Tag: Shopping

Diet

The Human Yo Yo

Sanjay Sabarwal
4HourBody
4HourBody (Photo credit: MsLynnLewis)

So this week I began the 4 hour body diet. The previous week I did the Culver City Steps and the week before that I signed up for the Turkey trot in which I asked others to join. There weren’t any takers, but as soon I mentioned the 4 hour body diet, I heard a few snarky comments such as “aren’t you doing enough already?” to which my immediate response was no. The last few years, I have  been a yo yo between being in the best shape of my life to well…being not so good. I could use my subdural hematoma and brain surgery as an excuse for why I have gained weight, but truth be told, I had completely given up being good at eating and working out. It all seemed so pointless if all I did was get into shape, and then blow back up. I am luckier than most that I do shed pounds fast, yet with each yo-yo, I see that it is getting harder. The things that I could get away with, I no longer can. I either have to stick to a diet and workout regiment or not.

I also know I am my harshest judge, and people who have not seen me in months invariably will comment on weight loss, but I know I was at my dream goal of 190 pounds at the beginning of the year. I am currently 215, and it just weighs me down. I want to just say fuck it and eat to my heart’s content, but it’s really more than just being heavy, I want to be healthy. I want to be the best in-shape 41-year-old around. It really comes down to me and how I see myself.  Until the person I see when I close eyes is not in front of the mirror, I am will keep pushing myself even if it makes me a human yo-yo.

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Brownness

Running From Dreams

Sanjay Sabarwal
Eye of the Tiger
Eye of the Tiger (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

6:47am. A beautiful morning. Nothing is chirping, but it feels like it should be. A small chill is already being defeated by the rising sun. I walk out past my gate. I bend forward to stretch the slow ache from yesterday’s workout to no effect. I try to stretch my quads. Same thing. I put on my bluetooth headphones, activate my Nike  running app, and start jogging to the beat of “Eye of the Tiger” from Rocky 4 (my all time favorite Rocky movie).  I see my shadow plodding in front of me.

At first, just the fog of sleeping inherits my soul, but slowly the rhythm of my free run shoes on the very hard concrete begin to seep through. I am doing it! I am jogging (albeit quite slowly), and then it hits me how much I hate running. The entire 3 miles as I jogged/trotted/walked, I hated it. I hated it as if  I was being made to eat Kerele which I hate with as much passion as I hate diet coke. Yet, I keep going. It reminds of my dreams and the things I want to achieve.

Some days it seems so utterly futile to run, pray, walk the dog, practice spanish, journal and do some brain games.  All before I head to work where I figure out how to get us not get sued by the many thousands of reasons small companies get sued in California. I giggle each time I go to an HR seminar because invariably, it will be brought up the New York and California are the most litigious states in the country in terms of wage and hour issues. So I go to my studios, grateful that I still have studios to go to, but it’s never far from me. Is this my dream? Is all that I am trying to do part of a larger plan for me to become what I was born to be?  Over and over. I see my shadow in front of me. I keep running, keep moving forward, wondering if I am running away from my dreams…

7:23am. Back home. Time to walk the dog.  Then pray. then write. No Spanish for me today. Gotta get to work!

 

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Myself

Transitions

Sanjay Sabarwal

Today, my niece turned 18.  She is the second to do so.  I also have a 21-year-old niece.  There is nothing like seeing others grow up to realize that you no longer can pretend to be young.  It’s really quite amazing to see someone grow up into an adult right in front of your eyes.  It’s also a surreal week as last week I witnessed the burial of a dear friends father.  Life. Death. Growth. That’s what we are surrounded by, yet we constantly get caught up in the mundane. We do not realize how lucky we are to have the ones we have in our lives.  We ignore that we are all beautiful souls who are just here temporarily and perhaps instead of really enjoying each others presence, we let the worry of money, work and conflict drive each day.

I realize that I am being preachy so perhaps I need to switch from We to I.  This is my daily journey. Each morning, I have been waking up and really trying to spend some time with myself. It’s as if I have become a stranger to myself. So many random thoughts swirling around, and I see that a majority of them are negative.  I see that I am creating so much negative energy, and so now I try to refocus. It has led me to know how lucky I am to have met my friend’s father one last time before he passed.  To be touched by the earth in my hands as I bid him farewell on his new journey, and to be blessed to have known him and his daughter.  I also could not be more proud of my friend’s husband, a new father and a relatively new son-in-law, who took care of the family as his own. It was truly inspiring to see him be there for them.

I am surrounded by love, pain, grief, anger, but most importantly inspiration. If I could just allow myself to see life as what it really is, I would be a better person for it. It is a continuous teacher, lover, and philosopher.  So today as I wish my niece a beautiful birthday, I also wish my dear friend and her family a beautiful day in memory of their luck in having uncle in their lives. I know I feel blessed with the people in my life.

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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Choices

Sanjay Sabarwal
choice and context
choice and context (Photo credit: Will Lion)

I don’t always do the right thing. I realize that we each face moments every single day of our lives where we have a choice to do the right thing.  We could eat better. We could exercise. We could be better friends, lovers, and the list goes on and one. I know those are choices yet somehow as I get older, I find some choices easier to make than others. There are days I just don’t feel like eating or exercising right, but with people its different. I see now that if I choose wrong then there are consequences. When I choose to ignore my friend’s need to be heard, I take a little piece out of our friendship away. When I say a not very nice thing to a family or a partner, I cut into their trust and love for me.

Choices run my world. And I am lately seeing a pattern that I am not liking about myself. I am less friendly. I make unkind remarks off the cuff. I am not the Sanjay that many have known me for many years.  The only explanation I have is that my recent surgery have made me less certain of who I am. Whats the point of eating and exercise if I still had to get brain surgery? What’s the point of being patient when I see other make the silliest mistakes?  How can I stop loved ones from continuing on the wrong path?  Why are some people continually on the path of getting hurt when all they have to do is step back? On and on in my head, I see so much wrong, and I want to fix it all, but I cannot.

I forgot that it is a choice we make when we are around others. We cannot make others do what we want them to do. Intellectually, I know that but emotionally  I have lost patience. I no longer want to let others be, yet that is not something I should be involved in. I try to remind myself of that everyday.  I know I have to choose the right thing, yet more often than not I am struggling to do that. What was an innate part of my personality is something now I have to struggle to do.  I also know that is my personal battle. I cannot control anything or anyone except myself.

I have to choose to be me even though lately that is the hardest thing to be.

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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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