Evan Sanders's Blog, page 30

The Doors I Am Opening

I keep having this image show up in my head – a young boy, backpack on, opening up these big white doors and on the other side is the rest of the world.

There’s a mixture of emotions right now.

A part of me is incredibly excited to head back out on my adventure again. Another part of me has been feeling this deep sense of sadness. It’s no surprise to me that the sadness has come with letting go. I have to let go of stories, places, events and things that are no longer for me. I have to let go because it will allow space for all that’s for me to show up.

At times, this is the hardest thing for me to do.

The memories can play back in my mind like a movie reel. But every time they do, I have to remind myself that they are gone and that I can’t go back. As amazing or hard as they can be, there’s only what’s here. There’s only what’s going on right now.

These moments are gifts.

Gifts that will continue to arrive if I’m here to welcome them.

And if I’m not? They just float by and I either live my entire life looking backwards or trying to race forwards to some unknown island.

Both are no way to really live. I’ve lived that way but it does nothing but create all sorts of pain.

There have been anxieties that have arrived in thinking about picking up everything again and heading to some unknown place. But I think this go around I am in a much better place. I know, deep down in my heart, I have to meditate throughout this entire journey. Nothing keeps me more grounded. Nothing takes better care of me. It always brings me back and keeps my mind in a better place throughout the day.

On the same note, I know that I have to go out and see as much and share as much as I can.

 

I want to meet the people. I want to be moved more by the places. I want to be influenced by it all.

But more than anything, I’m in no rush.

I’m not traveling.

I’m living.

And there’s a huge difference in that.

In all ways, I’m a beginner again.

There are pieces of my life that are completely starting over. While all of this is a bit nerve-wracking, it also resonates with something deep down in me. This is what I should be doing. This is the path I know that I should be taking. This is what I’ve wanted to do – adventure – for my entire life and now I have the opportunity to see everything as it is.

The good.

The bad.

The ugly.

There’s no other way it should be. There’s only the way that it is.

I can work with that. I can be there in it. I can soak it all in and keep on growing and changing.

This is where I’m meant to be.

So here I am.

-Evan Sanders, The Better Man Project

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Bare My Soul & Ignite The Rest

There are thousands of moments to come.

Wonderful moments.

Moments full of love and passion.

Moments that will challenge me to grow.

This lifetime is filled with so many more moments to come.

I had a very honest moment with myself the other night. For a while now, I have drawn up a plan of what was next to come for me with everything I have been creating here. This plan has shown itself to be very clear and a path that would make my heart dance.

Yet, there’s been this deep unease about something that I couldn’t really figure out. It stalled me. It prevented me from moving forward in the way I wanted to. It truly made me a bit afraid.

That something turned out to be a bit different than what it was on first examination.

It ended up as this…

I was afraid to lose the person who I am now for the person who I am bound to become.

In ways, that might sound a bit silly. But the truth is, I’ve spent a lot of time during this chapter of my life focusing as hard as I could on turning this ship around. And I did. I really did.

What made me nervous is that I had to head back into places to get in touch with more shadows. My work is far from finished. In truth, the greatest part of my path is right in front of me. But that’s going to ask me to shed some old skin that I just haven’t been willing to shed yet.

I’ve wanted to hold onto things.

And that’s how I know I have to let go.

There are things that are no longer for me that I have to loosen my grip on.

Old stories. Old ways of showing up. Old versions of me.

I have to go back to the beginning again. I have to return back to that place of learning it all over again and doing life in different ways than I’m accustomed to. Why? A hunch. The gut rumbling with intuition. That’s all. A direction on the compass. A way.

And in that, I have to be willing to get out of my own way.

As everything else falls away, I am becoming more and more of who I really am. The things that are not for me leave and I am left a more authentic version of myself.

That happens naturally at times. But where it’s really going to show up is me planting that seed with an intention. I’ve had it in my hand for quite some time.

It’s time to put it in the ground.

-Evan Sanders, The Better Man Project

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Stepping Into Magic

I’m having a hard time putting into words what’s going on with me lately. Not in a bad way. It’s just tricky. In fact, life is a bit tricky right now.

