my third online workshop

After the first in person workshop I held, I took the data I gathered and applied a reconstruction to the design of the following online workshop.

I was fortunate enough to receive four participants, none of whom had any idea of the question that I was researching.

Since the participants in my in-person workshop mentioned that the order of the activities could have been adjusted, I decided to start the workshop with vision curation, and introduced the design of the bully in the second activity. For the final activity, I ended the workshop with positive affirmations.

This layout proved to provide a much more engaged and responsive workshop overall. The feedback I received from my participants was critical and allowed me to understand that the redesign proved greater significance, with one participant mentioning that she will continue working on the activities after the workshop had ended.

I was able to observe that my participants engagement died down during the second activity (designing your own bully) where I had given them 25 minutes to prepare their design. Going forward, I will reduce this to 15 minutes because my goal for them is not to have too much time to think about it, but rather allow themselves to express whatever is coming up in those 15 minutes - almost like a flow state manner.

Below, I have provided some feedback from the participants.

Participant One

“thank you so much Pranav for having me join your workshop. I was literally positively in the most positive way surprised kind of what Mia was saying and how in the kind of direction that it went. I kind of thought we were just gonna learn a little bit about bullying and talk about/meditate on reasons why we bully ourselves. But it definitely went above and beyond what I expected in the best way possible as I was saying like I really like how everything was sequenced like I really like how we started off with a vision board and then we meditate on what we think our personal bully is and then ended on a positive note with the affirmations. One constructive feedback I would offer is I do think that the middle section with imagining our own bullies was slightly long. I honestly think that could be cut to 15 to 20 minutes because I was finding myself kind of twiddling my thumbs a little bit towards the middle and wandering a little bit I do think 25 minutes for a single exercise is slightly long. You honestly could maybe take five minutes and add that to the vision board and then another couple minutes to add to the positive affirmations I think that could maybe balance things out a little more. other than that light thing with timing I mean I had a wonderful time in the workshop. I feel like I’m starting my day off right and I’m definitely a little bit more cognizant and aware of the fact that our inner critic doesn’t really come from us it comes from outward experiences, dialogues, and things that we’ve seen or heard/things in the media. I Really like Pranav that you made that point that you really have to separate your thoughts with facts because not all thoughts are facts and I really really liked that and it was a very moving exercise”

Participant Two

“I think the incorporation of the IFS system is critical in this project and should continue to be explored. (I think it's important to keep what you put for the manifestations the same, simple things in ur day, the material, and emotional/interpersonal).”

Participant Three

“I thought this workshop was really great. Not to just reiterate what I said at the end, but I think the order in which this was presented was really smart. We got to lay out our dreams and aspirations, break down the beliefs that have been internalized that might be stopping us from achieving them, and then directly after, step out of that mindset and write out things about ourselves that we know and love and appreciate. This was really nice because I found myself writing things I love about myself that are in direct opposition to what my inner bully tells me, and while I’m not all the way there yet, I haven’t completely unlearned all of the internalized beliefs/bullying, it gave me the tools to recognize maybe where I need to do some affirmation/manifestation work on some areas that are still negatively affected by the inner critic. And also, made me realize that in some areas my inner critic speaks up, I have the tools and affirmations to actually refute some of those beliefs which in the moment is really hard to do mentally, but now that I’ve written them down, they hold much more power and can lend as a grounding point. I loved the bully visualization portion, because it really made me personalize where these beliefs about myself are coming from and the end realization was that none of these thoughts are my own, they are things I have been told that I have just internalized. So being able to visualize my internal critic as a separate entity outside of myself gives it a LOT less power and also helps me understand where some of these beliefs might stem from. I’m going to write some more affirmations because I think we ran out of time (mostly my fault because I was late) but I think definitely suggest to people that they spend a few more minutes after the workshop building that list out because I do think it’s a toolbox to keep in your back pocket— and in moments of doubt I don’t have to do the mental work to ground myself if I can’t. I have something to guide me and keep me centered as is. Will definitely be transferring this list to my phone’s notes app!!”

Overall, this workshop went better than I had planned. I am surprised that a simple redesign can provide great impact on the end results. I am currently in the process of understanding ways I can take this foundation and apply a more tangible and creative output for the final intervention itself.

More thoughts to be continuted….