I do have a faith that there is a supreme power- who looks after us and whole universe. I go for worship and I also believe in helping needy people. It is a way of worshiping god . I believe that God is someone who is looking after me and is with me all the time. I also believe that ‘God helps those, who help themselves.’
We all want to succeed. One path to success is identifying the habits that can help us on our journey. The book “7 habits of highly effective people” through life class helped us to identify them!
The first habit which we started with was “being proactive”The second habit we focused on was “Begin with the end in mind” where I learned changing some basic paradigms will help us proactively write our own values. The third habit we discussed was “Put First Things First”. Here we did an activity based on two factors: Urgent and Important which can be divided to make Four Quadrants. Out of these 4 quadrants, 2nd quadrant which is important but not urgent is at the heart of personal management. The fourth habit “Think Win-Win” helped me understand t
When I started school, I came with a baggage of worries and issues. I was a girl who never believed in self-help classes or books and I categorized Life Classes under the classification of Good for Nothing Self Help Classes.
As the time went by, I started implementing few of the methods of shaping my thoughts and my routines and life. And guess what! I saw things were brighter. That was a turning point. I would want to put my learning from life classes in four points:
I have implemented these learningsin my life and I am happy and content.
Thank you, Life Classes!
We are all travelers on this earth and keep travelling until we reach our destinations. We travel to the places that we would like to adore and explore, the same thing I did. I love books and movies as well as enjoy reading and watching them but with the daily grind it is very difficult to schedule it. The books and film club gave me that opportunity. During the sessions, we were engrossed in the books and explored them at length. I felt I was in a trans and an altogether different world. Moreover, when we reflected on our reading books or movie watching as a group I got several perspectives which I would have missed otherwise. Here I want to quote Elizabeth Scott -“I love that moment when you open one and sink into it, you can escape from the world into a story that`s way more interesting than yours will ever be”
The participants of book and film club have explored different genres of books and movies. We all got to share our ideas and that worked well as we all owned up to it. I also liked that everyone got an input of what we were going to do. I also really enjoyed reading the book so that made everything 100 times better.
We also had the opportunity of watching movies based on books or reading books based on movies which gave us a better insight in understanding the difference in medium. I could relate to how imagination changes on celluloid. What I read in a book and what I saw on screen had a stark difference at times.
“I do believe something very magical can happen when you read a good book” quotes J.K.Rowling. I felt the same when I read the book “Tuesdays with Morrie” by Mitch Albom. The lessons given by Morrie became life lessons for me and that made a difference to me and my life.
A few challenges for me were things like, watching a documentary and a horror movie. Documentaries have too much of yak-yak which make them dull and uninteresting at times. Also I had to extend myself beyond my area of interest and maybe that’s the reason I failed to make connections.
Horror is not my genre because it scares me to death. I keep looking for ghosts around me after watching a scary movie hence I would still want to refrain from it. Now the funny part is that after watching a horror movie here in the class I watched 2 more without getting scared. So that was an advantage!
Book and movie club changed me forever!
What comes first when you listen to the word ‘Happiness?’ – Smile from the depth of the heart, right?
Happiness is a combination of how satisfied you are with your life and how good you feel on a day-to-day basis. Both of these are relatively stable—that is, our life changes, and our mood fluctuates, but our general happiness is more genetically determined than anything else. Yes, it needs consistent effort.
Happiness is the center of our life. Who does not want to be happy in their life? I remember when our first session began, Sir asked all the participants to write about ‘Your expectation from life’ and I still remember everyone had this point in their answer that ‘We want peace in our life’. I really enjoyed and learned so much in this program like, “How to balance life, How to control anger, How to maintain relationship, How to take things the other way round,…..”. We learned how to train our mind. It is not only how to meditate but also a mixture of Yoga and meditation and when it comes together our life becomes perfect. I feel the difference in my life and I have experienced that change in my life now. It gave me courage to confess and helped me clarify issues with others (which bothered me since a long time), even to build a good relationship and understanding with my family members and others. Now I can track what my mind tells and how I should act. Meditation is really effortless and once you do it, it starts happening very naturally. There are some principles, if we follow them majority of our life will change.
I have had a similar experience earlier, as after I started doing Sudarshan Kriya, Sahaj Samadhi and Padmasadhana I found that my positive thinking was affecting my life as I started thinking, it happened. Sahaj samadhi is really very ‘सहज’(सरल). I have experienced once we firmly decide to do something(खरे मन से ‘संकल्प’ करे तो)it affects our present and future. I have started to “live in present”
I have read somewhere that, “Your difficulties appear to be very big, lift your eyes because you are only focused on yourself. If you lift your eyes up and look at those who are in a worse condition than you, you will suddenly feel that your burden is not as bad as you thought it was.”
