Evan Sanders's Blog, page 85

Live Your Dream

I would rather be on the field playing the game than in the stands watching.

Fact.

Tried living a few times by watching. Honestly, it sucks. There’s nothing worse than watching everyone else playing the game and having that urge inside you to get out there…but you can’t.

That will not be my story. That’s not how Evan Sanders is going to go out. All engines burning. Red hot. Nothing left in the tanks.

This past week has been a week full of learning centered around what to do with discouraging news. In fact, it ended up happening again today. In a prior life, I would have wallowed, found a way to destroy whatever path I was on, set myself back 99 steps and put aside my dream. But honestly, there’s no time for that anymore. The momentum that is pulling me in a specific direction has almost taken care of this past weeks news for me. It has dragged me without choice back to the matter at hand.

Mental conditioning is at play here.

This momentum I am talking about is only built on the foundation you have created. Without that foundation, having your success ruined by something small can easily happen. But when you are 6, 7 ,8 weeks into something, and you have only a few weeks left to go, you are raging down a class 4 rapid. That rapid is going to take you to where you need to go, and god almighty it is going to take a dam of immense size to stop this flow. But even then, some of the greatest dam’s have cracked and were overcome.

Living out your dreams is one of the most exciting things there is. You would think that it would be chaotic because you are charting waters unknown, but the fact is, after a few weeks, things get more and more focused and the rest of the world quiets down. You don’t start adding things to your life, you start subtracting the unnecessary.

Never, in a million years, did I think that would happen.

You begin to look at your life and start taking away things that you don’t need. You begin to appreciate quality more. You look for different things in people. You see everything a bit clearer and you start to increase the quality and value of yourself as time goes on.

This may not sound surprising to some, but it has been and continues to be to me.

The sacrifices that I couldn’t make way back when, during the time that I was controlled by my demons and monsters, now seem so small. They seem insignificant in the face of achieving this great thing. At the time they were Goliath…but now, I see them for the dancing shadows they are.

Live your dream.

Whatever you are scared of doing, go do it. Find a way to make it happen. Your potential lies within your decision to achieve your dreams.

Have courage.

- Evan Sanders

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Reinventing Yourself After Hardship

You fail.

You try again.

You fail.

You try again.

Nothing changes unless you make it change. You can get stuck in the same routine, with the same results, with the same crappy feeling in your stomach over and over and over again if you don’t change something. A great deal of the time it’s important to change your actions which yield different results. But there’s another step beyond that. Sometimes, you have to change your view completely, and it won’t just change your results, it will change your world.

I am convinced that one of the hardest things in the world is to get right back up after you have not just been knocked on your back, you’ve been stomped into the ground twice, three times, four times etc. So it’s story time.

When I was a freshman coming into my first year of baseball at college, I wasn’t prepared at all for the level of competition I was about to see. I remember one of my first outings was probably the worst pitching performance I had ever had. First guy came up…home run. Second guy came up…home run. Third guy came up…home run. Fourth guy I got out…Walked a guy…Fifth guy came up…and hit a ball that hit off the of top of the fence in centerfield. The coach didn’t let me finish the scrimmage inning, he actually just pulled me from the game in disgust and the teams switched sides.

I had never, in my entire baseball career, felt so useless and humiliated.

I was determined to never let that happen again, and even though my baseball career was tailing off because of the structural issues with my elbow, I continued to work at it. Thing is, back then, baseball stopped being fun for me. It wasn’t fun anymore because I couldn’t trust myself with my physical issues. I couldn’t walk out there with confidence and pitch like I had since I was 6 or 7 because  I was afraid my arm was going to pop like it did in high school. Eventually, it did pop again.

Even though it is one of the more humiliating memories I have, things for me seem to come in threes…and they always teach me great lessons. Like that month last year I was stood up by three different dates. If you don’t think that rocked me to my core then you are dead wrong. People will give you all sorts of advice about how “it’s about them and not you” and I am sure there is some truth in that, but it doesn’t really make you feel any better at the time. Rejection makes you, sometimes for a minute, sometimes for 6 months, question yourself and your worth. No one is greater than that reality.

