Brownness

Marc and Angel

Sanjay Sabarwal

Marc and Angel
75 Ways To Stay Unhappy Forever

Posted: 28 Nov 2010 08:29 PM PST

How To Be Unhappy

Dale Carnegie once said, “It isn’t what you have, or who you are, or where you are, or what you are doing that makes you happy or unhappy.  It’s what you think about.”

I don’t think anyone could say it any better than that.  I’ve watched so many friends search tirelessly for happiness by changing jobs, moving to new cities, pursuing intimate relationships, and tweaking all sorts of other external factors in their lives.  And guess what?  They’re still unhappy.  Because they spend all of their time and money adding positive externals to their lives when their internals are still in the negatives.

So with that in mind, here are 75 ways to stay unhappy forever.  Of course, I would highly recommend you read each bullet point and then move swiftly in the opposite direction.

  1. Dwell on things that happened in the past.
  2. Obsess yourself with all the things that might happen in the future.
  3. Complain about problems instead of taking the necessary steps to resolve them.
  4. Fear change and resist it.
  5. Work hard, do your best and then condemn yourself for not achieving perfection.
  6. Belittle yourself.
  7. Hang out with other people who belittle you.
  8. Try to control everything and then worry about the things you can’t control.
  9. Lie to yourself and those around you.
  10. Keep doing the same thing over and over again.
  11. Be lazy and follow the path of least resistance.
  12. Hold onto anger.  Never forgive anyone.
  13. Always be right.  Never let anyone else be more right than you.
  14. Compare yourself unfavorably to those who you feel are more successful.
  15. Let small issues snowball into big problems.
  16. Never learn anything new.
  17. Never take responsibility for your own actions.
  18. Blame everyone around you.
  19. Don’t ask for directions and don’t ask questions.
  20. Don’t let anyone help you.
  21. Quit when the going gets tough.
  22. Be suspicious.  Trust no one.
  23. Get four hours of sleep every night and convince yourself that it’s enough.
  24. Never throw anything way.  Even if you don’t use it, hold onto it.
  25. Say “yes” to everyone.  Fill all your time with commitments.
  26. Try to be everyone’s friend.
  27. Multitask, multitask, multitask!  Do everything at once.
  28. Never spend any time alone.
  29. Don’t help others unless you have to.  Do only the things that benefit you directly.
  30. Hang out with people who complain about everything.
  31. Focus on what you don’t want to happen.
  32. Fear the things you don’t fully understand.
  33. Always seek external validation before you consider yourself good enough.
  34. Take everything and everyone in life seriously.
  35. Spend your life working in a career field you aren’t passionate about.
  36. Focus on the problems.
  37. Think about all the things you don’t have.
  38. Read or watch lots of depressing news from broadcast media.
  39. Set lofty goals for yourself and never do anything to achieve them.
  40. Never exercise.
  41. Only eat junk food and fried food.
  42. Never check-up on your health.
  43. Setup your lifestyle so it revolves around money.
  44. Spend more than you earn and rack up lots of financial debt.
  45. Don’t say what you mean.  Don’t mean what you say.
  46. Frown.
  47. Never tell anyone how you feel or what you’re thinking.
  48. Make sure everything you do impresses someone else.
  49. Always put your own needs on the back burner.
  50. Get involved in other people problems and make them your own.
  51. Make others feel bad about themselves.
  52. Watch TV for several hours every day.
  53. Gamble often.
  54. Stay in the same place.  Don’t travel.
  55. Don’t play, just work.
  56. Let your hobbies go.
  57. Let your close relationships go.
  58. Never finish what you start.
  59. Take everything personally.
  60. Do lots of drugs.  Drink lots of alcohol.
  61. Never say, “I’m sorry.”  Never say, “I love you.”
  62. Don’t work hard at anything.
  63. Always wait until the last minute.
  64. Believe that, no matter what, you are entitled to things.
  65. Let others make decisions for you.
  66. Remember the insults.  Forget the compliments.
  67. Let it all bottle up inside.
  68. Rely on others for everything.
  69. Fail to plan.
  70. Don’t dream.
  71. Don’t think about the future at all.
  72. Always disregard other people’s opinions and suggestions.
  73. Make promises you can’t keep.
  74. Don’t decide on anything, ever.
  75. Just keep going and going and going.  And never ever stop.

