Category: Myself

Myself

Irritation

Sanjay Sabarwal
aura 2007 08 23
aura 2007 08 23 (Photo credit: kairin)

Recently, I have  changed my schedule to include 30 minutes of a show called “The Healer Within” by BK Shivani and Suresh Oberoi. Each morning, I write for 45 minutes and then watch the show which ends with a mini meditation. I found out that much of what the show says resonates with me. I am the creator of all my thoughts, feelings and actions.  With each thought and feeling, I have a decision to make which creates my action. Too often, I let anger and irritation override my natural inclination to be thoughtful, loving and caring. It wasn’t always this way, but I have allowed anger to change who I used to be.

Yesterday, I saw two very different sides of myself. My religious cousin who I mercilessly tease told me that I am one of the few people he sees as someone who can merge with God which is what all souls desire yet entry only comes with the right ticket. I had the makings but not the right markings.  That idea stuck with me the rest of the day.  Later on, my wife sweetly asked if I minded going to see Man of Steel with someone else. I had a choice not to react, but I did.  I even felt it. I heard her say it to me gently, yet I reacted badly.  I apologized yet the damage of hurting her over something silly had been done.  I now see that I will have many more moments like this but what is different is that I see myself as the creator of those thoughts.  I see now that Anger is just an emotion, that I don’t need to give into it.  I also see and know that I will fail but healer within teaches me that I have a chance at each moment to take a different decision.

I have a long road ahead of me, yet I am excited to know that I no longer feel helpless. I am daunted with how much work I have to do but after a long time I also feel a sense of purpose that had been lacking in my life for a long time.

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Family, Myself

Graduation

Sanjay Sabarwal
English: Class of '08
English: Class of ’08 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

Yesterday, I went to my niece‘s high school graduation. Just writing those words makes me feel old. The entire family went, and boy were we noticed when we screamed at hearing her name.  I have always loved the good-natured competitiveness that takes over families as they try to be the loudest, but I have to admit with our numbers, it was no competition. We were the loudest, and as I screamed I couldn’t but help remember at all the graduations my poor family had to attend because of me. High School. UCLA. Southwestern Law School.  Each time they went with the same amount of enthusiasm and numbers. It was as if my graduations were part of theirs. I realize now that graduations are a recognition of the family’s contributions. Sure. my niece and I put in the hard work, but really it was because of the energy and love given to us by our families.

 

My beautiful niece face swelled with happiness when she heard us, and in that moment I knew that we were all celebrating her achievement as well as ours.  Sounds a bit selfish perhaps, but there are moments in life when you know what you are doing is not just for you but for the people in your lives.  I also couldn’t help picturing my niece in diapers, and as old as I felt, I was just so utterly proud of her accomplishment that it didn’t matter that I had aged. It just felt right that I got to be there.  Sometimes that’s all that matters.  Being there to see the special moments that you will remember forever. Happy graduation, honey. I love you!

 

Brownness, Myself, Sumita, Writing

Memorial Happiness

Sanjay Sabarwal

The link provided below came to me via  Sumita and I had just finished reading the book When God Wink’s by Squire Rushnell (http://www.whengodwinks.com/faqs/) which says that there is no such thing as coincidence.  Coincidences are God’s ways of moving us along to our paths.  The video talks about happiness, and that it’s not about material things or doing a journey for being happy. The journey can be happiness. We have to let go of what we want of others to be happy, and we have to stop thinking that we have to reach happiness when we can choose to be happy.  It’s not easy, but as soon as you can let go of what you expect from others, you can be happier. It struck me that lately my life has involved a lot of coincidences. I have actually used my legal knowledge more in the past 2 months than my entire life. I am being asked to do more, and I realize that is something I have been asking for years. I put it into the universe, and now it has been answered.I realize now as I open myself up more and more to the Universe that I am finding answers. I have been struggling to write for a while but just found out I am getting my certificate from UCLA Extension for Creative Non Fiction. Coincidence?

I began helping a dear friend of mine, and already I am getting more in return than he is. Helping others is helping yourself is what I am learning.   He has been struggling, and at first I thought he just needed financial help, but it was really more than that. We have reconnected in our old ways, and suddenly I see myself being an attorney. and it hits me maybe that was the plan all along. Maybe it was not a coincidence…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=IM5JHURKBmQ#!

