Evan Sanders's Blog, page 66

Layer After Layer, Page After Page

The discovery of self is by far the most worthwhile journey you will ever take. But it’s a mystery.

Every day we experience new things, drive our feet forward without the knowledge of what is going to come next. And that’s the truth isn’t it? As much as we try to project our plans into the future, we really don’t know what is going to happen next. The greatest mystery novel of all time unfolds in front of your eyes in beautiful color and all we have to do is be in the story. We are the story…and each of us the heroes of the tale.

I can feel the depth inside of me like a endless well that you are thrilled and anxious about tossing a big rock down it to hear just how big of a splash it will make. But this well doesn’t end. By the day, it deepens as I open myself up to discovering this energy I have inside of me. Do I understand it? Hardly. In fact as the days go on, I begin to understand that the layers continue to unfold and the pages of my life continue to fill up. It’s endless.

In the past I had troubles coming back up from these depths in time to meet people. But as my practices have continued, I have found that balancing point of time and place for me to really dive deep down into myself…and to return back to the world with lightness of heart and genuine smiles. The depths is a place for me where I nourish myself. This personal nourishment guided from internal wisdom was lost for the longest of time. Covered up by weeds and dirt, I never really knew that it was there. But as time went on and I began to clean up the area, I discovered something truly amazing.

We all have these things within us. Thing is, we usually lose sight of what our true capabilities are when life begins to life us. That’s just how it is. People get hurt so bad that they end up tarping up the vulnerable sides of them and go into protection mode. It’s a fact that most will do anything – defend, deflect, deny – all sorts of criticism and sense of wrongness because they can’t handle the shame that comes along with making mistakes. We all make mistakes. We make big ones and little ones every single day. It’s up to you, if you really want to live a fulfilled life, to admit to your mistakes and mend the hearts (including your own) that have been affected by your actions / words.

I’ve started to call a big part of story The Consistent Mistake. Maybe that sounds a little bit ridiculous to you, but to me it makes a whole lot of sense because I am constantly making mistakes and course correcting. I take to heart these mistakes and make sure I improve. Sure some of these mistakes may be small, but if you keep your eye on the ball you’re going to be able to grow. That’s really what it’s all about – when you don’t feel like you are growing or moving you feel stagnant, down, and dead.

This growth can be in relationships, friendships, your work, or in your passion. But there must be growth or you’re dead in the water.

Let the mystery of your life unfold in front of you. You don’t have to be so insecure about all of it that you must project some sort of dreamed up reality into the future. You can’t even begin to understand how much life has in store for you until you give up your own thinking of “how it should be.” Oh no…you have to throw that away. Because once you stop rowing towards that island of “it all turns out” you are going to find yourself happy in your boat, with expressions of your deepest purpose naturally driving your direction…in whatever direction that may be.

– Evan Sanders

Beginning To Understand…Aren’t You?

The months of March and April have been, in a very distinct way, a couple of the most challenging – and at the exact same time – transformational months of my life. Moment after moment, thing after thing, realization after realization arrived at the front door of my mind and I have been ticking in ways I never knew were possible. The best way to describe it is like this…

We are all like the back of a very intricate watch – hundreds of little gears that all depend on each other to turn. Our best stuff, our magic, comes when – and in my case it was my mentor coaches and life events – something or someone comes along and puts some oil on a few of those gears that were stuck. Then, with a little push, things start turning…and the rest of the watch begins to work as well. This is, by far, the best description I can possibly give you about what is going on in my life right now – and hopefully a description that allow you to understand the absolute importance of allowing others to help you when you feel stuck in life.

But I don’t just want to talk about the watch today, I want to tell you about an experience I had deep in meditation that echoes the quote pasted above…and experience that I will remember forever.

In a “nothing very eventful” session about 3/4 the way through…all of the sudden my entire body was in excruciating and almost overwhelming pain. It felt like every single cell in my body was screaming and naturally I became a little bit uncomfortable with the situation…but decided to stick with it and see what was happening. Breathing. Breathing. Breathing. The sensation then turned from pain, to the feeling of someone starting to pour concrete into my veins, and I could feel myself getting heavier and heavier as the seconds went on, completely connecting and sinking into the ground. Then, something happened I will never forget. All of the sudden, my perception and vision expanded drastically as I was able to view the Earth in its entirety…and all of the sudden big pairs of hands started to crunch the Earth down into a smaller and smaller size ball until it was the size of a pool ball…and as I snapped back into my place within the room…stuck that incredible dense ball – the size of the entire Earth – directly into my hearts center.

