Evan Sanders's Blog, page 14
November 26, 2021
When It’s Time, You’ll Know
You’ll know. Trust me, when that moment comes, the feeling is unmistakable. The mind is constantly trying to figure out where or where. Release that. Let it go. Trust yourself.
Faith is a very personal conversation for pretty much everyone. As the years have gone on, I’ve had some significant events happen to me where I first completely lost my faith but then it came roaring back. It was hard to deny what I saw and experience. Those stories are for another day.
But what I was left with was this – no matter how dark things may get, you can never forget that you are a light. I think we forget that at times. We look to find something outside of ourselves, but forget to look within.
You are so much more than you ever give yourself credit for. I know there are times where it’s easy to forget that. It can feel that life gives out beatings. I’ve been there I don’t know how many times. But you are far more than the things that have happened to you and the difficulties that come your way.
You’re beautiful…and I don’t want you to ever forget that.
Faith teaches you to trust in something far deeper than what you mind can see. It reaches into the depth of your soul and helps you come into contact that you may never have felt before.
That’s why I said you’ll feel it in your bones.
Because that’s the only way to describe intuition. It runs deeper than all the oceans. It’s at your core. It’s a knowing without “knowing.”
It’s your guide.
Trust it. Follow it. It only has your best interests in mind and would never hurt you. It may take time to tune in and really hear it, but it’s effort well spent.
You’ll know.
You already do.
Evan Sanders
November 25, 2021
You’re Finding Your Way
It’s easy to find yourself feeling lost in this life. There are so many different paths to take and everyone is telling you a different way to go. The noise can be so loud that you can hardly hear yourself think.
But as you quiet down the mind, you will come to hear the powerful voice of your intuition. It is the guide to the path you are meant to travel and the wisdom that helps you see that everything happened the way it did in order to you arrive “here.”
Time and time again we are called to cross the rivers of life. When we first arrive at the shore, we stand there with a mixture of emotions at what exists in front of us.
Fear, doubt, courage, excitement and everything else in between. We think about what the journey is going to be like, sometimes delaying for great lengths of time, and deny ourselves movement at first.
But eventually, there’s comes a decision to enter the water. We feel everything in that first moment. It’s almost a bit shocking at first. But if we allow ourselves to just stand there for a bit – without running back to the shore – we get used to the water running over our toes.
In time, we make many steps forward and continue the journey. At some point, the water climbs up our calves, up our legs and even at points to our chest. We battle the current, do our best to keep our feet in contact with the rocky bed underneath us and manage keeping ourselves going.
Time after time we stub our toes, accidentally dunk ourselves, float a bit downstream and have to trek back upstream again. But we keep going. We can see the other side of the river and there’s no sense in turning back now. We must stay the course.
Eventually, we reach a point where the water begins to slow down, moving back down our chest, to our waist, to our thighs, down the calves and around our toes. We have made it through.
The end is very similar to the beginning. But what has changed? You. You believed in something and had the courage to see it all the way through. That’s called courage.
You aren’t lost. You’re finding your way.
Evan Sanders
November 24, 2021
Open To Receiving
The only way to receive what’s meant to be is to let go of what once was…
We are taught all our lives to hold on. Most of the time it’s out of fear.
Fear of loss.
Fear of the future.
Fear of the unknown.
But when you hold onto things that are no longer for you, you prevent the things that are actually supposed to show up from arriving. You stop yourself from receiving the gifts of life and traveling the path you were always meant to take.
The things in the past are gone.
Their time came and went. They’ve drifted off into the ether. You can’t go back and change them. You can’t redo them. Those moments cannot be touched. All there is left is a memory. So embracing that reality is the key to looking forward.
It’s not about denial. It’s about acknowledgement. It’s not about hating the past (no matter what has happened). It’s about understanding and healing.
And then you are left with what’s happening right now…this moment…and what you do in this moment determines the story that exists in the future.