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Myself

Ambition

Sanjay Sabarwal

 

Ambition (Wale album)
Ambition (Wale album) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

Why is ambition in some and not in others?  I hate my ambition sometimes. There are days I wonder why I push myself so hard, and am so anxious that I just want to chuck it all way and go in the safety of just working a 9 to 5 shift. I want to be an employee who just puts the hours, gets the paycheck, and then veg out on the weekends spent in the safety of TV. I envy those who tune out everything, and just sleep the weekends away.  I sometimes hate that I wake up thinking of writing, reading, of promoting events, of new revenue streams, of the 100s of HR and legal tasks at Ziba.  Each day nowadays is spent on a looming TO DO list that I sometimes dread to look at because I am never satisfied with how much I have accomplished. More! More! More!  I constantly feel undereducated, feel like I am missing out new things, falling behind in the world. This nagging feeling of not getting enough done follows me incessantly, and I just to BE sometimes.

 

 

 

I look others around, and I am amazed at the lack of ambition and structure in their lives. Each day just being lived, with no look at the future, no desire to be better, nothing to accomplish except just passing the time. Yes, I do sometimes envy that but I also know that it’s not a life I could really live. I want to more from myself. The standards I have set for myself can only be reached if I work each and every day towards.  If I am not improving myself then I am declining. If I am not reading or writing, I am less educated. If I am not working out. I am less healthy and ultimately less happy.

Everything I desire can only be accomplished if I use each day to cross off things off my to do list. It’s relentless, and quite frankly its exhausting, but I also know I wouldn’t have it any other way. Ambition, you’ve got me by the balls!

 

 

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Myself, Writing

Fraud

Sanjay Sabarwal

I have this need to be read It’s why I have been writing since I was 16, and I often wonder what makes me want to share with others.  What makes me desire to hear the sentence “I read what you wrote” followed by “I liked/loved/laughed/cried/thought about what you wrote.”  I am open to criticism but I am scared of it as well. My biggest fear is not being liked but being ignored. As if I don’t exist. I write because it makes me feel as I exist. It is the only time that I am the uninterrupted. unadulterated me.

All my life. I have fought this nagging feeling of being a fraud, of feeling that I was meant for something different. The reality is that we are all a bunch of choices.  We are where we are either because of our own choices or others in our lives.  The others count only if your under 18 or just not willing or able to make your own choices. As a Punjabi, its easy to point the finger at my parents, but they didn’t force me to write, or go to UCLA or law school. Those were all my decisions so in a way I need to write to think out loud on paper. I have this need to inflict my opinion others. It’s perhaps the only time I feel as if intellectually I matter.

Yet even my writing is haphazard just like my feelings and thoughts. I have been unable to write something original in a long time. It’s as if I am afraid to really put myself out there or maybe just maybe I don’t have it in me. It is that last thought that drives me crazy. If I am not a writer, then what am I?  It’s the only label I have ever really wanted, and its the only that has eluded me now for over 2 decades.  I often the wonder if the feeling I am a fraud is actually who I am.  That perhaps in some way. my desire to be something other than what others think of me is what drives me?

I don’t know, and so I write even though I feel like a fraud.  IMG_1964

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Myself

One More Time

Sanjay Sabarwal
Cover of "Rocky Balboa"
Cover of Rocky Balboa

 

There comes a time when you have to stop for a moment and ask yourself if this is the life you want.  Doesn’t matter when you do it or how often. For me, it’s been daily as I am not satisfied with where I am.  Maybe that feeling will never go away, and you know what , I don’t want it to. It is that feeling that makes me wake to write in the morning, to read a little something, and occasionally exercise. If I don’t make the time to be accountable for my life and where it is going, then I have no one to blame except myself. Do I fail?  All the time.  But like Rocky Balboa in part 5, I say “one more round” after getting knocked to the ground. I worry about the day I don’t do that. Life will keep punching, and if you don’t respond, you will be lying on the ground in despair. You will be knocked out and living life as if unconscious.  So get up! One more round.  That’s my motto. There’s no easy way out. There is no shortcut home. Bump up “No Easy Way Out” From Rocky 4 to get yourself pumped, and just keep punching.

Giving up is not an option! 

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