This process, the crunching down of the Earth, which seemed to take about half a minute or so, was choking the breath out of me. I couldn’t breathe. And when it was dropped into my solar plexus, and I felt it sink within me I gasped for air.

You are beginning to understand aren’t you? That the whole world is inside you: in your perspectives and in your heart. That to be able to find peace, you must be at peace with yourself first, and to truly enjoy life, you must enjoy who you are. At once you learn how to master this, you will be protected from everything that makes you feel like you can not go on, that with this gift of recognizing yourself, even when you are alone, you will never be lonely. – Unknown

I came out of that experience with a very very interesting feeling inside of me, and later when telling my coach about the experience he said that I am finding my solidity. There is this element of density to me that even months previously wasn’t there. One of my practices was to start taking Aikido classes because I am so excellent at resisting things instead of just letting them flow (the idea of Aikido in itself is to transfer energy)…but as the months went on, and I started digging into my reading and learning more and more about myself, I found out that it really wasn’t as much as me not being able to flow – trust me there are times when I am incredibly fluid – it was more about me finding my roots…my home…my scared ground.

Three not-so-very-small teachings have come into my life lately that have completely re-animated the way I look at and experience the world.

Dark energy – I’ve written about it a few times before, but that type of energy inside of each of us that is pitch black, dark, thick and we feel like it can choke the light out of the entire world if we let it out. You must to begin to understand that this type of energy, if you can allow itself to be understood, can be transferred into something incredibly beautiful and positive. Your greatest pains, fears, and worries, can be painted into a beautiful picture.
Masculine energy – Really, down to it’s core, what masculine energy is and what it means to be driven from your purpose and your mission in life…all the while being “the mountain” and witnessing the swirling aspects of life – thoughts, emotions, etc going on around you while never changing you. (this is a very brief description)
Feminine energy – This, and really grasping this, has been probably tied with my understanding of the masculine in terms of how much I have changed lately. Being able to understand that the feminine of this world, is the world itself. It’s life itself. Everything that morphs and changes…the full array and spectrum of life and all it has to offer.

Why have these understandings changed me? In the ways I can actually describe what is happening – there are some things going on that are going to be be far to difficult to put down into words – understanding the dynamics of how the world works and how these energies work is perspective altering. I have been able to look back at my life and see that I have constantly been rocked out of my boat by the ocean (feminine) time after time and my purpose drowned with me. But I am convinced, allow purpose to develop in any man and give him the understanding that his inspiration can come from all that changes and what is feminine in this world, and he can show the world an unfolding masterpiece.

As tough as it has been at moments to learn these lessons, I would go through it all over again if I had to. Because now, there is a reclamation of heart going on and there is a complete understanding of that “home” is actually wherever I am. My entire life I would walk into rooms full of people I didn’t know and feel nervous, slightly intimidated, and off because I, myself, wasn’t nourished and at home. Now? I walk in with a smile and a full heart because I have nourished myself and my soul…and the world is a much friendlier place. If it’s a big room, I close my eyes for a second, imagine the room, and then try to visually wrap each and every single person with a blanket of understanding, friendship, interest, and love.

That, right there, has changed me drastically.

As a lover of having deep conversations in the past, I would naturally go there pretty quick because I felt like those were the only types of conversations that could “nourish” my heavy heart. That changed as well. Not that those conversations aren’t great, but now, I am far more interested in what other people are about, their stories, and where they want to go with their life than talking about specific subjects that fascinate me. I look back and I think about all of the amazing deep conversations I had, but in honest moments with myself, I can’t help but also recognize how much I drove those. Now, there’s this built in curiosity I have about other people, and it’s translated into the development of knowing 40 new people by first name in the past month, all budding friendships, and the starting of conversations about them.

What have I found?

That my joy, my deepest sense of joy, comes from the development of relationships and giving others encouragement. This thought had crossed my mind in a few different ways over the past few years, in terms of being motivating or inspiring…but I realized that encouragement is actually the word. We live in a world that can make people feel incredibly unimportant at times…devalued, worthless…the list goes on. I am here to do the exact opposite. Because people do matter – everyone matters…and they need to know and feel that.

Life is changing.

Drastically.

Good. :)

– Evan Sanders

A Burden Or A Blessing

Breathe kid…breathe.