It’s hard to let go.
I know. It’s one of the greatest lessons I keep learning over and over again. But when you do, there’s so much room for possibility. You are free to create. Free to be. Free to choose. Free to write the story in any way you see fit.
The most important part of all of this is that you can’t let the pains of the past prevent you from getting back out there in the world and trying your best again. You’re going to get hurt form time to time. It’s inevitable. That’s part of living.
But refusing to play at all because you’re scared delivers the greatest pain of all – regret.
You have to be willing to lose…in order to win. In everything. You only learn and grow when you put your heart on the line. It’s not the end of the world if you lose. It’s just a moment in time. Get back out there and try again. Give it your all. Learn from the past and move forward with a deeper wisdom.
You can do this.
Evan Sanders
November 23, 2021
The Bravest Thing You Can Do
Find somewhere to escape. Lose yourself deep within the mountains and let the forest wrap its arms around you. Sit. Breathe. Put your hands upon the earth. Settle the mind. And just…listen.
Let silence be your guide. Patiently wait. Witness it all. After a while, something will arrive like a bubble arising from the bottom of the ocean floor. It will hit you all at once and you will just “know.”
You’ll know exactly what you need to do and where you need to be. The answers to the questions arrived without trying to muscle through it. It just showed up – effortlessly – as if you knew it all along.
My teacher once told me, “Once you stop thinking so much there wont be anything you do not know.” That has been the truth through and through. Even if I had lost myself along a path that didn’t serve me, I came back to what I already knew deep down.
You have to end your war with life. You have to let go of what you think you know in order to begin to discover all that exists for you to tap into. Once you open yourself up to the great mystery of it all, you start to learn from the greatest teacher of all.
It’s easy to find yourself lost in the complexity of everything. The farther and farther you zoom in the more and more complicated it becomes. It can be so overwhelming to the point that you just want to throw your hands up in the air and give up.
But while things can be so complex, they can also be so impossibly simple. When you sit back and let go and detach from it all, the answer you seek was there all along.
That’s half of the battle. The other half is trusting the message. I have in many moment been an expert in getting in my own way. I’ve distrusted the messages that I inherently knew were right and eventually came crawling back to what I knew I had to do in the first place.
But there’s value in these experiences. Although they are tough lessons to learn, after enough times of going through the wringer you discover just how important it is to trust your intuition.
Don’t be afraid to walk the path. The deepest wisest version of you will never lead you astray.
All you have to do is trust it.
Evan Sanders
November 22, 2021
Into Your Roots
As much as you love other people, you must also fiercely love yourself. Compassion can be very soft but it can also roar like a lion. There’s a wonderful balance between the two.
I’ve always thought of self-love and self-care through the eyes of a big redwood tree. What happens if you stop watering the tree completely? The tree starts to suffer. Not only does the tree fail to thrive, but the entire ecosystem that the tree supports also doesn’t get to benefit as well.
Is the tree selfish for bringing water up through its roots and nourishing the rest of itself? No. It’s just doing what it has to naturally to continue to thrive and support everything that depends on it. It’s simply in its nature to do what its intended to do.
And similarly, taking care of yourself isn’t selfish whatsoever. As much as you go out into the world and offer your love, care, compassion and support to others, you also have to make sure you are looking after yourself. Of course other people will be able to offer you the same things you offer them, but that doesn’t negate the need for you to do the work that only you can do.
“What can I do today that would really nourish me?” That’s the question I want you to ask yourself. Sit there, quietly, and listen. Listen to what your wisdom says. Beyond all of the noise of the mind, it’s going to tell you directly – hey here’s what you’ve been neglecting or really need right now.
And then, go do it. It’s not just enough to hear the wisdom. You have to act on it. Go offer yourself that nourishment and care. Pull water and nutrients back into your roots. Sometimes we don’t feel like ourselves not because the outside world is getting to us but because we aren’t playing an active role in making sure our internal world is well taken care of.
