By Volunteer Sneha Pai, FHI Bangalore
Recently, we at Fly Higher India – FHI had the wonderful opportunity of interacting with the awe-inspiring Vaishali Chakravarty, Founder – Joy of Drama. Her approach to life and deftly handling the situations it throws just blew my mind. The positivity she radiated in that brief one hour has inspired me hugely and I definitely plan to adopt some of the precepts shared by her to crack this mega complicated thing called life.
If one wonders, “why life skills?”, like Vaishali says, I think for us to be able to sail through life with utmost joy we must be equipped to handle tough situations better and have a thought-out way to control what we can.
One of my key takeaways from the session would be the creative problem-solving approach to the challenges we are often faced with every day. We certainly tend to overlook a lot of issues probably just to avoid confronting the discomfort they pose. In the longer run, they would only pile up wasting a lot of our valuable time. Acknowledging the problems, labelling it appropriately, and reflecting on it is something we should practice doing. The other takeaway I would stress upon is emphasizing on the importance of social-emotional learning. Gauging other peoples’ perspectives so that we can effectively relate with them, and empathizing with them is extremely necessary to develop a sense of purpose in life.
Lastly and most importantly, life skills are best cultivated at a very early age. And, as volunteers/teachers, the best we could do is drive the younger generation towards situations that will help them cultivate these essential skills. Sports is a great way to explore certain life skills pushing the learner to their limits. Drama is another great option that focuses on the importance of senses, feelings, and expressions.
Summarizing it, I feel, at every stage of life, there is an opportunity for us all to learn a life skill or to put one to use. Keeping a calm and open mind will only make it simpler to achieve that.
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