Category: #trust30

#trust30, Family, Myself

Small Details

Sanjay Sabarwal
Image representing hulu as depicted in CrunchBase
Image via CrunchBase

It’s the small details in life that make up so much of our lives. I saw that yesterday when I finally got my Hulu Plus subscription. Netflix had spoiled us with 8 seasons of Greys Anatomy that we rammed through in 6 week, but put us on edge when we realized that we were missing the current season. I had my great friend Sandeep Kumar gamely burn me a DVD but for some reason it didn’t work. Then one of my cousins recommended Roku and another Hulu Plus, and it suddenly dawned on me that somewhere along the lines, I had fallen behind. I no longer kept up on the current news or the latest TV shows, or for that matter anything remotely entertainment related. Somewhere, I lost the desire to buy the latest technology or watch the hottest show, and although I thought I was better for it. I lost a bit of myself.  Small details that chipped away at me where suddenly now I am flipping through channel with no idea on what to watch.

Yet, I have always had help around me. I just don’t ask for it very often. Or at all.  Small details that I consistently fail to notice. My big-hearted cousin helped set up my Apple TV which has grown dust on it since I bought it last year ( I still love my old Apple TV, that thing is a beast!), and suddenly we have a whole new world open up to us, and it hits me that I always seem to fail to call the ones who have never hesitated to help me.  It never even occurred to them to expect a thank you from me, and that made me realize that I have allowed too many small details to pass me by.

I have never been alone, yet I constantly choose to fight some battles alone.  It’s not about TV or HULU or for that matter entertainment, it’s the idea that I am surrounded by loved ones who reach out in a second, and yet I still hesitate to ask for help.  I just wanted to say thank you.  Small details …

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Number 1 Passion: A Blog Post

Sanjay Sabarwal
Image representing iPad as depicted in CrunchBase
Image via CrunchBase

Number 1 Passion by Eric Handler
What is your #1 passion in life?  Now, imagine what would happen if you incorporated that passion into your life daily.  Write down your passion and keep it close to you.  Remind yourself of it daily, just like brushing your teeth.

(Author: Eric Handler)

Reading has been my passion all my life and lately I have begun to incorporate it into my daily life by either going to bed reading or taking a day or two to make significant progress into a book.  I am still split on whether I prefer the Kindle or the Ipad by my ideal still is a real book.  Something quite satisfying about turning a page, feeling the heft of the book lighten as you make deep in-roads into its story and get stamped with new ideas and thoughts (can’t help remembering some of the passages from Freedom by Jonathan Frazen) and touched by the emotions and characteristics of novel protagonists.

Besides my literary passion, my other passion is trying new things and that has transformed very well at my work as I have managed to make mundane tasks more interesting or come at them differently.  However, I am constantly stalled by my own insecurity and need to please others and I swallow my ideas, ballooning up with regret, festering inside with an urgent need to vomit out all the negativity.  However, I am getting better and I see now that I do not have to react to every situation with emotion especially hurt and anger.  I have learned to quiet down my emotional turmoil and hear what the other person is saying and see it from their perspective.  Even if I do not agree, I see that people relax once they feel heard.  It is a great feeling to make things happen when there is calm in important parts of my life.

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My Future: A Blog Post

Sanjay Sabarwal

Invent the Future by Cindy Gallop
A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

My favorite quote of all time is Alan Kay: ‘In order to predict the future, you have to invent it.’ I am all about inventing the future. Decide what you want the future to be and make it happen. Because you can. Write about your future now.

I sit here, mind blank, full of the past, not much of the present and none for the future.  Those are my initial thoughts until I realize that I am present, I am here, and I change my present and future if I choose to.  For the first time in my life, I ran 3 miles.  To some, it may not mean much but for someone who like who was convinced that he could never run more than a mile, I saw a future of me running a marathon, getting new running shoes, perhaps a treadmill in the garage, full of future thoughts because I dared to do something in the present.  It is now that I realize that my future is right here, right now, these words because they are the reason I keep wanting to write more, express more, get better than just whining.  My future is my wife (who I am still getting to know) and what we will do together (perhaps travel, perhaps have children, or perhaps just spend more time loving each other, friends and family.  What is the future but the possibility of the present?  What I do today, right now will make my future, I see that now.  Each day I work, work out, write, love her as well as family gets me closer to the life I have always wanted.

#30trust, #trust30, Writing

Fear: A Blog Post

Sanjay Sabarwal
Cover of "Fear of Writing"
Cover of Fear of Writing

Fear by Lachlan Cotter
These are the voices which we hear in solitude, but they grow faint and inaudible as we enter into the world. Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Is fear holding you back from living your fullest life and being truly self expressed? Put yourself in the shoes of the you who’s already lived your dream and write out the answers to the following:

Is the insecurity you’re defending worth the dream you’ll never realize? or the love you’ll never venture? or the joy you’ll never feel?

Will the blunder matter in 10 years? Or 10 weeks? Or 10 days? Or 10 minutes?