In the end, I would say that some things are the same and the revision of the Life classes in our school brings about new learning which enlightens. So, special thanks to our management for giving us this wonderful opportunity and time to know and explore one’s self.
Getting to know yourself allows you to jump into a well of happiness. Self-knowledge is important for one main reason: because it offers us a route to greater happiness and fulfillment.
Happiness Program helped us to know ourselves. I had a preconception that it’s difficult to meditate. I felt nauseated while closing my eyes but after learning Pranayam, Sudarshan Kriya, Padmasadhna and Sahaj Samadhi meditation, now I can meditate effortlessly for more than 30 minutes. This program helped me in being mindful i.e. now I live in present.
I would like to share a stage where I was enlightened while performing Sahaj Samadhi. I was in a different mode after doing meditation. Sahaj Samadhi is a stress buster for me.
I would also like to share that I had a frozen shoulder and I was unable to move my shoulder. The doctor suggested a visit to physiotherapist. It was difficult for me to perform Pranayam but Shruti(my facilitator) asked me to continue Pranayam and Sudarshan Kriya. It’s a great feeling to share that now my frozen shoulder is cured just because of Pranayam and Sudharshan Kriya.
It was an amazing experience to attend all the sessions of Happiness Program. This program has helped me in many ways. All the principles which were shared during the program have given me a different insight to look at the problems. Now I know how to dig deep and come up with the solutions.
Kruti 🙂
7 Habits of highly effective people- The classes that we attended were really effective.
I can recall my words: “Oh! One more day of life class”, “Why do we need to do this?”, “Oh life classes are there after some days, what was the homework, need to do that.” and many more such statements. But once we start with the class we start learning, we start interacting, we start thinking about our self, we start thinking about our behavior, our near and dear ones. It helped us to understand the purpose of life. It helped us to think and decide what is important for us and what is not so important. It helped us to understand about our emotional deposits and withdrawal with our near and dear ones, to understand their expectations, to tell them our expectations. In a way, these classes helped in making our life simpler than before.
I would never forget the bond that we built while playing in a team, sitting and watching movie like a family, sharing our problems, our happy moments, having tears listening to others, laughing together, dancing, singing and many such activities.
The wow moment for me was when I gave a thank you letter to my parents, the happiness I saw in their eyes was more than any other thing. I would like to thank the facilitators for adding on to my knowledge!
Roma Bhesania 🙂
First, I want to show gratitude to Neha Bhatia, Mary Gerard and Payal Jain for conducting the workshop and guiding me develop skills that need patience. It was my paradigm that I can never learn art though I wanted to learn it. The only art I knew was cooking as I love to cook, but there are many skills to explore like oil painting, cloth painting, embroidery, clay work, pot painting, and many more…. I had even taken the initiative to practice the skills, learned during the workshop, back at home regularly. During all the workshop days I was excited to come to school to learn something which was not in my comfort zone.
Finally, I am happy to learn new art skills that have kept me engrossed and made me more curious about learning other art skills too…
Regards,
Vaishali Desai.
I always wanted to explore this area but never got this wonderful opportunity. So basically I’m jotting down my reflection in form of points and not paragraphs… Here’s a reflection of my learning during this impressive journey of Art and Skills classes:
I’ll miss attending Art and Skills class…our lovely facilitators and all the energetic participants.
Thanks for everything dearies!!!
Life classes helped me to get a better understanding about me. All os us have problems in our lives. There are so many paradigms, there are so many perceptions for the same thing. First I was blaming, underestimating, doubting myself and circumstances. I started adopting that change starts from within and I focused more on circle of Influence, then I changed my attitude from negative to positive ‘I can also do it”. Turning setbacks into triumphs. From this I learnt that it is only you choose how to respond to what life throws at you. I love reading this line “The way we see the problem is the problem”, Covey writes.
We must allow ourselves to undergo paradigm shifts- to change ourselves and just not alter our attitude and behavior. Also during the class reading about the various centers in the book, I realised that, I am not principled centered I always end up doing things that either please me or others. But now, I have started working upon this. Also most of the time I tend to complete everything on my desk at the sake of my health and family. I realized that I don’t need to unnecessarily overstretch myself. I realized that it is vital to keep ourselves energetic and renewed if we want to improve our ability. I started eating healthy food and taking meals at appropriate time. I have also started focusing on the important tasks, even though they seem less urgent. Planning of the tasks in advance so that it never becomes urgent. It was a wonderful time. Thanks FS for conducting a series of wonderful classes and I am thankful to my facilitators, Bhumika Manglani and Nisha Jain for enlightening me.