Sometimes when I write I keep my eyes closed and type, listening to the keys pattering away and try to feel into the digital paper. Clean white space ready to be filled up with whatever is in my heart. There are many things in there right now. There are many beautiful things, a sense of unfolding, a reclamation of heart itself…I feel nourished, I feel deeply connected and loved…I am working on developing a passion thats reach can far extend past anything I have ever even imagined. That dream is right in front of me and I am living it daily.

There’s so much deepening going on, and at times, there are some intense shooting feelings that zap their way straight into my stomach and I lose my appetite. It takes me an hour or two to regain my hunger…but that feeling is overwhelming at times and I have to go back to this…”Breathe kid…breathe.”

Life can be a burden or a blessing.

We are all faced with challenges that force us to keep our heads up…or drag our heads down. Those are really, when it comes down to it, the two options we have when we are faced with obstacles. Keep your head up despite the circumstances and work towards healing and growth, or keep your head down in defeat and stagnancy. I’ve done both. I’ve spent a lot of time throughout my life keeping my head down in shame, fear, and anxiety. When you pull your head down, don’t ever think that it will only just effect your line of sight…no, it begins to drag your heart down as well. Your attitude will fall and the rest of you will start to sink into anxiety and fear. Fear is what keeps us from keeping our eyes up and looking at the world as it is. You can’t hide from this bi**h when it’s hard. Remember the wolves I was talking about yesterday? Decide to do that and you will be chased by that dark wolf…teeth glistening and mouth watering.

We’ve all have had the wind knocked out of us, rug pulled from under us, and from time to time beaned in the head by a wild pitch…but I’ve resolved to always get back up from the dirt as fast as I can. Do I have my moments of weakness? You bet. I am an incredibly fallible man. I make mistakes day after day after day after day. But I course correct constantly. I make little adjustments. I fine tune. I learn from my mistakes and make efforts to move in a positive direction.

But man some of these things that are thrown at me are hard.

Maybe I’ll say it again…”breathe kid…breathe.” I have, quite often, looked up at the sky and asked “I know you got me…but really with this? Like seriously?!” Haha…it does make me laugh from time to time at the things that happen that I know are far from coincidence…but in the end I know that I am growing and shaping into something that I am supposed to be.

I guess the quote above is really how I am feeling right now. There’s a leaning beyond what I am really comfortable with right now. Whether it’s learning about people, interacting with those around me, diving into meditation, reading handfuls of books every week, or even tapping into some unresolved things in my life…I am leaning. I’m leaning into it and it has my coaches all saying…”It sounds like you are right in the thick of it.”

I feel like I am in the thick of it. Where’s the weed-wacker? The truth is, I am letting go. I’m letting go of a lot of things and just watching them float away. You never know how the winds are going to turn, and maybe, one day, some of those things will come back around again if it’s right. But I’ve let them go…and as difficult as it may be, I still smile as I’ve sent them off.

– Evan Sanders

Come To The Dark Side…We Have Cookies

It was almost a month after I published Two Wolves, a book about the most important lessons I had learned in my life up until that point…that meditation brought about a pretty significant discovery. Two Wolves main premise was that there are two wolves fighting within us, a wolf of shame, fear, greed etc. (the dark wolf) and one of love, joy, compassion etc (the light wolf). The main question, “Which one wins?” arises eventually…and the answer seemed to turn out as “whichever one you feed.” This is an old Cherokee tale between a grandfather and his grandchildren that I have appreciated and loved for years.

Something however arose that seemed to not disagree with the point, but expand upon it. This is what I discovered.

If I had to write the whole book over again, there would be a significant change in the mentality of the dark wolf. Darkness, the pitch black parts of our humanity, is probably something that scares people even more than public speaking. The force of nature and energy that runs through each of us that could seemingly snuff out any light is a place we absolutely, on many occasions, refuse to go because we feel that it will tear us apart inside and leave us as scraps on the street. That fear is real. That fear is palpable. That fear is controlling and vicious.

You simply cannot just feed one wolf and expect the other to starve to death without a fight. Oh no, it doesn’t work that way at all. There’s this concept that is traveling around that in order to be happy you must simply think happy thoughts and all of your entire world will change. To a degree that is slightly true, but that doesn’t get to the root of it at all.

If we look at life in such a mundane way, we miss a very powerful, scary, and yet incredibly useful force of energy that if tapped into properly, can propel us into presence. Like how I didn’t say into the future?