And now that you know what not to do, let me tell you a secret about happiness.  Nobody is happy all of the time.  It’s perfectly normal to experience considerable fluctuations in your level of happiness from day to day, month to month, and even year to year.

In fact, according to a recent scientific study, overall levels of happiness decline from one’s teens until one’s 40s and then pick up again until they peak in one’s early 70s.  So the chances are that your happiest days are yet to come.  Hopefully that gives you something to smile about.

Photo by: Helga Weber
Journal, Myself, Preeti

Life Failed: Love/Family Did Not

Sanjay Sabarwal
By Jemal Yarbrough

I am not Sanjay Sabarwal, co-owner of Ziba Beauty.  I am not a lawyer.  I am not a promoter.  I am not a double major from UCLA.  I am not a columnist.  I am not a former volunteer at the Lexington Juvenile detention center in Kentucky.  I am not a past political intern.  NCTE) I am not a stroke victim.  I am not familiar with cancer.

I am not,  I am not, I am not any of these facts.  All my life, even at this moment, I have believed I was destined to be something greater; more significant, a personality. Focusing only on my desires and wants, I forgot how to be.  Spending energy (and credit cards) to showcase a life imagined by many but afforded by few, I drowned my soul painfully.  Surrounded by many gadgets and the must of my dog (her dog), I became empty, a negative, a compilations of could be’s, would be’s, should-be’s, would’ve’s.

So who am I?  Perhaps that’s not as an interesting a question as what I am.  I am part of a love that I did not think possible, that I had heard of and seen in fiction.  After 4 years, her face is still the first image projected onto my thoughts.  Her eyes an amazing greenish-yellow, rivaling those of cats (domestic and otherwise), her temper and stubbornness exasperating but befitting the queen she has the potential to be.

Then there is my family, my energy trough where I go to replenish myself.  I draw my strength from them like a greedy gambler who can’t get enough. I steal their inspiration and good wishes so I can face the cannot’s and will not’s in my life.  I use their love and faith in me to see myself.  It is then I become Sanjay Sabarwal.

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Dreams

Sanjay Sabarwal
Free twitter bar
Image via Wikipedia/ twitter.com/zibasanjay

The images of talking to Preeti’s dad evoked my dread of the long-awaited conversation of what next?  Flash of Gurjit crying reminded me of Tejpal’s as well as the death of the normalcy of my life and of the challenges ahead.  Still I dived in these murky as my heartbeat slowed, well aware that the heat of the blankets told of an intense and long sleep.  The room become brighter as if to mark my awareness.  No longer did I want to ignore the idea that I was awake, instead I fished for more.

I marveled that I only had one drink yesterday yet told everyone I had two.  Why?  I wondered.  What was it about being in certain crowds that made you want to be an overachiever in an activity designed to kill brain cells? What was it about social discomfort that made me want to grasp to the one liquid that could return me back to feeling like everything was ok temporarily. How was it different from my dreams?

Then it hit me.  While I thought about last night, the dreams had made their escape.  It was as if I had been purposefully distracted so they could go to their secret hiding place. My breathing slowed, the blankets cooled, I reached for my phone to get my daily Twitter and Words with Friends fix  and the dreams went further away and suddenly the urge to write feels silly and trite.  I am left holding simplistic words and thoughts rather than the deep implications my dreams carried.  Conned, once again by my mind, I reluctantly came to my page and had nothing to offer except the memory of my dreams gone.

I closed my eyes, and nothing came save for the feeling of betrayal I caused myself.

 

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Quote of the day!

Sanjay Sabarwal

Sent from my iPhone

Begin forwarded message:

From: “Sangita Poudel” <sangita@zibabeauty.com>
Date: November 24, 2010 8:57:48 AM PST
To: “TeamZibaBeauty” <TeamZibaBeauty@zibabeauty.com>
Subject: Quote of the day!

