Dear Curious Souls,
We met at “My House Cafe” for our first brunch together on May 12, 2013. Many showed up at our brunch, although it was also the Mother’s Day. I thank them all for coming to our brunch.
At our gathering, among the three talks I initially proposed, we decided to discussing the talk of Amy Cuddy “Your body language shapes who you are” http://www.ted.com/talks/amy_cuddy_ … ) In order to remember the talk once again, we watched it over with the help of our mobile phones, ipads and a notebook shared between friends. Well, we were indeed quite technological in a brunch 🙂
Our discussion was very interesting. Especially when we shared our personal stories on the matter, it became very entertaining as well :-). While discussing on whether or not, we could really “fake an emotion, to make it”, or better, “to become it” – like Amy Cuddy said, we found ourselves swimming in the waters of psychology, business life, self development and somewhat politics as well :-). Specifically for the latter, we talked about the body languages of politicians like Putin, Erdogan and Andreotti, how they were in the beginning and how they were transformed in time.
It was not possible to discuss this matter, without going into philosopy as well, so we asked ourselves the questions like, whether self awareness of ones own weaknesses could become a disadvantage in this respect or not; or, to what extent we could manipulate emotions; and if emotions could be created then, would it be possible for us to consider them as real or not. At a moment, we started discussing love and arranged marriages and it was funny to observe that our conversation was almost leading us towards acknowledging the merits of arranged marriages :-). So in short, we had quite an enjoyable time together !
Personally, this meeting also gave me insight on how to better organise casual Curious Souls gatherings, in addition to our regular meetings. For example, while noting the plesant sides of getting together at a brunch, I also observed that watching the videos together and carrying a captivating discussion on the subject, simply destroys the pleasure of eating. Personally, I do not recall how was the taste of the food I ate during our discussion :-). So it may be better to get together in places like cafes where the stress would not be on the food but rather on being together for a discussion. If you have any proposals in this respect, I would love and appreciate to get them.
For our next casual gathering, I would also love to have your proposals for TED talks that you would like to discuss. And possibly a venue for it as well! If you would be interested to moderate our discussion on a specific talk, I would even more appreciate 🙂 This way, we can add variety not only to the talks we discuss but also to our method as well.
So I hope to see you all soon in another Curious Souls event and in the meantime, I wish you the best of all.
With my kindest regards.
Isil the Curious Soul 🙂
Curious Souls Get Together 
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