Dinner & Conversation about Mindfulness
By Sharmin Farhana, Digital Nomad
One of my very close friends faced two major challenges back to back — first, he was in a serious car accident and, just a few months later he got stuck in a burning house. He made it through both with survival scars. Somehow, he has always shown a positive attitude and resilience throughout. I’ve had a growing interest in how positive thinking and mindfulness can improve outcomes and have been attending meet-ups related to it and learning all I can. I decided to host a gathering and invite my friend to be the featured guest to share his strategies and mindset with us. I came across DinnerParty so I decided to try it out to help me plan this event … and I am so glad I did.
DinnerParty made it so easy to set up the event. Having my friend be a featured guest made the gathering come off as much more official. Choosing a location was a breeze as well. I consulted the featured guest and we decided to go with Tong in Jackson Heights, NY. It is an authentic Bengali food restaurant at great prices keeping it budget friendly. We both sent out invites to our acquaintances and we got a high acceptance rate in return! The app allows you to send out invites through email and text message — which was so helpful since I had either someones email or their number but never both!
I decided to provide three price points, one at a higher price to let guests show support for our events, another price point that covered the cost for the night and finally a budget price point for those who’d like to join but can’t afford to spend so much. I feel this allowed more people to join us. The guests also had an option to prepay on the invite. I got an email as soon as a guest accepted, advising me of their payment option helping me keep track of who to collect money from. Most of my guests chose to pay after but the featured guest not only prepaid but chose the higher price point to support the cause!
At the dinner, the featured guest honored us with his secrets — Consistent faith and belief that everything happens for a reason. He said that every day he wakes up thanking God for being able to see another day, and then whatever hardships are thrown at him, he views it as something to overcome and a lesson learned.
Many of us realized that we wake up with negative emotions, dreading the day ahead of us, which automatically sets the day up for problems. One of the guests mentioned that he woke up one day feeling miserable and he had a really crappy day that day — he went to his kitchen to grab breakfast but there were no groceries, the shirt he wanted to wear had a hole in it, and everyone was being a pain-in-the-butt at the office. Then he shared how he faced similar situations on a different day, but he woke up to his mother’s phone call which set a positive tone for the day — he didn’t have groceries again, but this time he didn’t think of it as disastrous, instead he went to the Starbucks down the street to grab a sandwich! What a difference one’s mindset can make …
We ended up making a pact that we all will make a conscious effort to start our day on a positive note for 30 days. Then we will meet again and share the impact it made on our lives. Because we all know we’ll have to provide feedback at the end of the month, I feel everyone will make a real effort to include this new habit into their daily routine.
The event was so successful! The server brought over the bill and everyone passed me their portion making the process so simple. The attendees were very impressed with how smoothly the night went. The majority of the guests chose the budget option so I covered the additional costs but it didn’t matter because I have many more events coming up and I have faith more people will continue to show their support… and you can bet DinnerParty has found its righteous place in my event planning arena.