I remember about a year ago when I graduated one of my mentors told me that we must meet life’s messiness with precision and harmony.

I think at times in the past, I’ve met that chaos of life with more chaos. Maybe I felt that the tornado of my life could overpower the crashing of the ocean? That didn’t really work out very well. In fact, it was probably a complete lack of awareness that there was “another way” that made me act like that.

Yet as life has shown up in the way it is right now, there have been a handful of tricky situations that I’ve needed to navigate before I take off again.

If I’m being completely honest, some of those situations I can feel building but haven’t really shown up yet. Intuition is speaking here again. It’s the feeling that something is going to happen with a few different people and things but I have no real evidence for that showing up.

All there is…is that feeling that has always guided me in the right direction.

I don’t wonder that much about it anymore. I just trust it.

So there’s that piece of my life.

The next piece is a lot more profound.

I’m leaving for Europe in almost 3 weeks and saying goodbye to a place that has been my home for almost all of my life.

I think the first time I left, I really thought that I was going to come back. But something in me changed over this past 5 months being here. Not only did I build by dream from the ground up just the way I wanted it to be, but I realized that a lot of the “story” that existed in reasons why I should come back weren’t really rooted in much depth at all.

I challenged those ideas with my heart and in the end I realized that I actually belong “out there” with everyone and everything.

What else has shifted?

I’ve been diving deeper and deeper into my studies and my practices and have learned things that have really changed the way I look at life. One of the books I’ve been reading is “A Path With Heart” by Jack Kornfield. He is a Buddhist teacher and I’ve started to come into contact with some lessons and teachings that have really expanded my mind.

I’ve realized that I’ve developed and grown with the fears and insecurities that I have because of the cards that I’ve been dealt throughout my life…

…and, my deepest sense of belongingness and joy is going to continue to come from my reclamation of my heart and dissolving any sense that there really is this sense of separateness between me and others.

Jumping back to over a year ago…I had told one of my other mentors that I desperately wanted to close the gap between me and other people because I felt that I was lacking this deeply rooted sense of community. After doing lots of work on vulnerability, things really began to change.

But as I see it now, it’s actually my childlike nature that still is kicking hard inside of me that really is the key.

Me, as a child, was one of the most mischievous, adventurous, joyous kids around. Sure I was stubborn as all hell, but that’s besides the point.

The point is, it’s that nature of being absolutely curious about everything that really makes me the healthiest version of myself.

That’s what I’m bringing to my trip this time.

Curiosity. Wonder. Exploration.

I felt that in Italy, it retracted slightly in Spain, opened up wildly in Portugal and then when I separated my rib surfing I had to settle into a mode of really nursing a terrible injury.

But I know I have more joy and wonder in me. I also know that I have a deep deep sense of wanting to connect with other people. It’s not that I’m shy around others…it’s that at times the fear crawls in and gets worried about letting new people in.

I have to work with that.

I have to work with opening myself up because I can contact around people at times. I don’t show who I really am. I show up as a more reserved version.

But in all truth, the person who I really am…my true self…is a loving, caring, compassionate, laughing, joyous man

The only thing that gets in the way of that are the wounds of the past. And trust me, I’m doing what I can to heal those.

 

I’ll end with this. Today, while I was reading, I came across a sentence where the author said that true spiritual practice is not about improving upon ourselves but rather allowing for ourselves to come into deeper and deeper contact with what already exists.

For me, I know that’s joy and curiosity about the great mystery of life.

It just so happens that my coach told me a couple of years ago…”What if it was The Deeper Man Project instead of The Better Man Project.”

Now I truly understand his point.

While it is just a name, that name has changed for me in many ways.

Now, I see it as an unfolding of my life.

I’m not trying to tack things on.

I’m not trying to increase efficiency.

I’m going back. Way back. Back to that young boy running through the forrest ready for anything.

That’s who I am.

That’s me.

-Evan Sanders, The Better Man Project

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Matters Of This Heart

It has been my heart that has guided so much of this path for me.

A big, loving, compassionate heart.

My struggle came from not knowing how to let go of things. It could have been he smallest of things to the biggest of events in my life. But my lord I have not done well with goodbyes. Because of this, my attachments remained strong and events would play over and over in my mind, sometimes for years, as my grip on life wouldn’t soften and my imagination ran wild with me.

