#LifeLessons - The Biggest Life Learnings Of Sammar Shabir

NAME: Sammar Shabir

INSTAGRAM HANDLE: @sammarshabir

JOB TITLE: Author and Certified Professional Life Coach

Sammar Shabir is an author and a Certified Professional Life Coach. Her debut novel, The Barred Window, was published by The Dreamwork Collective in the UAE and Liberty Books in Pakistan. She is also the creator of the Rewrite Coaching Program.

A storyteller since childhood, Sammar wrote consistently throughout her life, but it wasn’t until the illness during the pandemic that she finally slowed down enough to attempt a novel.

Sammar believes in validating personal experience while practising accountability and strategy. These principles form the backbone of her coaching work. Through her Rewrite Program, she helps clients navigate transitions, move from stagnancy to strategic action, and build forward momentum in their personal and professional lives.

In her free time, Sammar enjoys adventure sports, watching movies, travelling, exploring good food, gaming, horseback riding and spending time with her kids.

 Today Sammar shares with us her biggest life lessons to-date:

#LIFELESSON – 1

The first real-life lesson I learned was simple. If you’re determined enough, you can accomplish anything. Anything. People love throwing the word talent around for feel-good fluff. But talent means nothing. Tenacity is everything. Most ‘talented’ people are just people who didn’t quit on Day 3 the way the rest of us wanted to.

When you’re building something, you assume it’s supposed to be a constant high, endless motivation and music swelling in the background, as per the rules of the movies. But life is not a rom-com. Once you actually start, somewhere along the way, inspiration goes out the window. What’s left is you, your goal, and the choice to stay or to quit.

Success looks like drudgery, boredom, and fear. And it looks like showing up when you’d rather give up. Your ability to show up regardless of how you feel is the only thing that will carry you through. Happy, sad, anxious, exhausted, uninspired, with no instant gratification and no end in sight. It’s very glamorous in the same way peeling onions while crying is glamorous. But if you still show up, life eventually bends. Fail. And then fail again. And then some. One day, you won’t. That’s how character development works in real life. Not exactly what you hope for, but effective

No one is coming to save you. I checked. At some point, you realise the only person who can take a chance on you is you. Accountability is not about blaming yourself for what wasn’t in your control. It is, however, about taking ownership of moving forward and refusing to stay stuck. If something breaks you, you still owe it to yourself to get up, crawl if you must, and move. Because the alternative is staying where you fell, and that is how people slowly rot in the comfortable reality of their own discomfort.

Determination isn’t glamorous. It’s gritty, stubborn, and deeply unfriendly. It’s the personality trait version of a thorny plant. One that’s low maintenance, not cute, but somehow still alive. But it works. Every time.

#LIFELESSON – 2

The second life lesson I learned was the hardest one for a control-driven mind like mine. To accept the gift of surrender. Or in the language of scripture, Tawakul. When something in your life slips out of your control, it needs to slip out of your mind too. But reaching that point isn’t poetic. But rather like a relentless war inside your own head.

We all think that resisting will save us, and that holding tighter will fix what’s falling apart. But resistance only prolongs the inevitable and keeps you stuck in a spiral of pain, replaying the same narrative in a loop.

Surrender isn’t waving a white flag. And it definitely isn’t weakness. It’s strength because anyone who’s ever had to let go of something knows precisely how difficult it is. Anyone can cling. Letting go is the real audition for adulthood. There is wisdom in the radical acceptance of reality without trying to contort it into something it’s not. It’s letting go of the fantasy that you can control outcomes that were never yours to begin with. Which, unfortunately, includes other people’s behaviour, no matter how badly you want to send them a detailed paragraph on how they should act.

Holding on to old baggage is self-sabotage masked as strength and loyalty. It means that your past continues to direct your future, tainting moments that could otherwise be grand. And dragging emotional luggage around everywhere gets exhausting. Even airport porters would quit. I don’t mean to imply that you forget what happened or erase the lessons. But surrender is reclaiming your power and loosening the chokehold your past has on you. It’s about removing its hands from your throat.

In all brevity, surrender is relinquishing control and choosing the present over a past that cannot be rewritten.

#LIFELESSON – 3

The third life lesson I learned was profoundly humbling. Stop taking yourself so seriously. No one else does.

Truly. Everyone is the main character in their own head, which means you are a side character at best. A cameo. Maybe even an extra. Sometimes not even in the scene. And if that’s the case, why not do what you want without obsessing over what someone might think of you? If you’re going to cease to exist one day, without a trace, then you might as well live a little while you’re here.

Play. Be ridiculous. Add humour to the most unpleasant situations if you must. Sometimes that’s the only thing that’ll keep you alive. Take a break from being a high-functioning adult. Let things fall apart. Be useless for a while. Binge-eat. Do a Netflix marathon. Go to a theme park. Watch anime. Game. Sing terribly at karaoke. Take a break. Do whatever reminds you you’re alive and not just performing living.

We are so consumed with ourselves that we believe everyone else is, too. They’re not. People will think about you for five minutes, max. And then they’ll go back to stressing about their own lives. Meanwhile, you’re losing sleep over an opinion they forgot by lunchtime. Let them judge. Let them misunderstand. Let them laugh. Go be cringe in pursuit of what you actually want.

Life is not an exclusive experience. We’re all here to be blessed and clobbered in our own turns. So laugh at the absurdity of this entire life thing. Half the people you’re scared of are confused themselves, they hide it better.

The day you stop taking yourself so seriously, you finally become free.