So you get knocked on your back once, and while you are laying there you get run over by a marching band, a horse-drawn carriage and a semi truck…then what do you do?

You have to bounce back.

You have to be willing to run it out there again on the field of play and give it your best shot. You have to have a short memory. You have to also put these feelings in a special tank inside, and light it up when you need it. It doesn’t burn clean, but that’s okay.

I’ve been asked this many times….”How do you stay so positive? Has it always been like that?”

First off, no. No and no. I’m not positive all the time – I think that would actually be unhealthy. But I always take something positive out of a negative – that is my challenge for myself. I will always try to find some light in a situation. I spent so much of my life focusing on how much everything sucked, and because I was focusing on it, I just got more of it. You can’t really control other people or events that just happen to you on a daily basis, but what you can control is your reaction to them. You can think things through, you can put your best foot forward and deliberately make the decision that you are going to move forward through anything.

The saying “Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” is right…but it assumes that you are indeed going to make the choice of moving forward with a good mental attitude.

There are plenty of things in this world that might not kill you, and can make you weaker. I have experienced many of them, and they are all stemming from the decision to let life happen to me instead of my own decision to grab the wheel and steer it in my direction.

This is not to say that I have my moments where I put one some music and listen to a rapper spit out fire. I do. I have songs that I know by heart because they speak to me when I get upset. As angry as some of them can be, they all have one lesson in them….the lesson that I need to hear at that time…”this will not destroy me.”

You need to tap a lot inside of you in order to get to where you need to get. Just make sure you aren’t destroying people along the way. Because it does come down to a decision. You have the choice to make people better or make people worse. When you make that choice, you will end up realizing it also has a huge effect on yourself.

- Evan Sanders

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You Leap & Hope To God You Can Fly

It never makes sense. 

Maybe that’s the first thing you have to look for? A lot of the time logic is thrown right out the window and you just have that feeling in your gut that you “have to do it.” I stopped trusting in my gut in high school when I always would leave tests thinking I had aced them and ended up doing horribly. What I later found out is that I just needed a little bit of extra time to combat horrible processing deficiency. A little extra time to think about things and work my way through and then I could utilize everything else I had in my arsenal. 

It’s amazing how much being patient can change your life. 

So my grades flipped, and I started to believe that I was actually talented at things regarding school. History became a love. I started to write despite the papers from previous years written were always dripping in blood. Seriously, I am pretty sure my teachers may have stabbed some of my papers with a knife or two. I’ll have to go back and check for puncture wounds. 

Even though your past may speak differently, your instincts are actually really hard to ignore once you being to…

Trust yourself. 

That’s what taking leaps of faith are about. They are about trusting yourself and knowing that what you decide is the best decision you can possibly make. You can always have the input of advice from others –  you can most of the time convince yourself out of anything – but the reality is, that little voice inside of you, or even that feeling of pulling you towards someone or something…there’s a reason for that. If you trust yourself, you will go after that. 

When you are doing something new, it feels strange. But that’s you landing outside of your comfort zone. That’s you doing something that you haven’t done before. And this could be anything. Reading a type of book you aren’t used to reading, fishing with a different style, dating someone that is outside your normal range or going on adventures to places unknown. They all take trust. Trust in yourself and trust that experiencing the new will deliver you something that you have never seen before. 

Life doesn’t always work like a scientific formula. 

Sometimes you have to taste new foods and experience new things to understand the breadth and depth of it all. You have to open yourself up to really giving things time to marinate instead of making quick decisions about what is right and wrong for you.

Because honestly, how many times do we get it right the first time?

How many times have you thought that you wanted something, and it ended up being the worst thing for you? Or to play the opposite side of the table, how many times has something completely unsuspecting just swept you off of your feet and you say “never in a million years did I think this would happen.” 