But the heart has always known better.

The heart knew when to let go. The heart knew when to go for it.

It has always known…and this is what I’ve truly come to learn.

All of the freedom…all of that joy, laughter, happiness…all of that was already here. Btu I was so focused on improving and perfecting that I completely dropped out of contact with my loving heart.

A lot of that dropping off was caused by pain.

I suffered through a great deal and that pain cut me off from who I really was. As I’ve continued farther and farther down this path, I’ve come to understand that getting in touch with those events, not running from them but running to them, and allowing myself to finally heal was the thing that was actually going to unlock me from that old story that I kept telling myself over and over again.

I’m not saying this practice is perfect. Far from it. But it is real.

The more and more I step into my work, my reading, my studying, my writing and my practices the more that things begin to unfold for me. I connect. The chord plugs straight back into the wall and all the energy that I could possibly want is there…because I’m finally connected.

I think one of the blocks I’ve had in going back and re-reading a lot of my old work is seeing how absolutely disconnected I was and not wanting to fall into that place again. But that’s just a fear. And that fear instantly dissolves when I realize how different I am as a person today than I was 6 years ago.

Night and day.

I can also see, however, how those aspects of myself that I love being in contact with now existed all that time ago. They were just covered up with a ton of dirt and it took some shoveling to really start to see what is there.

I have a lifetime left of this.

I have thousand upon thousands of days of sitting and practicing.

I’m actually excited about that. Being 27, I hear a lot of people around me starting up conversations as if they were old and grown up. But me…I feel like I’m getting younger and younger by the day. There is more joy in my life. The way I work with my pain and suffering is far healthier and it leaves me faster and faster. I’m answering the callings of my heart. I’m doing the things I love. I’m being more adventurous. And whatever that internal judge is screaming at me most of the time when I’m about to do something that will make me grow, well, I’ve learned to shut that up as well.

Life is changing.

I am changing.

That’s a wonderful thing.

-Evan Sanders

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Be As Still As The Dead Of Night

Be still.

Every day I’m trying to dedicate time to quieting all of the noise down and just being here. As there are now hundreds of thousands of followers, comments to respond to, things to make, calls to be had and so many inputs flying in, it becomes more important than ever to slow all the way down and just have time for myself.

So I’ve been getting quiet.

Very quiet.

In all of that silence I’m learning. I’m learning what’s actually going on for me. I’m finding that there are things that have not been taken care of from a long long time ago that I have to learn to accept and finally let go of. That piece, has been the biggest piece for me.

I’ve learned that I’ve held onto some people and some things for so long that I didn’t even know they were still residing in the depths of my soul.

My heart was aware…but my head was completely out of the loop.

So when I’ve stepped into that quiet, everything shifts. I come into full contact with what’s trying to guide the way. I start hearing what I’ve pushed away or ignored and let all of that pass through me.

I’m learning to not resist. I’m letting it be there. All I can tell you is that the process of going through that can be incredibly hard at times but also unbelievably liberating. Things move you, but if you stick with them and don’t try to escape, they shift as well.

I remember many months ago I was really agitated by the silence that surrounds a great deal of my life. I think part of that was my internal compass trying to get me going in the right direction with my coaching and open myself up to the possibilities of running my own thing. I also think that a piece of that was I was refusing to get in touch with a lot that was actually going on for me.

If I’m being real, there seems to have always been a lot of challenges for me to get through. It’s never been easy. Most of those challenges have been around other people and also me battling demons in order to accomplish my dreams.

That’s how it has always been.

I’m not exactly sure that’s how it will always be but we will see.

This morning, while scrolling through my Facebook feed I came across this incredible description about Venus being in retrograde and a horoscope for March. I was born in July (Cancer) so read this.