Your ego is that voice in your head that is constantly screaming through fear…and is sending you the message “we have to get there we have to get there.” Your inner guidance…is the voice, soft and commanding, that says “we are here. all here.”

My mentor explained this concept to me perfectly today and it cleared up even further this idea of tapping into both types of energies. What does being all here mean? What does that even look like?

When I am fed little tidbits like these, my mind loves to dive in. I love thinking about this and what it means to me. Well, naturally I did. Being all here means exposing yourself to the complete uncertainty of life – the actual true grasping of knowing that the only thing you know…is that you have absolutely no idea what is going to happen next. Isn’t that the truth? Don’t we project into the future so often that we forget to even appreciate what is going on right now? In fact, we create our own anxieties through this projection so often because what we thought we knew didn’t happen…and then we start to freak out that it didn’t. Let go of this. Open yourself to the endless amounts of combinations and permutations of a moment that exist. When do you this, you allow yourself to be guided by something far more powerful than your own ego screaming out “LET’S GET THERE!”

P.S. “There” sucks. I’ve been “there” and it’s not even close to what you wanted. That hollow feeling exists in your stomach when you get “there.” Here though…now that sh*t is awesome.

That still leaves me to get into this darkness. This place where I used to think I had to “travel to” instead of just “be in” when it arrives. How much things have changed. How much things have absolutely drastically and emphatically changed in my life over the past couple of months – I am right in the thick of it.

There are very very very dark place in my life that have refused to be visited until I began the practice of sitting on a mat every single night and exposing myself to them. What happened when I did this and knew that the only thing I was supposed to do was come back to my breath every time something came up? Detachment.

WHAT?!

The worst events of your life came over you like waves, wanted to drown you, sent you through unimaginable pain at times, shot streams of tears out of your eyes…and then left? Yes. Undoubtedly yes.

When you allow yourself to experience the darkness that each of us holds…and don’t be like, “I don’t have any of that my life is gravy (cause you are full of it)” it oooooozes out of you like goo. Slowly but surely, and sometimes it takes a while, these pains leave you. Deep down since we run from the wolf that is so desperately fierce and vicious, we are still attached to it. The more we run, the more we try to starve it, the more we fear this wolf…the greater its power over us is.

This wolf doesn’t need to be fed your attention, oh no, it needs to be fed your past, your energy, and your fear. It salivates and thrives off of these things. It feeds off of your crappy karma, the “I’m sorry’s” you didn’t say, your ego, your negativity. It’s as strong as it has ever been when you start to avoid going to that place as well and refuse to talk about it.

But court that wolf…and you have an entirely different relationship with it. Don’t starve it….play with it. As fierce as vicious as it may seem when you are running from it, turn around and put your hand out and it will roll over and play with you.

Don’t just take my word for it. Try it. Sit down on a cushion, cross your legs, sit up straight, close your eyes, gaze about 6ft in front of you and breathe deeply. Don’t try to make anything happen. If thoughts start coming into your head, just gently come back to focusing on your breath. As time goes on, your experiences will vary…but just keep coming back to your breath. Again and again. Breath. You are already experiencing both energies.

– Evan Sanders

There’s This Type Of Dark Magic

These past couple of days have been, well, interesting. There’s this feeling floating in my stomach that I don’t really know how to explain. It’s not nervousness, it’s not pain, it’s nothing that I can really put a specific word to – positive or negative. It’s like…there’s this calmness to everything, this stillness…and I know it doesn’t have anything to do with the world, oh no, it’s just me.

I’m calm. I’m still.

We are very fickle creatures. This isn’t something that should surprise you. Everything moves and shifts within us on an instant and holy hell are we bombarded with all sorts of things. The challenges never stop. Never. It always surprises me that people are so amazed that I can find something to write about every day. I always think to myself, “How could you not? I mean good lord in the past 5 minutes I could have 10 topics to write about just knowing the stuff that is going on in my mind.”

That’s the truth of it. Moments like today have given me a strong reminder what it really feels like to be exposed and completely vulnerable to everything. Ever since school started, I have spent day after day stripping away the unnecessary and equally as many days learning. The stack of flash cards that I had (started with 10) that had the written statements of what I was supposed to consider for the year has grown to over 400. While it takes me about 15 minutes to go through all of them, this is a visual testament to all of the things I am learning. It’s making a difference…one hell of a difference. At times, I am still raw, but I can feel everything around me, in many ways…healing.

