Flying Elephants – Part 1

Hope all of you enjoyed your long weekend. I had a completely different experience this weekend, I spent all the 3 days with 35 energetic little friends. Yes, I got an opportunity to be the coach in a Teenagers workshop called “Flying Elephants” conducted by MindFresh (www.mindfresh.in). I heard about this workshop from my friend and sent Rohit for this (couple of months back). Rohit liked the workshop and learnt a lot.

2 weeks back, I received a call from Padma (from MindFresh) asking whether I will be interested being a coach in this workshop. I really wanted to be part of this, as I was eager to know how someone can handle 35 teenagers in one place that too for 3 days, when I am finding it extremely difficult to handle one!!

Let me tell you about MindFresh and Flying Elephants. Kirtanya is the CEO of MindFresh who is actively supported by Jaya (her sister) and many more volunteers.  They conduct many workshops, but their signature workshop is “Flying Elephants”. The workshop focuses on the following aspects

• Importance of grabbing Opportunities
• Power of positive thinking
• How Brain works
• Learning skills
• Power of Emotions
• Distractions any teenager would get into
• Time Management

When I saw these topics in their pamphlet, I was 100% confident that it is going to be a boring session for Teenagers, in fact, I felt even I will get bored if I have to attend this. I was little doubtful whether Rohit will even manage to be there for one single day. Last day of the workshop, every single kid including Rohit praised the MindFresh team. They were in-fact sad that the workshop has come to an end.

On the last day, Parents were invited and Kirtanya gave a speech to us for 3 hours. To be honest, I felt it is worth spending 3 hours to learn how a teenagers brain work and how are we (parents) supposed to handle them. She even made us realize few of our mistakes which we have done while handling the wonderful kid we have got.

But one thing which kept haunting me was, how they are making the kids sit and listen to them for 3 days. Do you have the same curiosity to know? Then you have to wait….. J J  In my next blog, I will write about my experience as a coach and tell you how MindFresh is making this workshop an interesting one for the teenagers.