CANCER – You’re on a journey now — whether physically or metaphorically — asking you to keep your perspective and eyes on the prize. Venus stations retrograde in your 10th House this month asking you to re-evaluate your ambitions, and what something is truly worth to you. There is nothing wrong, but you’re horizons are opening up, and you’re reaching a vantage point showing you infinite possibilities and the deeper potential in a situation. Explore your options as you let go of ambitions you’ve outgrown. This is a process of clarifying and sharpening a long-term vision, so you can focus your energy, to make solid progress. What does success mean to you? What would you to get to the top? It’s a cutthroat world but stay true to your integrity or you could slip. If there’s sense of you taking the fall for something — trust the truth always come out. You need not compete, try to uphold a public image, seek vindication, or look for someone to blame. Especially right now, even what you consider to be a mistake could be the answer to your prayers. There are no short cuts to success; it’s built through blood, sweat, and tears, trial and error. It’s all worth it if you’re moving to a destination that you truly care about. The important thing is to not give up. Keep your perspective and make choices in your most optimistic vision, while keeping one foot in reality. Trust, any roads that fall away are revealing a deeper underlying opportunity — asking you to rise to a challenge, recognise your authority in your life, and follow your passion. This is not about success in the eyes of the world, but being your best and most authentic self, as you materialize a long cherished (perhaps childhood) dream. (www.cosmicintelligenceagency.com)

Horizons opening up. Infinite possibilities. Deeper potential. Authenticity. Sharpening the long term vision.

These things resonate with me down to the core.

As I have built my practice from the ground up, which was my biggest goal for when I came home back to the U.S. I am now in a place of wanting to really take it to the next level. There has been a lot of thinking going on about my journey throughout Europe and the rest of the world and it seems like life is opening up for me.

I know, that in this process, I’m going to have to say goodbye to many things that I’m going to have a hard time leaving.

But that’s part of the process.

One door closes and the next door opens.

Right now, as thins are, I am just trying to keep my faith that I am on the right path. I know that this path has heart. I know that the things I am setting out to do will not only change my world but the lives of others.

So I have to keep going on. There’s really no other option for me as my heart sees it.

Off we go again.

-Evan Sanders, The Better Man Project

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A Deeper Type Of Alchemy

What if you could turn darkness into light?

An alchemy of the soul.

What if you could take the worst that ever happened to you, the darkest of moments where you always believed that no such light, joy, love or anything else was present and bring out something good in them?

Wouldn’t that be some of the greatest magic you’ve ever come across?

In ways, I think that would be more valuable than turning basic metals into gold. It would be, a different type of value…not monetary or materialistic…but a birthing of happiness.

I think over thousands of posts and captions on different social outlets that’s really what I’m trying to do with my story. I’m turning the hardest of moments into lessons. In one of the books I’m reading, they call this “Turning Difficulties Into The Path.”

This is my journey. This is my path. And, I think over a long period of time, I’ve come to accept that everything that has happened, good and bad, are all part of me. They are to be embraced, accepted and understood instead of pushed away, rejected and buried into the depths.

As I’ve come into contact with these stories, they have changed.

There’s something about bringing them to the front of your mind that makes them shift in a way. But even more, there’s something about bringing them into the light that exposes them in such a manner that they truly begin to disintegrate and you see them for what they are. Lessons. Areas in which you can learn.

But if you keep them locked up, they fester and cause havoc in so many different areas. They show up in relationships, your health, and your mind begins to crawl with weeds of the past that slowly take over.

The process of getting rid of those weeds takes a long time.

If you don’t get rid of them they will just stay there forever.

That first initial dive into the weeds can feel like it’s going to be the most overwhelming thing ever. There’s a lot of pain there. There’s a ton of old stories that you may feel are far too much to tackle. But the truth is, once you get going on unboxing one thing after the next, it all becomes a lot more manageable than you thought it was going to be.

But you have to breathe.

You have to breathe through every single moment because if you don’t and you tighten up it’s so easy to let everything consume you.

When I was surfing in Portugal, I remember going out on a particularly big day (14-17ft) and my 16 year old Portuguese guide was really pushing me to challenge myself. Just being out in waves that big was an experience. Unfortunately, everyone in the lineup got absolutely ruined by a sweeper set and took wave after wave right on the head.

This was my first time having this experience and all I can tell you is that I was a big panicked.

When a big wave is about to crash down on you, you have to dive as far down as you can to get under it and through it. You naturally get tossed around. You have to keep calm because you’re holding your breath under water and looking for which way is up.