Something about today made me think back to one of the women I was working with in my coaching course during a session…she said to me, “I’ve never seen so deeply, and found so much joy and so much pain in someones eyes.” Not really a small statement. When I came out of my first session at school, and I threw myself into a state of learning and practicing every day, I felt this oozing of that pain start to come out of me. It landed in my writing, it flooded my meditation, it seeped everywhere…but not in the way you would expect it to. I am sure at times, because I am just as infallible (if not more) than anyone else it affected those around me in negative ways, and for those mistakes I completely own – but it mostly started creating an atmosphere where I could really become the War Painter.

You know, the painter that goes into war zones and paints beautiful portraits of famous battles with his brush. I guess I’ve started to paint these scenes of my life that until this point haven’t had a single brushstroke applied to them.

And yet, through off of this, and there have been some pretty big challenges, some of which I still face daily, there’s been an absence of fear. It’s like I am supposed to be here – supposed to be in this place where I am oozing out and soaking up all of these different things. My life is an interesting balance of osmosis and secretion at the moment.

Where is my heart in all of this?

I guess that’s a question I have been coming to the table with every single day. The more surface level questions are debatable, but in truth, I know exactly where it is. I know the depth of it’s understanding of what’s actually going on with me. While some of these things seem new, it knows better. It has always guided me and refuses to lead me astray. My mind can say what it wants about things at times, but 90% of the time I function through a depth of feeling that only a few have understood well. I am glad they understand…because at times I don’t.

I am fine. I am moving. I am growing. I am unfolding. I am deepening. These things are all happening and at such a perfect pace it’s hard to believe some of the things that are coming up. In time, I will speak about those specifically…but only when I feel driven to really dive deep into those topics. For me, I have to trust that feeling…the “pulling” for more to be able to write about very specific things in my life. It’s not that I am afraid to – far from it – it’s just that there’s a time and a place for those stories, and when the feeling is right I always dive into them.

Everything with me is moving forward. It’s beautiful. I’ve left some things behind, but that’s okay. As I know how life works, everything in time comes back around. All that is left is smiles.

– Evan Sanders

Romance With Life

Tonight I sit here in my kitchen writing under these little white Christmas lights that glow away sparking incredible memories. I haven’t written in here in some time, but something about these lights tonight are deeply resonating with me inside. Memories of smiles. Memories of feeling these vibrations within that I couldn’t even put words to (impressive for a writer). Memories of deep eyes and warmth. I’m sitting here tonight smiling. I’m sitting here tonight full.

It’s been a theme of my entire life that I’ve been taught the lessons I most needed to learn whenever I really didn’t want to learn them. That theme has made no changes in plans over the past couple of months, and for that – while the struggle was real at points – I thank it for it’s merciless timeliness. I’ve always appreciated people and things that showed up on time, and well this is no exception.

Everything always happens at once. In a way that’s pretty beautiful. In a way that’s one of the most challenging things you will ever come across. For me, it consistently knocks me on my ass and causes me really to catch my breath and start looking up again. These moments can either tear us apart or they can bring out the best in us. A long time ago, I would fall apart at the seams and my life would be dripping with every negative emotion in the world. I guess if there was ever a specific testament to how much my life has changed from writing almost every single day, it’s that my approach to those “knocked on your ass” moments has morphed drastically.

We all suffer. We all go through pain. We cry, we grieve, we hurt…but those are only fleeting emotions and thoughts that come and go throughout our minds. It’s true that some situations take a little bit longer to let go of than others – I am no fool I understand that we feel deeply and those feelings take a little while to come out of us. But I have come to realize that just as much as one thing sucks, it doesn’t tear apart the whole of your life. Like a bucket in a fist of water, put it in and it rises a little, pull it out and it returns back to its original state.

But why tonight? Why do these little lights that I turn on every single night, the same lights that have made me smile time and time again…why are these ones so special tonight? to be honest, I am not really sure. I see them and while I’ve seen them for days on end, I guess they really spoke to how this heart of mine is feeling. Warm. Full. But most importantly, open. It’s the easiest thing in the world to do when we are hurting – close off to the world. But through everything, I’ve managed to not only stay open, despite my shaking at times, but to open myself even further. To unfold even more. Honestly, it’s probably a process that wouldn’t have stopped for anything in the first place. This blooming of purpose, the closing of the gap between me and those around me, the putting myself into situations and places I never would have before and my recent romance with life have become unstoppable forces that I can only imagine will take me exactly where I need to be. It’s a pretty insane feeling to be at this point with these massive forces at play, but at the same time, I’ve never been more relaxed in my entire life.

