hometown. When you’re traveling, though, you’re capturing moments that are pieces of your history. A good camera with a good lens can’t be replaced by your phone. Invest in yourself and your memories by purchasing a high quality camera before your next trip.

In my hand luggage I always have my camera, iPod, make-up bag, tooth brush, cleansing products, clean underwear, socks and a change of clothes in case anything goes missing at the other end – and of course my passport.”

6. Return home to an inspiring atmosphere.

No matter how beautiful or exciting my destination, the comfort and joys of home are always missed. Make arrangements to return home to an inviting atmosphere. Start early and be organized when packing so you aren’t forced to return to a house in disarray. If you have a cleaning service, schedule them to come just before you leave so your house is in pristine condition. If you don’t have a service, find the time to do the task yourself. It’s worth it to create a peaceful entry into your own pleasant surroundings as the perfect way to end any trip.

7. Create a lifestyle that allows you to travel.

Bottom line is that it takes money to travel well. On top of that, you need to have time off and be able to coordinate your time with your family or travel partners. For many working corporate or public sector jobs, this can be very difficult.

#KLM #FlyingBlue #LeadingHotelofTheWorld #LHW #PriorityPass #AileenNoura

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Location:Copenhagen

Tactics for Asking Good Follow-Up Questions

I am posting this not to discover your inner-CIA talent or teaching you to be a judgemental person, but dealing with daily errands and intense working chores make human instinct as a rare commodities to be used. I combined some notes from the books that I read, paper cuts, my neuro-science class and pinterest board to share this write-up with you.

Whether you are looking to hire someone, decide whether to trust someone, or enter a business partnership, the better you are at judging people, the better off you will be. Unfortunately, most people are just plain bad at reading others. Several decades of research among psychologists has indicated all sorts of blind spots, biases, and judgment errors we make in assessing people. Much of that research has focused on the mental processes we use to interpret what we see or hear. But errors also occur way before that – the problem can begin with the questions we ask to understand people in the first place.

When you want to get a read on someone, what questions do you ask? Most people have go-to questions. The ones I hear most often are open-ended questions like, “What are your greatest strengths and weaknesses?” “What do you want to be doing in five years?” and “What motivates you?” Some savvier questioners ask behavior-based questions, like “Tell me about a time when you….”. Sounds great, right? Now, ask yourself if you have ever once actually learned the truth about someone by their responses to these questions. How many times have you relied on people’s responses to these questions only to see later that those responses meant nothing at all? Most people ask a question like this and then move onto another topic, seemingly satisfied that they heard what they needed to hear. In reality, they learned nothing about the other person.

In my experience conducting interview-based assessments for the past years, I have found that this is because the first answer to one of these questions is only marginally helpful and may even be irrelevant. Yet most askers simply accept what they hear (good or bad) and, without asking any follow-ups, move on to the next topic on their list.

But the key to understanding people lies in the follow-up question. In my experience, there are two major reasons people don’t ask good (or any) follow-up questions. First, many interviewers aren’t actually paying close enough attention to ask detailed follow-up questions. To ask a good follow-up, you need to pay very close attention to how the interviewee responds to your initial question, and then build on his or her answer. The second reason most people are hesitant to probe is out of fear of offending the other person. But being polite isn’t the same thing as letting the other person off the hook.

Ask a follow-up that will help you really uncover what you are seeking to learn. Be curious, and you will be amazed what you uncover. Here are three types of follow-up questions that will enable you to understand more about a person:

1. 1. Ask your original question again, slightly differently. Don’t be afraid to ask the same question twice. If I am interviewing someone and the person either deflects my first question or doesn’t give a real response, I will often say, “Let me ask you this another way…”. It is effective because you communicate that you are not letting the person off the hook, but you’re allowing them to save face by at least implying that maybe your initial question just wasn’t clear enough. It is a highly effective method of extracting a real response that will actually be predictive of behavior.

Caution: just make sure you change the way you phrase this second question, otherwise it can seem adversarial. The key is to ask the question another way, and declare that you are doing so.

2. Connect their answers to each other. One of my favorite strategies to understand people better is to link their responses to something they said earlier. I’m not talking about an attempt to catch someone in a lie, but instead connecting the dots between their answers. Good judges of character do this naturally – they listen intently, and tie what they hear to something said earlier in the conversation. Ask something like, “Oh, that’s like the time you…?” or, “Is that what you meant earlier when you said…?”. Beyond allowing you to understand the person better, it communicates that you are really listening, and actually provides meaningful insight to the person by pointing out a connection that he or she may have not even seen. It allows you to synthesize information rather than just hear it.

Caution: Overusing this can make you seem like a police detective seeking a “gotcha” moment. Avoid saying things like, “But that’s not what you said earlier…” What I am suggesting is to synthesize rather than interrogate.

3. Ask about the implications of their answer. When people answer a question without being particularly revealing, or by giving a very safe answer, what do you do? For instance, when asked about greatest weakness, someone says, “I’m a perfectionist” or “I work too hard.” Rather than accept answers like that at face value, seek to really understand the person by asking about the implications of their answers. With a self-proclaimed perfectionist, you might ask, “How does your perfectionism play out in the workplace?” or “What are the consequences of your detail orientation?” And don’t stop there – keep asking implication questions until you are satisfied you know what you need to know about the person.

Caution: When asking about implications, avoid being a litigator and turning them into leading questions. Instead, truly be curious about the behavior and what its effects are.

Coming up with a great list of questions is only the first step in conducting an in-depth interview. It’s the follow-up questions that will really tell you who you’re dealing with.

"Listening" in my humble opinion is the key to asking good questions




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