I took 7 waves over and over and over again and by the time it was done I was about cooked.

I could hardly breathe.

I was absolutely gassed from paddling and taking a beating.

But I got through it. I learned a very important lesson that day.

You can’t panic.

You have to maintain your breath and stay calm.

If you don’t, you could drown. Simple as that.

Life works very similarly. When chaos arrives, you have to actually calm yourself down more than anything. You’re going to take a few on the head. That’s expected and that’s okay. But it’s your breath and your willingness to settle yourself down that’s going to help you get through it.

You’ve made it through every single bad day you have ever had.

I want you to think about that.

You have.

No matter how bad it got. No matter how bad the experience was. You made it. You survived. Pull strength from that. Pull wisdom and courage from that.

Every single difficulty has been a lesson for you to learn from.

Use it.

– Evan Sanders, The Better Man Project

Want to read my book? Check it out here! The Better Man Project Book

 

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As The Smoke Burns Black

Pain.

I’ve used it to fuel me. I’ve taken the worst of the worst and allowed it to transform my story.

At one point in my life, pain consumed me. I had no outlet. I had no idea what to do with it. So it ate away at my guts until I felt hollow inside. A fury of emotions would rage inside trapped by the hollow walls of my body. I would self-destruct. I would collapse. There’s nothing strong about a tin body full of nothingness.

Expression.

That’s what changed it.

My writing quickly became a way for me to process everything that had happened or was happening in the moment. It seemed that as I put the words down on the page, the event changed. I was able to see light in something that existed as completely dark in my mind.

As time has gone on, I think I have started to understand that writing became a filter of sorts. My inherent joy and enthusiasm for going at life with a fiery intensity changed the way I looked at things. The event shifted. It turned itself from a mutated ball of emotions into something that made much more sense to the wisdom inside of my heart.

And with that change came peace.

That’s not to say that this came instantly. In fact, most of it didn’t. Most of the changes came after writing about something and thinking about it time after time after time again. With some of the things that happened, the only requirement for healing really was time.

I have found myself telling people that there’s black smoke burning in the sky today when I am really going through it.

I mean that in the sense that I am burning darker energy. It doesn’t always come out clean. It doesn’t always burn nicely. But when it does, it produces a fuel that will last for quite a long time. Most importantly for me though, that energy within me gets out. It doesn’t stay there. It billows into the sky and I show the heavens and everyone else around that I am doing everything I can to get through these moments.

This hasn’t been the easiest month for me.

There have been a ton of challenges and a lot of things have come up for me. I’ve felt in ways that I haven’t felt in a long time. I’ve had to stoke those coals and burn that darkness once again. I’ve had to go back to places and relearn lessons about how I’ve handled situations and why going about it the way I’ve gone about it matters so much to me.

I guess I’ve been reminded of my foundations.

I think it’s really easy to just go about your life and pretend everything is fine. Ignore it. You can try to “rise above it” because you don’t really want to deal with it. Maybe you even push it to the side and try to forget about it.

But it never goes away.

Oh and I know this to be true better than most.

Because all those times you push it away, you are creating this big imaginary haystack ready to burn and all it takes is one match to ignite everything and burn you straight to a crisp. How do I know that? I’ve been there. Once completely…and the second time I was lucky enough to have someone in my life I could put my back up against when everything seemed to be going wrong.

You’ve got to go through it. You’ve got to go straight into what you’ve been avoiding because that visitor will always come knocking on your door until you finally let them in and give them the attention they deserve.

Ignore it doesn’t work. Running from it only makes it worse.

Through. Through, through, through.

Right now, I’m going through it.

I’m letting things be the way they are. I’m not trying to fix it or manipulate it or construct it in a way that it isn’t. I’m just accepting it as it is.

So as hard as it can be at times…

Look up into the sky.

You will see the black smoke burning

-Evan Sanders

Want to read my book? Check it out here! The Better Man Project Book

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& This Is Where My Story Begins

Do you remember?

Do you remember the first time you really saw what was going on? How things were unfolding? What was coming for you?

Do you remember that first moment where you first started to understand why everything happened the way it did in the past and how that has brought you into this moment? That can be a pretty exciting wave crashing through your mind.