You are, and always will be, a beautiful work in progress. As the layers unfold, nurture them. Move past the critic and take extraordinary care of yourself. This is how you begin to really thrive.
You, and everyone else you love, will benefit.
Evan Sanders
November 21, 2021
Tell Me About This Plant Here
“Tell me about this plant here.” I looked at my teacher confused. I had no idea what this had to do with anything or how it was going to help me fix my problems. But…I played along.
Well, there’s the roots, the stem, the leaves and the flowers. I don’t know what you’re really getting at here and I definitely don’t how this going to help me?
She looked at me with a smile on her face and said, “Good. Now, can you stand over that flower and yell at it to make it grow faster?”
Damn. I knew exactly what she was getting at. It hit me like a ton of bricks. I had fallen into the trap of always trying to get “there, there, there.” You know, make it to that island where it all turns out. The one that will make you happy when you finally get there.
I looked at her and smiled. She knew I got it. I then looked at the plant, nodded, and went back to my desk with a far better sense of what I had to do. I needed to be “here.” I had to pull my mind back from always trying to get to this imaginary island that you really can’t ever get to when you see it for what it is.
It can be pretty hard to trust the process and the unfolding of things. It can be even harder to be patient enough to see something through all the way to the end. But I can promise you this…
If you allow yourself to connect with the journey you are on, embrace the moments in front of you and continue to learn about who you really are, the things that are meant for you will arrive.
I can’t tell you when. I can’t tell you how. But what I do know is that if you stay open to the possibilities of life and accept the fact that this truly is all a great mystery
you’ll go on one amazing ride.
You can’t yell at a flower to make it grow faster. You can only nurture it, love it, support it and embrace where it’s at during the natural course of things. Align yourself with where you’re truly at on your journey. Enjoy where you are. Of course there’s still room to grow. You’ll be doing that for the rest of your life. But when you can be “here” and truly connect with these moments, you’ll find the peace you’ve always been looking for.
Onward.
Evan Sanders
November 20, 2021
The Lessons Will Repeat Themselves
One day you’re going to arrive at a door in your life. It’s not just any door. It’s a door that holds a very specific set of rules and can only be opened when those rules are followed.
This isn’t just any door, it’s a door that leads you to the next stage of your life. You might arrive at that door and spend some time trying to open it but it remains locked. Some people turn away. Some try to go around it. And then there’s the few who sit by it and learn everything they can about it.
Each door that we come across is made differently. They are beautiful in their own way. No two doors are the same and you can’t use the exact same knowledge to open the new one. They also hold completely different aspects of your story and take you on a path that you are meant to travel.
You can decide to ignore the door if you wish, but it won’t take you to where you need to be. It will take you off course for as long as you wish and you’ll experience many different things. But it will never be what you’ve known deep down in your soul that you were supposed to do.
So eventually, if we allow ourselves, we arrive back at the foot of the door reflecting on what it took for us to arrive at this point in time. Sitting. Thinking. Remembering. Questioning.
Then, when you’ve finally committed to moving forward in a different way, the door swings open and you’re exposed to an entirely new world. But that door only opens when you’ve made the decision with every ounce of your being. That’s when you’re granted access.
The key to every door is faith. Without it, you can’t go where you need to. You spin your wheels and reject your path. But with it, anything is possible. All doors open. All paths can be realized. All journeys taken.
Don’t ever stop believing.
Evan Sanders
November 19, 2021
What’s Actually Important
It takes everything to begin something. All of your courage. All of you willpower. The energy it takes to get something rolling in a different direction is massive.
Efforts from faint hearts will not do.
No matter what has happened in the past, you can create a different future. Each moment you have a choice of how you want to create the very world in front of you.
You can choose to live in fear or you can choose to live in love. This is your decision to make and yours entirely. No one can make it but you.