I just trust.

When the need for passion and enthusiasm rises, it comes out of my life fire out of dragons mouth. I follow that and let that be. When I feel that I need to go up and talk to someone I never have before, shake their hand, open them up and talk to them about what’s going on that day, I follow that as well. There is deep deep trust in these feelings that resonate from somewhere inside. These are the same types of feelings that arise on the daily…these are reverberations from the depths.

Deep tremblings from the soul.

So I’m following those, and it’s changing my life. People have been noticing how different I am – people that I have known for my entire life. This heart is blooming, and so is this romance.

These lights are beautiful. They make me happy. They bring so much warmth into my life and I am lucky to spend a moment or two with those memories.

– Evan Sanders

The Karma Build

The Karma Build

Never underestimate even the smallest of actions. They are little drops of water, or even, little sparks of flame that can either build your life or set the entire thing ablaze. I’ve been there. I’ve really been there. 5 years ago my entire life was set on fire and it was all because of a karma build of negative actions over time. Ignoring the little things, attacking inward and outward, letting pain seethe inside of me and run my life. Oh yes I remember that night well, the night where the flames colored the sky. I burnt down. I burnt to ashes.

Every single day, we are presented with situations in which we can add to our karma build or subtract from it.

It’s never really the big life events that define us. Yes, of course, they do have a major role to play, but it really comes down to the small things, the nitty gritty details that many people ignore because they think they are insignificant. The more and more I dive into life the more I begin to understand that everything is moving, constantly changing, made of energy…and your actions in this moment have the power to send ripples throughout space that you can’t even possibly comprehend the strength of.

For a long time, there was this gap between me and other people because of a inherent distrust in myself – not them. This gap was created through fear, through personal anxiety, and through a complete non-understanding of what I was meant to do and be deep down inside. So I would avoid situations and people, or on the flip side, purposefully spend most of my time attending to others so I could ignore focusing on myself.

You know that karma build that I am talking about? Well, it doesn’t manufacture well when you are coming from a place of fear.

There’s great beauty in this life, but you can certainly miss it if you are spending too much time thinking in the future. You can miss the smiles people give you and how incredibly amazing they are. You can miss out on how unbelievably peaceful it is to sit out on your porch closing your eyes and just listening to all of the sounds around you. These are considered to be the small details by many, but to me, these are the drivers of my life…these moments are my inspiration.

Everything around us is living and breathing, and to think for a moment that just because the ground you are standing on is solid by nature makes it dead, you my friend are completely wrong. It’s all breathing. It’s all living…and it all matters.

Every action has a result. Every action has a counter-reaction to it. These are the laws of life that we live by and these are massive forces at play. I think what we don’t quite yet understand is how much our actions really do effect others, the people surrounding us, and the rest of the world and beyond. We don’t quite see how different we make the world every single day by encouraging someone or lending a helping hand to someone in need. We don’t see the ripple effects of our smile on someones life, attitude, and perception of the world.

All of these little actions that you take every day are part of the karma build, they are seemingly useless to many but if you really tap into what’s going on in life, you will begin to feel into life instead of just observe.

So as time is going on, I tap into my actions more and more and more and can feel the landscape changing as I consciously make my decisions. This shift in my mentality, which came through my coaching mentors stretching of my mind, has allowed me to let go of what hurts me and to breath life and love into every single moment that i have.

Always come back to your breath. Come back. Come back. Come back. If your mind begins to wander, come back. If you start to hurt, come back. Over time, you will get better and better at being in this moment instead of reliving old ones or trying to go to a place that you can’t possibly exist in. Keep coming back. “Come back to me” sometimes you will hear your heart whisper.

Our lives can be put on autopilot or you can drive this puppy manually and really get a feel for the results of the intricacies of every single action you take. There’s beauty in that. Don’t be intimidated by the understanding that everything you do matters. This should be something that frees you instead of locks you up.

Let that karma build. Keep adding those drops of water into the vessel and over time you will have filled it.

P.S. Don’t worry if you accidentally lit your haystack on fire. Being able to rebuild your entire city just the way you want it to be is one of the coolest experiences you will ever get to have.

– Evan Sanders

Stories With Morals | The Little Seed

Really, when it comes down to it, all of my writing is a collection of stories with morals.

Sometimes the stories are about memories – sometimes they are about the future and my dreams, but all in all….it’s a big collection of heartfelt stories about life, love, passion, and dreams. So let me tell you one.