I feel like I’ve had a few of those.

My story began just over 6 years ago and after having spent all of this time writing my heart out and pouring what was in my soul onto the pages I’ve learned that there’s another journey for me to take. I’m not sure what to call this one. All I know is that traveling back into Europe and around the world is going to bring me a completely different type of perspective of life.

A few years ago, when I really started to figure out what I wanted to do with myself, I had this dream of traveling the world and discovering what was really out there. I think not seeing places and not experiencing different types of people keeps you in the dark to what really is out there for you to take in.

So I started working. The crazy thing about all of this is, I never really 100% knew that the path I was on was going to take me to where I wanted to end up (that dream). I just felt that it was the right way to go and if I continued down that route – adjusting to a few speed bumps along the way – that I would make that dream happen.

It really hasn’t been easy.

There have been some serious setbacks. I’ve had to completely restructure my coaching and how I work with people. I’ve actually had to come back to the states for some time to rebuild and restructure and get ready to start all of this over again. There have been lots of stories that I’ve had to deal with that have tried to derail me.

But something in me keeps telling me to head in “that direction.”

Now when my mind looks at “that direction” it looks like a gigantic bank of fog and I start getting that thinking emoji that’s available on everyone’s phones.

But you have to go anyway. If anything, I’ve learned that the only time I really end up where I need to be is in trusting my intuition and taking note of the things my head has to say, but not living from that place completely. Trying to figure it all out (the future) is really a completely useless task. It’s not going to happen the way you think it is…but if you follow those whispers deep within you will end up exactly where you need to be.

So as I head into this next trip, I understand that I need to keep the blood moving, put a little bit more pressure on myself to explore and take advantage of the places I am living, and to really go for it.

Because last time, in all honesty, I was like a dog that just caught a car – I had no idea what to do with any of it.

It almost paralyzed me in a way.

It was out of this paralysis that I started to break free and really understand that my greatest joy and enthusiasm for life was actually being amongst people, connecting, and standing in a place that I had never been before. I think I rushed myself last time. I also think that there were some external forces at play that really had an impact on my stress levels and I couldn’t appreciate what I had as much as I would have liked.

I’m changing that.

You can gain a lot of wisdom looking back. You can start the reasons why things didn’t work or did work. If you can take that – the past – and actually use it to your advantage, your life is going to bloom. Mine is. I’m using everything I have learned and going back and chewing on all of these amazing lessons of life.

I’m heading into the new and using the old to support that journey.

I don’t think I could ask for anything else.

-Evan Sanders, The Better Man Project

Want to read my book? Check it out here! The Better Man Project Book

 

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In This Messy Life

I think as time has gone on, I’ve come to understand that life is naturally a bit messy.

People are complicated. Feelings are ever-shifting and the fluid nature of everything becomes more and more apparent.

This puts me in a tricky place. Well, maybe I should say a new place. As a man who has believed for the longest of time that there are simple foundations and principles that should stand as a bedrock in my day-to-day life, I’ve come across the fact that this fluidity of everything that is really doesn’t allow for much place of creating any expectation whatsoever that those same principles will not be honored by the rest of the shifting world.

I’ve come to a deep internal discussion with myself of what it is really like to live a life without attachment. To love and to let go at the same time. I found, and I’m sure that if I go back and read years worth of my own stories on this subject, that it has been letting go that has been the hardest thing for me to do.

And yet, by not being able to let go fully, it also restricts my ability to love deeply.

I’m in new waters again.

Waters that are forcing my perspective to change. Honestly, I find that my answer to this question that I’ve been holding for quite some time is going to be found in a deeper exploration of the reading that I am doing. Where does virtue fit in this world? As someone who believes in loving and respecting others deeply, where do I start creating my own personal boundaries and at the same time maintain this sense of peace that I am finding by going with the grain of where life wants to take me?

These are the questions that I’ve been working with.

At times I feel like I’m going a bit mad with them.

As the seasons change and winter comes to an end, I’m feeling this renewed sense of energy and many things are being cleaned out of my life. Maybe this is why the lesson of letting go continues to arise. There’s a sense of melancholy around this time as well as a deep excitement for what’s possible.