Can you be happy being anything less than who you really are?

Now Do. The Thing. You Fear.

I knew it would be difficult to take on the 30 challenge more so than anything  else because it would require me to face my fear of writing regularly and perhaps on some sort of schedule.  The stories sit inside me cobwebbed, yet I feel great anxiety when I start to dust off the past to write about it mainly because I have not dealt with the emotional consequence as well as having a turbulent present.  So where do I begin? That’s the question I am stuck or similarly whenever people ask what I want to write about, I say Ziba but to be quite honest, I do not if that’s the first story I want to tell.

As I witnessed a good friends wedding from UCLA, and being around other UCLA friends, I realized how much I miss that perfect time when all that mattered was scholarship and friendship.  It was a perfect time when writing came to be easy and words just appeared when I sat in front of the campus desktop computer.  Yet more than anything else, I was not alone.  I remember spending nights on my friend’s couch when I had no money for dorm housing, and benefiting greatly from the generosity of true friends who I see now 15 years later, and it is as if nothing has changed.  We all have spouses now, and we are older but just for that one night, we felt like we were 21 again, laughing and giggling about the dumb things we did at UCLA.

Yes the insecurity returns when the 39-year-old me sits here and wonder what to write about and it hits me that more than anything else, I am fighting about my own story.  I do not who I am anymore.  Years ago, I had a defined personality and name away from Ziba Beauty but now I am just a co-owner and while the opportunities are endless, there is a sense of betrayal to my sense of what I should be doing: which is writing.  So more than anything else, as I sit in this hotel room in New York, I am determined now to keep writing regularly and hopefully have something published next year.

Divine Idea by Fabian Kruse
Imitation is Suicide. Insist on yourself; never imitate. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Write down in which areas of your life you have to overcome these suicidal tendencies of imitation, and how you can transform them into a newborn you – one that doesn’t hide its uniqueness, but thrives on it. There is a “divine idea which each of us represents” – which is yours?

Currently, I have a tendency of copying and pasting my own old writings and not really creating anything new so I need to stop “killing” myself and just sit down and write.

 

 

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Afraid to Do/Personal Message

Sanjay Sabarwal

In the midst of a humid and hot as hell New York, I stayed away from the laptop just taking in the alone time with her and some old family.  So far, it has to led to mixed results as we have become rusty at truly being alone together.  The constant calls and texts from others do not help sometimes only because we have become new at being with each other. Sad truth is, we are struggling more so because there are some old habits we have that are hard to break, and are creating constant friction.  Anyways, that is my long winded way of saying sorry, I didn’t get to the prompts for these reasons/

Trust30-Day 9-Afraid to Do

Afraid to Do by Mary Jaksch

The other terror that scares us from self-trust is our consistency; a reverence for our past act or word, because the eyes of others have no other data for computing our orbit than our past acts, and we are loath to disappoint them. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Emerson says: “Always do what you are afraid to do.” What is ‘too scary’ to write about? Try doing it now.

Writing for me has always been personal but recent comments by others in my family and others close to me have now made me scared to put down anything “real” or “off the cuff” for fear of offending them as well as coming off as harsh.  I feel as if I can no longer vent bout the issues that are affect my due to friends and family.   Unfortunately, I am in a position that I cannot blog about it but I did manage to find another outlet which is to write a blank document, rant and rave and then deleting so I don’t have the stress that I will offend someone. 

Your Personal Message by Eric Handler
To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men, that is genius. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

What is burning deep inside of you? If you could spread your personal message RIGHT NOW to 1 million people, what would you say?

My message would be a copy and paste of Pema Chodron.  To let things be, let emotion flow around you and don’t waste time on things that do not matter, spend time on the ones that make you matter. 

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Come Alive

Sanjay Sabarwal

Come Alive by Jonathan Mead
Life wastes itself while we are preparing to live. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

If you had one week left to live, would you still be doing what you’re doing now? In what areas of your life are you preparing to live? Take them off your To Do list and add them to a To Stop list. Resolve to only do what makes you come alive.

Bonus: How can your goals improve the present and not keep you in a perpetual “always something better” spiral?

(Author: Jonathan Mead)

I am in the rare position in life where I can say that I would still be doing what I am doing now if I had a week to live with the exception of a few things I wish I was doing more (traveling more, reading more, trying out new activities such as camping), and I realize that I love where I work, I have the partner I love but, (isn’t there always one but?) I am missing some part of my old self, and that’s who I was when I ran Ziba Music with my father and the fact that I was always open to new experiences.  I see now that I want to reconnect with old friends more, old activities even more and limit some of the new people I hang around with only to do things I truly love with my partner.  I would say that I am at 75% in terms of not changing my week but would like at least 2 days to be spent with old friends, doing an event and perhaps traveling. My current goals are getting me to that ideal 100% as just this weekend, I reconnected with some dear friends of mine, spent quality time with her and my family and finally got to do a BBQ at a place (for me, it was the ideal weekend).  Now just gotta make sure I have more weekends like this!

 

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