Evan Sanders's Blog, page 49

Let Yourself Be Silently Drawn

I’m being pulled.

I feel like I’m being pulled in a direction and there’s something that’s keeping me here. This isn’t a small pull either, it’s a heavy moving current.

There’s nothing wrong with this current. There’s no reason why it shouldn’t be here. It is here. But what I’m thinking about this evening are the things that are keeping me attached to this place. My attachment to this place doesn’t necessarily mean location, but rather there are moments in time that I’m hanging onto that I haven’t seemed to let go of.

It’s been an interesting evening as I sit here reflecting on the many different pieces of this grand puzzle called my life that are shifting and changing. As I wrote last night, patience at times has been a factor in all of this but there’s something else here at play.

In the strangest of ways, and I only say this because I’m at a loss for the words that could truly describe it, I feel like I’m coming face to face with some form of fate.

I can’t explain this well, but this goes beyond the concept of goals and dreams and for some reason I am starting to feel deep down within my bones that I was meant to walk this path. That I was meant to experience everything I have experienced in order to bring this through the filter of my life and create stories and talk to people about this journey.

This feels righter than right and at the same time sits a bit heavy in my stomach for a moment and then the skin on my face heats up.

But there’s a calmness and stability to this feeling that contributes to the absolute mess of “ways this is making me feel.” There are far more emotions than a simple on at hand. In fact, there are things at play that I don’t even really have the slightest clue about.

Let yourself be silently drawn by the things that bring the best out in you and incite a passion into your heart. You can spend your entire life wandering about in search for yourself in others, in things, in places…but it’s only until you search the one place you should have started from in the first place that you will ever begin to find your own magic.

Let your gut instinct draw you into the places you should be. So often we can let our heads talk us out of what we know deep down that we should do. We can convince ourselves of so many things and unfortunately run straight away from the things that will enliven our souls. When you fall into what you know is right you will fall into a life that literally has limitless possibilities for you.

Your choice.

-Evan Sanders

Don’t Stress The Could Haves

Be here. Don’t be “there”…be here. Train your mind to waste no time in the land of “what if.” If you live there, you will spend your entire life not being here with the people who are here, the things you have, and the gifts you’ve been given. You will spend your entire life chasing an island you can never get to. Don’t live in “what if”…live in “what is.”

Discover what life coaching could do for you – aykme.com

Rumble Young Man Rumble

I haven’t really had much time to sit down and dive into everything I’m learning right now. There have been many things that have grabbed at my mind lately and to be honest, September was one hell of an interesting month. As the nights get colder and the season starts to change, I’m feeling my own changes come upon me. It’s the stillness of the air and the quiet of the night. While my brain sometimes rambles on throughout the day it’s pretty quiet most of the time. Not much talking. Not much internal critic going on. Just quiet.

A long long time ago I started a journey that has been coming up into the forefront of my mind day and day again. I don’t know why I’ve been so reflective lately on the beginning of this project – maybe it has to do with the fact that one of it’s greatest dreams is coming to fruition in 20 days.

When I came out of my first photoshoot in February, I knew I was close to what I had always dreamed of but not quiet there yet. I knew I had what it took to accomplish this vision that I had since I was 11 years old so I went back to work for the next 8 months and now here I am. Honestly through all of the trial, error, pain and anguish I at times wasn’t completely sure that I was ever going to get to this point. I didn’t know everything that was going to be in the way of the person who I was back then (more like 5 years ago) and the person I am now.

And I think that’s the point.

But the real reason I came here tonight to type away is to talk about what I’m learning right now. Not what’s about to happen in 3 weeks. I’m here to write about what’s going on right here right now.

There’s a massive amount of happiness in my life right now. There are incredible people in my life, I am on a journey to continue growing my own business, I’m coming up against obstacles and facing them time and time again, I’m in the moment (more or less), I’m feeling some things pretty seriously that are opening up to my eyes to what’s actually here vs. the way “it should be” and I’m chasing dreams. This is all here and there are a few more things that are really prevalent right now.

Quiet. Patience. Observant.