Once upon a time there was this little seed. This seed was the hardest seek to crack. It’s shell was firm, it protected itself from the weather and could withstand and attack from the outside. This seed was solid. Firm. Impenetrable. Like a fortress in of itself. Nothing came in. Nothing came out.

The seed was carried from place to place but never really found a home. It was always sheltered from the outside world, and no matter how much the crow or the farmer tried to open it up, it remained as solid as a rock. While the other seeds revered its strength, the little seed knew that despite all of its might, it felt empty inside. The seed felt deep down that it had something to offer. So the little seed resolved that the next time the farmer came along, it would allow itself to find its home.

One day the farmer came along and picked the seed up with all the other seeds in the area and planted it gently into the ground. At first, the seed was scared being covered up by a few inches of dirt, but then as time went on became really comfortable in the dark. The seed began to relax into the ground, and day after day could feel little trickles of water come down to it. The little seed allowed the water to run down it’s shell and started to enjoy itself even more.

One day, many years later, the seed felt something strange. It felt this deep bubble from inside and all of the sudden, “CRACK!” The seed felt like it exploded! Over the next few days the roots started to come out and dig their way down into the ground. Then, a little green leaf made its way, slowly but surely up towards the top of the ground.

The seed could feel itself growing, unfolding, and expanding. Every day…a little bit faster…a little bit more, until finally that leaf hit the sunlight. At firs the seed was blinded by the light, but then it relaxed, just as it did into the darkness and began to enjoy the surroundings. The seed saw some of the other seeds and waved its little leaf at them. The farmer came along and smiled and gave the seed some more water.

Day after day, the farmer came along to feed the seed just a little bit more and watched it grow. The once little seed was growing so fast. What the little seed didn’t know is that it wasn’t just any type of seed, it was a special kind of seed…one that was the biggest pain in the ass to crack, but when it did, after very persistent and gentle care of the farmer for 5 whole years, it would become one of the fastest growing plants in the world.

That little seed, was the famous Chinese Bamboo seed, which is one of the toughest seeds to grow. It resists growth like the plague and takes year after year of constant care to crack wide open. But when it does, that little ole’ seed will grow 90 feet in 60 days.

So as the seed could feel itself shooting up into the sky, it looked back down at the ground and felt its roots growing deeper and deeper. It constantly thought back to the times of being down in the dirt and what it was like to be covered in the dark. So the little seed encouraged the other seeds to be patient, and to open up to the farmers care.

Finally, the little seed asked itself…”Did it take 60 days for me to grow 90ft? Or did it take 5 years and 60 days.” The farmer overheard him and shook his head and smiled.

They both knew.

– Evan Sanders

The Image Of Love

Someone asked me the other day, “What would the image of love look like to you?”

I guess I’ve never thought about the image of love. What that would look like…the colors, the shades, the shape of it. Most people would probably say it looks something like a heart. But not to me, not to this mind.

The image of love looks like a bird to me. This next sentence I’m about to write out is probably one of the closest things I will ever have held to my heart.

You must hold the people you love with open palms, so they are free to fly away from you, and in time, if it’s right, they will come back. 

I’ve had one very very very strange and yet amazing year. For the people who are just entering into my life, or who are just starting to get to know me, a lot has happened in this past year. I say strange and amazing because some of the things that have happened are completely beyond my comprehension and at the same time beyond coincidence. A trio of dreams last summer woke me up and shook me to my core and into tears of joy, I changed my body entirely and dove into my health, I started healing major parts of my life and I continue to be challenged, stretched, and for the first time ever feel like I am blooming. All of it climaxing in the past couple of weeks, which took a turn for the unexpected and then even more unexpectedly all snapped into place?

It has been a completely uncertain mess over this past year, and yet now when I look back on it all, I can see how designed that path really was.

The image of love was divulged to me in those dreams last year, and it really was given to me in that powerful sentence up above about open palms.

What I have started to learn, and these lessons are the hardest lessons of all, is that you have to love as deeply as you can and then you have to be willing to let that go as soon as you put it out there. This is not a small task. I don’t think this is a small task for anyone. But it’s the most fulfilling task that exists. To make this amazing journey and to deeply love what you are doing, people around you, and life…what an adventure that would be?! It’s the journey that I am part of right now…it’s a journey that I am enjoying (while tough as hell sometimes).

