Tag: Social Sciences

Myself

Emotional Intelligence

Sanjay Sabarwal
Cover of "Emotional Intelligence 2.0"
Cover of Emotional Intelligence 2.0

As someone who is trying to change so much in myself, there are times I do feel overwhelmed. I wake up almost every morning now to do the following: journal, work on original writing, sometimes blog, watch BK Shivani and mini meditation about soul consciousness raising, do Lumosity.com, walk the dog who has been patiently waiting and then right after that work out for precisely 15 minutes, 11-13 minutes running off and on the treadmill and 3-10 minutes using a punching bag.  Finally, shower, Grab a banana or cereal and off I go!. All this before even starting my day at work.  Initially, I was exhausted by 9:30am when I arrived at the office, yet now I feel it normal, full in a way that I have not felt in ages.

I try to use BK Shivani’s message that I am the creator of my thoughts, feelings and actions. I am in charge of my emotions, and I create almost 50-60,000 thoughts in my head in a single day. The question is not about quantity but quality. Positive and soul consciousness raising thoughts give energy while negative, necessary and idle thoughts deplete you.  I’d like to add that negative emotions do the same.  At the same time while I listen to “Healer Within” I remember the book Emotional Intelligence 2.0 which tells me to use active listening to hear the other person. I am trying on so many levels to be the person I want to be. I have made it my mission to be a better person because ultimately, I want to enjoy meaningful relationship with others but most importantly with myself.

It’s a hard path because I constantly fail at active listening which involves me really hearing the other person and asking questions. Instead. I get hurt and become self-defensive which in turn creates more hurt and pain which leads to more negative emotions.   I am starting to see that I am truly at the beginning of my journey of being in charge of myself. Wish me luck!

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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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Myself

Mistakes

Sanjay Sabarwal
Candles
Candles (Photo credit: magnuscanis)

 

I hate when I have to learn from repetitive mistakes.  It seems pointless, even hateful that I continue to make mistakes that seem so clear AFTER the fact.  Yet, that is how we get better, grow and perhaps at some point stop making those mistakes. I never thought I would stop making mistakes, but I did expect that I would get better.   Well, so much for that notion.  It’s not even the continual mistake that I am sorry about, but the fact that I let someone down who expects me to rise above being my usual self. I am too caught up in my pain to see theirs.  Too self-involved.  Too hurt.  Too deep in my self-pity. Too everything as long it involves just me, me, me!

 

Yet, all those are rationalizations. They are nothing more than excuses after the fact.  I am at a loss as to how make the person feel better, and that could lead to even more mistakes.  I thought I was better than that.  That I could learn at any age, and be a better person.  I know I can, yet I also have to deal with the aftermath of my carelessness.  It wasn’t meant to be spiteful but leaving someone alone in their time of need can feel that way to the person.  I was recently told to become more aware of what I say and I do, ad I have to say I still have a long way to go.  I am still too often on auto-pilot, and saying and doing things that are completely unnecessary and hurtful.

 

At this points, words are the assurance I feel I can offer someone, yet even I know that is not enough.  It is time for action. Sometimes being and acting sorry are not even close to being enough.  Sometimes you have to be an adult!

 

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Myself

Acknowledgement

Sanjay Sabarwal
by Jemal Yarbrough

Warning! Whining dead ahead, please delete page before the debris of self-loathing, regret, and petty annoyances ruin your day and eyesight!!

Lately, I don’t know if I even know myself.  Small things I used to ignore or not even let me enter my consciousness now grind away loudly in my head, and I feel as if some are there just to purposefully make our lives more miserable.  I keep trying to forgive, to ignore to live day by day yet I feel so full of emotion that I manage to puke up small hissy fits or too sharp retorts to people who just happen to be in my eyesight..

Between her bouts of nausea, pill giving, constant asking if she’s ok, I have lost sense of who I am and what makes me tick.  Gone is the schedule to write, to read, to sustain myself, and I realize I need to get back to basics as I completely alienate myself from everyone.  I seem to have just become reactive and living emotion to emotion, and that doesn’t quite make me a pleasant person to be around especially if you are her best friend or my new brother-in-law.

Yet there is more to this than me being just self-pitying  In all of this, is the cry of my love language: acknowledgement.  I come from a family where we are quick to appreciate and recognize what we do for each other, yet I am with someone who is heading to possible depression as she copes with a disease that has stolen away so much of her energy and heart.  We sit apart across a gulf of resentment, and self-pity, and while I call out to her, I seem to be just by myself, destined to wallow in a shallow pool of self-hatred and guilt.  Our friends are trying to help yet are some too young, some too selfish and some just indifferent.  Then there is the special category of people who seem to be waiting for for me to beg for forgiveness and all I can say is that they will be waiting a long time.  Finally, there is the extra special category of self-important people who for one reason or another are not reaching out because they are “hurt” by my sentiments.  To them, I say a big fuck you and please get out of my life.  I pity myself for being dumb enough to be friends with them in the first place.

I also know that two simple words from her could change all of this.  Two small words that if I heard occasionally or perhaps in the form of a card, a poem, a line or just an intimate moment.  Two words that would make the day just go faster and more worthwhile instead of the constant and steady silence in our room and house.  Two words that could cleanse away this wall of resentment between us.  Two words from her that could make me feel like a husband rather than just a caretaker.  Two words that could ease the heaviness in my heart and dampen my reactive nature.  Two words that would make the 3 years of hell we had prior to her illness fade into black.  Two words that would mute my hurt and anger at the world and those close to us because I am lashing out blindly. Two words: Thank You.  Just that.  Thank you.  I do not need anything else.  Those are the words that will sound proof me from my constant doubt, worry and self-hate.

Thank you for reading. Thank you Lord for never leaving me alone. Thank you Family for always being there are at my lowest moments and just bringing me up with your presence.  Thank you ex-friends for teaching me the value of friendship and finally thank you to the ones who selflessly come out of the wood works and shown the true measure of caring.

 

 

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2010

Sanjay Sabarwal
Description unavailable
Image by gynti_46 via Flickr

You weren’t a good friend, come to think of it you weren’t much of anything except a source of constant grief.  I am not sorry to see you go, in fact I would say I am glad but I am not going to even dignify that sentiment in relation to you.  But then I realize I have something you cannot take away which are my friends, my family and best of all my brand new wife, Preeti so perhaps I can begrudge you a bit of a farewell.  Except today is just another day, and that’s how I plan to spend it.  No parties, no celebrations just a night in with my beautiful Preeti, just the 2 of us lying next to each other, savoring the closeness and the love of all the ones dear to us in memory.

You weren’t easy to deal with.  From taking a dear family member, giving me a stroke to afflicting the love of my life with a life changing disease, I can definitely say you have made it a mission to be memorable except you are not.  I am not going to give you that power.  Instead, you get this tiny post almost 2 hours before you die in my memory.  You don’t exist, and if you plan to tell your friend 2011 to do the same, then it will get the same middle finger.

I am not bitter.  I am not angry.  I am just done.  I know what I have in my life, and guess what, I know I am rich in that.  Forget money, forget fame, forget the material things or the many meaningless promises I have made at other New Year Eve’s.  I have what I need and want.  Now all that’s left is for the rest of the year to recognize that they have  been reduced to numerical symbols, meaning nothing except for the passage of time.  If you thought you were going to beat me down, 2010, you were mistaken.

Hear me out 2011, you might want to stay on your best behavior before you, too become another torn out calendar.  You have been warned.

Also, 2010, FUCK YOU.

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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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