I’m quiet. I’m really quiet. While I’m around other people I’m not but I find myself going throughout my days not saying much. It’s not that I don’t have things to say it’s just there’s more of a stillness in this heart of mine – something that has never really existed to this extent before. While things are crazy busy and opportunities are popping up everywhere, I’m settled right in the thick of it. My life is going about 1,000 mph and yet I feel calm and collected. This, is one hell of a feeling and one very very noticeable change.

Patience. Where do I even begin? Patience was never my strong suite in my earlier years. I was incredibly impatient because I wanted whatever was going to happen to happen right this instant. I found out the hard way that things don’t usually happen the way we want them to and rather they usually happen in completely different ways than we ever thought they would. That couldn’t be more true for me. Nothing ever seems to turn out the way I thought it would, which is pretty much the single reason why I stopped worrying about how things would turn out. Instead, I started to focus on what really resonated with me deep inside and did that…somehow knowing that I would be taken care of if I really took the time to settle into that mentality.

Observant. There are things that I’m picking up on right now – words, moods, situations, changes in the room – that I’ve never been able to see or feel before. I’m not realizing them after the fact…I’m realizing them right in the moment. When those vibes show up they hit me hard. But what has made the biggest difference in the world is understanding how I’m showing up. I’m understanding who I’m being. I’m seeing how I make an impact on others just by being there. There use to be this big gap between me and others and that has somehow seemed to snap shut.

My thirst for adventure hasn’t seized. In many little ways I like going on adventures throughout the week but the grand adventures are coming. Today, while I did work, has been a little bit more of a mental health day in order to recharge my batteries and continue moving forward. However, if I’m being real with myself, I’m pretty tired. I’m worn down physically from these past eight weeks of working my butt off and I feel a bit run down today emotionally. Like I said, it has been a crazy past month but I’m excited about this new one that’s right here.

I’m connecting with these days more and because of that I’m starting to see my path a little more clearly. Not in the way of “I know this and that is going to happen” but in the way of seeing by faith. There was always a significant amount of doubt when I started all of this about what in the world I was doing with myself. But now, now I know exactly what I’m doing.

I have no idea where it’s going to take me…but I know the man I’m going to be when I am there.

-Evan Sanders

Take Chances In Life

Don’t play it safe. Take chances. Love your heart out. Don’t fall into the trap of “well what if this happens later…” Most of the time, it doesn’t happen. Don’t be afraid of missing out, the greatest show of your life is going on right now. Let the people who left go and if they come back…great – but you may be different. Your life may be different…and that’s totally fine. Don’t worry so much about the bad things that might happen, instead, think of all the amazing adventures you could have. What if you finally making that decision to really go for it changed everything. What if it all clicked? What if you fell deeply, madly, passionately in love with yourself, another, and the life you’re living…just because you decided to stop playing it safe? Wouldn’t that be amazing? I think so.

Discover what life coaching could do for you – aykme.com

Giving Up On Being Perfect

The greatest challenge you will ever face is to be yourself in a world that is trying so hard to shape you into everyone else.

Discover what life coaching could do for you – aykme.com

Time To Audit Your Life

Today I have a tip for you that I use a lot and I think you will really like it…it’s called Audit Your Life. 

What do I mean by this?

Auditing your life has to do with building goals and visions – and this is a one step part video of probably 5 or 6 – and the process necessary to building successful goals to help you along the path towards success. But before you do any of that, you need to look at where you are now. The reason why you need to look at where you are now is 1. That builds the foundation for the next steps of where you want to go and 2. It allows you to accept your current condition which is probably the most important parts of the goal setting process.

Accept where you are now, accept that your actions in the past have driven you to the place where you are at this moment, and you will be on your way along the development process and the goal setting path.

So, auditing your life…what does that actually mean?

Look at your relationships. Look at your internal world – how things are going emotionally? Look at your body – what’s going on with that? Look at your environment – work situations etc?

Look at your entire life. 

My favorite way of doing this is getting on a huge chalkboard and drawing the whole thing out of, “Where am I now?” When you do that it gives you a very clear and visual experience of what exactly is going on in your life. Further, it helps you organize everything…it’s not just all floating around in your head.

When you audit were your life is now, you give yourself the ability to go, “Okay, where do I want to be? What do I see for myself?” Understand what your vision is for the future and then work backwards from the end to what you have going on in your life right now.

Step by step by step by step.