No matter how much you try, you can’t control everything. There will be things that happen that are completely out of your hands. Understand this deeply.
But what you can do is choose how you want to move forward after that event has happened. You can hold onto it and let the pain fester or you can move through it with light and let it dissolve around you. You can hold resentment or grace.
Once again, that choice is yours and yours alone.
It will take time. It’s not easy. But the process frees you from the moments of the past that used to control you. It lets you escape a prison of your own making.
Be willing to let go of the things that you know in order to truly begin to “see.” The way you’ve been doing things, the things you think you know and the habits you have can all put you in a box. Be flexible enough to let those morph into things that truly serve you.
Don’t be afraid to start all over again. 30 days of being truly alive and living your truth can make you more alive than 5 years of just surviving. Time is a funny thing like that.
Think about more “being” and less “doing.”
Evan Sanders
November 17, 2021
Every Step You’ve Taken
Every step you’ve ever taken, the tragedies and victories you’ve experienced, the mistakes, the wins and losses, the courageous moves and wanderings through the unknown, have all brought you here.
Here being this moment, as your eyes hit these words. Present. Pure. A endless amount of possibility. And in this brief moment we have together, I want you to remember something you’ve always known but at some point may have forgotten.
What you’ve been seeking for so long is not out “there” in the world. It inside of you. You’ve been searching for something you’ve already had. That’s why you could never find it. You’ve been looking for your keys and they have been in your pocket the entire time.
And you’ll hear many say that your journey here is to remember who you really are. What that means is that you have to come back to the core of your being. To get there, you have to wash off all the stories that have covered up that essence like thick mud.
The past is gone. It’s done. And the only way you’re ever going to be able to move on from what’s happened in the past is if you view if through the eyes of wisdom, compassion and understanding. If there’s judgement, you’re tethered to whatever moment you’re judging.
Seek out those moments you can’t let go of. See how you are viewing them. Is there anger, bitterness, resentment, judgement or criticism? It’s okay if there is. But recognize that all of those emotions keep you trapped. Begin to view those events through a different set of eyes.
The eyes of healing, understanding, love, acceptance. You’re not dismissing what actually happened or what they did. Those healthy boundaries are good. But you are saying to yourself, “It’s time for me to get my life back. To own this story so I can have all the power I need to move into the future the way I want to.”
That’s what this is all about. Embracing the story. The dark and the light. When you do that, everything changes. You grab the keys in your pocket and see that the doors open when you realized you had what you needed all along.
This moment is yours.
Evan Sanders
Take Your Oars Out Of The Water
“Take your oars out of the water and enjoy life a bit.” I’ll never forget that piece of advice. I had always been striving to get to this place where it “all works out” that I completely forgot to be enjoying where I was.
Stopping the rowing to that island can be pretty challenging. All these different things start running through your mind…
Fear
Doubt
Worry.
Anxiety.
Panic.
But if I let go trying to control everything I might not end up where I want to be! Sure, but you might actually end up where you need to be. There’s a big difference there.
It takes a lot of faith to just let go. But when you do, you recognize that the current of your life is heading in the right direction. Takes trust, sure. But if you can have faith in your intentions and know that what you put out will come back to you, you’ll arrive. It will happen.
You’re never quite “there” because there’s no such thing. The layers unfold like onions endlessly. Every new layer brings new fears to work through. New commitments to make. New acts of courage.
And once you work through that one, you’re onto the next. If you can embrace this process for what it is – endless unfolding – and you take good care of yourself while you’re doing it, you can enjoy the next ring of the tree when it comes.
Surrendering doesn’t mean giving up.
Really when you get to the roots of it, it’s about faith and trust. It’s about letting go of your grip on life. It’s about floating in the water, enjoying the weather and allowing the connection with life as it is to flow right through you.
Nothing to change. Nothing to grip onto.
Just…being.
Evan Sanders
Evan Sanders's Blog
- Evan Sanders's profile
- 97 followers