I guess you can add that realization to the mix as well – the one that I came to that said “everything you do should come from a place of light and love.” The decisions you make, the things you say to people, what you are doing with yourself etc. Of course I get trapped into old ways sometimes, but I can feel myself changing and warming even more than I was before. Not in a cheesy way…but I’m talking just being able to be here and really love what is going on. Traditionally speaking some of the things I’ve been going through are not the easiest, and while they can bring pain, I can make the decision to wrap them in love or hide.

I choose and have chosen the love route.

To be as straight as possible, I think the world we live in needs a whole lot more encouragement, love, and light. I plan on giving it.

– Evan Sanders

What Is Confidence? | Key To Rip-roaring Umph

What is confidence? It’s the ability to have rip-roaring faith through anything.

But how do we develop that confidence? Even more, how do we start to ask ourselves what our definition of confidence is? Lastly, how do we get to a place where we don’t even have to ask, “What is confidence?” because were are functioning from a place of knowing and being instead of always searching and grasping for answers?

Before we get into this, here are some of my favorite quotes about confidence.




“Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter, and those who matter don’t mind.”

Bernard M. Baruch






“No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”

Eleanor Roosevelt, This is My Story






“If ever there is tomorrow when we’re not together… there is something you must always remember. You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think. But the most important thing is, even if we’re apart… I’ll always be with you.”

A.A. Milne






“You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, ‘I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.’ You must do the thing you think you cannot do.”

Eleanor Roosevelt, You Learn by Living: Eleven Keys for a More Fulfilling Life






“Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.”

Bertrand Russell

Webster will tell you, when you ask it to define confidence, that confidence is

: a feeling or belief that you can do something well or succeed at something

: a feeling or belief that someone or something is good or has the ability to succeed at something

: the feeling of being certain that something will happen or that something is true 

I love all of those definitions, but what really strikes me and what I really want to talk about today is the last definition – that feeling of being certain that something will happen. That’s a pretty amazing feeling when you get it. I especially want to talk about being certain in times of great uncertainty – aka when it all hits the fan and you are wondering what the hell just happened? Yeah, those times. The challenging times. The times when you feel down and out. How can we bring self confidence into the equation and get back up, continuing on the road to big time “umph” without letting that life thing tear us apart?

If you are thinking on the subject of how to gain self confidence, you first have to let go of the limiting belief that life is happening to you…instead of it just occurring. You have a part to play in this world and I can promise you that not everything is out to get you. Things just happen!

Believe it or not, it’s true. You will be going throughout your day and for no reason at all you will be blindsided by something, and that’s just the way the cookie crumbles. To expect a world with so many moving parts not to break down once in a while is absolutely absurd. Entropy is a really true force…along with chaos. Things will naturally fall apart because they are supposed to. Religious teaching after teaching teaches us that we have to separate ourselves from our attachments, because all things come and go.

Give yourself the ability to start seeing that life works in many mysterious ways, always changing, always morphing, and you will be on the road towards answering the question of how to become confident.

But it honestly goes farther than understanding that everything is moving and shifting. Deep down, you have to identify with an energy that is running through you – an energy that doesn’t exist in your mind and in your emotions – that what you feel is right…I mean really far deep down inside, is what is your guiding force in life. This place takes some time to get in tune with, but when you do your actions are reasons for doing things become a whole lot more pure.

For me, this is a place that I have been tapping into lately, and it’s changing my life each and every day. I am recovering from life events faster, my weaknesses are strengthening because of this energy, and I am able to keep my head up despite similar circumstances happening that would have crushed me years ago. There’s a deep routed confidence that everything is going to turn out alright and there’s no reason to stress.

And there really isn’t. Just as much as things change (maybe to your liking or not) they will change in another direction. You can guarantee that. So if something has “traditionally” screwed up your “plan” good…because you needed that shake up. When lifes you, which it seems to do all the time, understand that your reactions to things and the way you look at things after that painful feeling is simply a representation of your deep insecurities inside. So next time you are down, watch yourself very closely to see and feel what is going on inside. Those feelings, those thoughts, those emotions, expose your greatest weaknesses. Like I said, good. Good…good…good. You are growing.

Through that growth, you will be able to breathe new light, love, and…the point of this whole article…confidence and umph into your life.

If you are looking for some confident quotes, check this great list out here.

Get out there. Get bruised up and covered in dust. Hold your head up high, smile, and speak from the heart. If you can do that, you can be certain through uncertainty.

– Evan Sanders

P.S. write me a comment below, love to hear what you have to say.