Leaving the harbor once again is a scary expedition. Leaving it in a completely new way offers the same thrill and sense of adventure that it did all those months ago.

I know in the depths of my heart that this is what I have to do in order to develop this contact with the finer layers of my soul. There are intricacies that exist in between the lines that are waiting to be discovered…a sense of magic…and a feeling of a “click.”

Now more than ever, things have had that feeling of clicking for me.

I’ve continued the settling of the raging fury in my blood and slowly ended my war with life. There are times when I pick up the armor once again and turn myself into stone in order to protect myself. However, slowly but surely, I let go of those defenses.

I’m discovering. I’m learning. I feel that I’m going to be saying those lines for the rest of my life as I continue to travel down this path. I also know that my greatest growth and journey will come in putting myself completely out there and rooting myself deep into the world – no matter where I am.

My disconnection with my truest self comes from trying to play a role that I think everyone else will like.

I’ve had to drop that mask as the years have gone on and stay true to what I know is right. It has taken a lot for me to get out of my own way and start to allow the child in me emerge again. To tell you the truth, it was scared to come out for a while because it felt that it would be judged harshly. Now, I know that it will in ways and it won’t in ways. That’s the reality of life. That’s the reality of being on the field playing in the game.

 

I know, without doubt, that I want to avoid sitting in the stands watching.

-Evan Sanders, The Better Man Project

 

 

 

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My Heart, Full Of Fury And Fire…Rage

My heart, full of fury and fire…you must rage.

Rage into the night.

Burn down the past and let the flames be the light.

And what a delight…

Watching you rage once again into the night.

You can feel it can’t you?

That passion igniting once again? The way in front is clear with the journey to once again take. But this time, I know how to step into it better. Maybe it was life working in its wondrous ways that allowed me to take a step back and view everything from afar. I thought I needed specific things, but when I came back, it became clear that I didn’t need them as much as I thought it did.

I saw clearly.

I saw that the path for me wasn’t in going back and creating roots but rather in planting my roots all around the world. I created my experience and allowed for myself to live in the flexibility of what I had made. The stress poured away and I knew that if I took my steps into the world again I would be a completely different man.

I would connect more.

I would try new things.

I would push myself farther and farther outside my comfort zone because that’s where all the magic has happened for me.

I knew that I was the architect of this entire experience and in order for me to bloom I would have to become something I had never been before.

No more old ways.

No more old ways.

Constantly reinventing and changing. Constantly trying on new thing to see if they were for me.

But the old ways would have to go and I would have to change.

I think, as these months back home have unfolded, I’ve discovered that I would have to finally jump. I couldn’t live in fear. I couldn’t be passive. I would have to go for it and do what my adventurous heart has been begging me to do for such a long time.

It has been begging me to dive deeper and deeper into this thing called life and meet as many experiences as I could possibly come across.

And at the same time, it has told me to disconnect myself from the story that I am missing out on anything. This story, that what I am doing is making me miss out on the “20’s” where people call these the best years of their life has been a powerful narrative.

But I know what I’m working for.

I know what I’m up to and why I am doing it.

These years haven’t been a sacrifice because I’ve simply said no to spending more money than I had, going out and partying and drinking every weekend, and systematically avoiding the development I knew that I had to do. Rather, I followed my heart which told me to go for it…to build my dreams one day at a time…and that has given me the chance to travel around the world, as my own boss, go anywhere I want to go at any point in time…and help people change their lives in the process (all while mine morphs and shifts as well).

I know that I don’t buy “things” for the sake of buying them. I purchase experiences.

I believe the experiences that you are able to create for yourself last far far longer than the things you have. In fact, I didn’t remember about 90% of the things that I had boxed away in our garage until I went through them. But I remember how excited I got about a few things I had bought for myself because they meant so much to me.

It was the experience…not the item…that I fell in love with.

My life has been a bit tricky lately.

There’s been a large calling for finally jumping into something that I’ve avoided for some time. But as the days go on and I settle farther and farther into that “knowing” this is the right way for me to go…and that I have to discover this life for myself…I start to move into it.

I fall into action.

I create my future.

I am the painter and the picture.

So bloom young man bloom.

-Evan Sanders

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