This will give you a milestone based path instead of going into something completely blind. Then, out of those big milestones, write little lists underneath of “What do I know now & what do I need to know.”

The what you know now  is probably going to be very small and the what do I need to know is probably going to be very very long. So make sure you are really investing time into understanding what skills, resources, and competencies that you need to bring into your life…to help you get from where you are now to where you need to be in the future.

This is one of the most helpful processes that I go through with my own personal goal setting and I hope you will get something out of diving into it as well.

-Evan Sanders

Explore what life coaching could do for you www.aykme.com

As He Uncovered Himself

Erasing. Erasing. Erasing.

The more I erase the more I find. Seems to be a little counter intuitive to what we are taught isn’t it? Most of us come from a place of how many things can we possibly learn to make ourselves better? How many skills can we tack on to improve on our lives like we are a living breathing résumé.

Bleh.

Lived that way. Too hard really. Not for me.

When I got sick of doing that I found something much deeper and more exciting about my life. I found out that not everything was about tacking on…but it actually turned out that it was more about erasing away all of the unnecessary stuff. The personal judgements, criticisms, the ego, and everything else in the book that turned out to be a tad bit too much. I realized that I fell into the trap of “I’m not good enough” and had spent all of my time learning how to tell stories about things that I had added in so others would be impressed. Oh how I was on some stage back then. I was on a stage being pulled every single way by all sorts of strings.

“What would happen if you decided to cut all of those strings?”

I found out. Wasn’t comfortable because I felt lost for a while, but I really did find out. In fact, you know how anxiety inducing it can be to really begin to comprehend that you have absolutely no control over the future? HUGE. I mean, big time. I started to panic because the place I had lived in – the future – was a shallow reminder of how hard I had tried to live my life in the land of “it will all turn out.”

He will never ask you to be anything but who you are. You’re imperfectly perfect to him. He will see you as a wonderful mystery, something to be learned about and explored all over again every single time you see each other. And when your ocean rages he’ll stand there firm as a rock – never moving, budging or failing in purpose no matter the test or trial. You’ll never doubt his being there. You’ll never doubt his resolve. He’ll be his own man and let you be your own woman. He knows how to let you be free. He let’s you fly, not because he doesn’t want to be there, but he knows how important it is to feel the wind beneath your wings. He knows the pains of old you feel. He knows there are scars and wounds that you’re worried about him seeing. But he already sees. He already knows. And he loves every last drop of it. 

Little did I realize at that time, the only time I have is now. Right now. There’s nothing else. You can have some sort of idea of what you want to do down the line but that’s really it. The only way to make those things become a reality is by showing up here and now and that’s all that you’ve really got.

Yikes.

But that’s so liberating in many ways. That’s powerful. So let it be. Let it be exactly what you need to connect.

Because when you connect to what’s going on, anything is possible. Anything. The world becomes yours. But when you try to constrict it all, you’ve built yourself the worst prison possible – one in your mind.

Let it all free.

-Evan Sanders

Natural Talent And Intellect Come Second

Work your ass off…that’s where the passion lives & at the same time use the power of your mind to master the game and study it to the point where you know exactly where you are going to break the rules. Be different…the world needs it.

Watch The Magic That Occurs

It’s clear to me that my mother’s artist blood runs through these veins. She has taught me many things, but most importantly she taught me to love and treat others as if they were art. “Art makes you feel something. You experience it. You let it wash over and through you. Let it touch your heart. After you do that, it means something to you.” You can brand your love on other people’s hearts in such a way that they will never forget you. Situations may change. Terms may change. Feelings. Life. Location. But one thing stands the test of time – the way you make people feel. Things may change around you, but there are some things that don’t have to. You don’t have to stop being who you are and offering the world your love because life is happening. You can be you. That’s perfectly ok.

Discover what life coaching could do for you – aykme.com 

Action Expresses Priorities

The older I get, the more I let Randy Pausch’s wisdom sink in. Ignore everything they say and watch what they do. I keep my life a drama-free zone and I only do that by paying attention to actually what’s going on vs. my perception of it all. Most importantly though, I hold myself accountable to that same piece of advice. True, words are incredibly powerful but actions speak volumes where words can’t. Your integrity rides on actions, not words. Without your integrity, you’re nothing.