Happy Minds.

Event: The Happiness Therapy

Conducted By: HappyMinds (visit website)

Venue: Science Center Auditorium

Guest Blogger: Shweta Merchant Gandhi

Photo Courtesy: HappyMinds

We at HappyMinds look at the organization as an empowerment institution, on a spree to infect the nation with happiness! And are just overwhelmed by the response we received for our very first "The Happiness Therapy" session this last Sunday which is a small step in this endeavor of ours.

The Happiness Therapy session aimed to answer a few simple but really relevant questions from our day to day lives... questions like - Do i need a direction in my life? Do i need to be more positive and confident? How do i be awesomer? I need to practice gratitude and life anger free/complain free life... but how? This fun session was aimed at teaching ways to positive thinking, rediscovering self and making best possible use of one's life.

The session is aimed at making people aware of the simple fact that they are the CHIEF HAPPINESS OFFICER of their lives! And no one else should be assigned that much power over YOUR life!

The session was also full of small snippets of wisdom such as - "Change The Script" which essentially tell you that the Mind Is A Great Story Teller. And it loves telling stories. All day, everyday, it tells you stories about who you’re, what you’re like, what you should be doing with your life, what other people think of you, what’s wrong with the world, what will happen in the future, what went wrong in the past & so on. Unfortunately a lot of these stories are negative. Change the script! Change the quality of these stories – make it positive, powerful & pure!

We were thrilled that we had a jam packed auditorium. And we could i hope make a small impact in their lives through this session. In the end i want to leave the readers of this blog with what we call 10 HAPPINESS FACTS. Do tell me if you think of them... here they go -

1. Only 10 percent of your happiness comes from external circumstances.

2. Your outlook on life, and what you choose to do with your life accounts for 40 percent of your happiness levels. This includes your friendships, work, and participation in your community.

3. A mere 20 minutes of exercise, three days each week will increase your happiness by 10 to 20 percent after six months.

4. The happier you are, the more antibodies your body generates – up to 50 percent more, in fact.

5. Happy people generally earn more than unhappy people.

6. Dancing increases happiness.

7. Money buys happiness. Those who can afford to have their basic material needs taken care of are happier than those who cannot, however…

8. Money does not buy happiness. After having your basic material needs met, additional money does not have any impact on your levels of happiness.

9. People in relationships are usually happier than people who are single, however…

10. Happier people are more likely to retain relationships.

PS. - If you attended the session do post your feedback as a comment to this blog. I would love to hear from you of what you think about the session. Do let us know your take away from the session.

Shweta.

Talks About Design!

Event: Talks About Design 

Conducted By: Rohan Nanavati, Kunal Lapsiwala, Rajarshi Smart

Venue: VNSGU - Fine Arts Department

Covered By/Blogger: Hetvi Choksi

Photo Courtesy: Kaushal Thakkar

And, they talked about Design!

Surat’s art and design fraternity witnessed it's first ever, session on Design and Typography by the design honchos of the city, – Rohan Nanavati  (Roar Studios) and Kunal Lapsiwala, Supported by Rajarshi Smart  (Department head - Fine Arts - VNSGU ). We were quite astonished looking at the diverse audience, that consisted of the Fine Arts Students of VNSGU, to the Event Managers, the Photographers, the Website/App creators to also the housewife segment of the city! Considering the tile "The story of Design and Typography”, we had expected this to be some sought of a factual class, but it came out to be a fun group discussion session :) 

“Guys this is my first ever try at such a session, I have been planning to conduct such a lecture ,or a workshop, on design, since a long time. Hope you’ll will like it.", said Rohan, the man behind Roar Studios... Well, Rohan we suggest you should not only plan, but implement your noble plans for the betterment of Surtis ;) His Session “The History of Graphic Design" brought focus on the history and evolution of graphic design amongst various eras of art like Art Noveau, Dadaism, Pop art etc. It covered the evolution of hand paintings to the current era’s digital art and printing techniques. Not sure about the designers, and the performing students, but this was too much of cognizance for “non- design background people" like me. The examples and the logos were aptly earmarked and made it quite interesting.

The second session was “The Typographic Effect” by Kunal. This was all the more fun as Typography, is something that all of us encounter in our day today life , and everyone present there could relate to it. He told us about how the fonts evolved , from the black letter, to the roman letter, to the Serif and the San Serif, Script etc. He brought emphasize on the fonts and how each brand used the fonts in different ages and how a font is important for a particular brand, considering its brand image. The best part about this session was the video by "Ben Barrett-Forrest”, that was played and the “Identify the font type” game!

All we have to Say is “Three cheers" for Rohan, Kunal and Rajarshi. Looking forward to more such meets in the future.

P.S. : Fine Arts department -VNSGU , will be organizing art meets on every Wednesday and Art movies’ showcase on Thurdays, Kindly contact the PA-department if you are interested