Food for Thought!

“All that we are – is the result of what we have thought…….. If a man speaks or acts with an evil thought, pain follows him……

If a man speaks or acts with a pure thought, happiness follows him, like a shadow that never leaves him”.

                                                                                                      “The Secret”

Thank You!

Sangita Poudel

ZIBA Beauty

562-402-5131 Ext.242

 

 

“Our mission is to become the respected expert and global leader in the Art of Threading® and the Art of Mehndi®”.

Brownness

Waheguru/Music

Sanjay Sabarwal
Symbol of Sikhism, white and golden version.
Image via Wikipedia

Sitting in the car, the religious text started without me.  Let me rephrase, it started playing the 540 years or old words but I was lost in the marvel that I actually was hearinng music of my choice after almost 2 years in my car. 

A brief shake of the head, and I began to focus on the language I didn’t understand (and perhaps never would).  For a brief moment, I wondered who wa s I kidding myself but the singular string in the background of the track somehow resonated, and I caught myself trying to speak the words along side.  There weren’t many I could repeat but I used an immediate substitute: Waheguru. 

At first, I felt foolish, fake and forgetful.  But I continued replacing my ignorance with what I knew.  In that moment, I was one with Him.

My Old lover came back.  I betrayed her without a though, used her until I was satisfied, raped her of all meaning, but now I needed her help.  I sat in the car with just her repeated one word: Waheguru.  The music changed through the tracks but the word stayed the same. Wah Guru (wow, God).  That’s it.  He had come in Her shape from my past.  Music was my true love and passion and I had disrobed and discarded her useless a long time ago or so I thought.  Now She came to fill my soul up to the brim.  Nothing else entered, a first in over 2 decades.  Just me and the Word in the car, speeding along over 80 miles an hour, devouring the pavement the same way I used to the thousands of songs in my library. 

Waheguru.  In the noise surrounding my world, but in the quiet of the car, only one word was my companion, one my word my lover, one word my savior. 

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Life Goals

Sanjay Sabarwal
A white Lamborghini Concept S in the Lamborghi...
Image via Wikipedia
The Lone Soldier by Jemal Y

There I stand stoically ready to face the  world,mute but  capable, deaf but open to the world.  Many of my dreams sacrificed to the dullness of meaningless days.   Future goals set aside for empty gratification, my life resembled nothing like I  imagined it would.  No longer.

Yesterday, I ran across an old document titled 101 Life Goals.  Curious, I opened it up and it was something I had written EXACTLY one year ago.  I wont bore you with all 101 but the top ten were:

1)     Publish a Memoir

2)     Get Married (for the last time!)

3)     Get an MBA

4)     Have Kids (2-3)

5)     Become an accomplished General Counsel

6)     Get a Lamborghini

7)     Publish Fiction

8)     Have a great library

9)     Become a Gourmet Chef

10) Travel the World

The 2 that stood out to me right away (besides the Lamborghini) were about publishing fiction and my memoir.  I am proud to say that I have started those 2 life goals, and for once I had written something that wouldn’t just be a mute witness to my aimless wandering.  No longer would my passion be a lone soldier in the battlefield of dreams.  I was finally on a mission that made sense and made me feel that for once I wasnt a slave to words that just burst out of me for no reason, but the master of my life. 

That wasnt the only thing to celebrate, I was also closer to other goals as well (including marriage, the library, and the kids) yet it was telling that I had done nothing to become a gourmet chef.  I love to cook but I hardly ever do it anymore, and the tons of dust-covered books in my kitchen are telling me that perhaps that’s a goal I will get to when I get to the ones I really want to achieve. 

I had also changed on life goal, from becoming a MBA to doing my MFA (Masters in Fine Arts) with an emphasis on creative writing.  Nothing like reading something from your past to know that for once your on track. 

No longer a lone soldier but a fighter for the things that matter most.

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