That is the magic of life.

Someone once said something like life is what happens when we are making plans. And it’s true. All of the plans in the world can still paralyze you from actually living courageously. You can plot it all. You can graph it out. You can make list after list and write out dream after dream on the wall…but until you actually take that first step, and the steps beyond that, and fully subject yourself to the fluidity of life…and go with the flow…you will never experience all that this wonderful world has to offer. 

59 days ago I started something that I had wanted to do for almost 7 years, and along the way I have realized just how amazing every day can be when you adopt an attitude of moving with the current of your dream. I think that I have failed in times past because if something didn’t go according to plan…according to the plan I made at the beginning, then I would fight it or believe that it wasn’t supposed to happen.

That’s not realistic at all!

How could you possibly know what is in store for you months down the line, in something you have never done before, that you are blindly going into and are just functioning on faith and your promises to get you to the end?!

Crazy people think they know exactly what is going to happen. 

Guess you could call me a bit crazy a while ago. 

No. You can only believe in the pursuit you are undertaking and know without a shadow of a doubt in your mind that you will achieve it. That is your job. Leave everything else to the heavens above. What happens will happen and breathe it in. The good and the bad. Celebrate the good and respect the bad. Use both for fuel. 

The world will see the clear smoke and see you are fueled on happiness…and in times of need, you burn the bad…and that plume of thick black smoke in the sky…people will smile because they know you aren’t defeated and you are just lighting what is in your soul on fire – so you can get to the next place. 

Open yourself up to the possibility that you effectively have no idea what the hell is going to happen…and my oh my isn’t that exciting. 

- Evan Sanders 

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His Magic

It’s a a funny thing to think about. Magic. The magic of life. Personal magic. The wonders that open up when you begin to bring faith, belief, and self worth into your life. Magic begins to happen. When you put your mind to something, and direct your thoughts towards making it happen, there’s no shortage of moments that knock you off of your feet. 

Not getting what you want is a powerful thing. 

There are these moments when you think you want something and it is taken away from you…and you are left with a few choices. Pursue, leave it on the table, or fold. In times past, I only believed in two options…but as time has rolled on, I have developed the ability to let things germinate. To plan the seed and see if it will grow. Whether this is with decisions or simply ideas that I let enter into my mind, I like to see what grows from it. 

It’s very easy to see things in a black and white way. In fact, I think that makes life a lot more understandable for people. It’s incredibly hard at times to even consider that there are a million different colorful reasons why things are happening to you. The black and white decision becomes almost an escape. Good or bad. Right or wrong. I am not saying there aren’t examples out there that could be classified in this type of way, but most of the time things fall in between the edges of the scale. When I came to accept this, things became much more interesting. While I experienced a spectrum of new events, I also opened myself up to those events in a way that never could have occurred before. 

I think that’s how life works. 

If you invest a penny, you are going to get something proportional back. 

But invest everything, heart, soul, and life into it…the rewards are endless.

I think i’ve known this for a long time but was incredibly scared to actually implement it. Not having certainty can be a major fear breeder. We like to make educated guesses on how things are going to go and if the results can be shown from others prior experiences then we usually how with that option. But something tells me there’s other powers at play here. Something tells me that there is a lot more than we can hear with our ears or see with our eyes. At least, from the experiences that I have gone through, this is the impression that I get. 

Going all in on something can be initially demoralizing…but watching those seeds germinate is one of the most satisfactory things there is out there. 

Believe in your magic. 

You may not always get what you want, and that might upset you initially, but the fact is you were on the field actually playing in the game. That is something to truly be proud of. Because while in real life sports being on the field is not enough, the game of life is far far grander than any arena we have ever seen. We put ourselves on display in front of billions of souls and make ripples with our words and actions. When you come to believe in that…that this world we live in is one big arena and can be impacted by one, mountains begin to move. 

One thing that amazes me about coming to the table almost every day and writing is that my perception often changes about things. While the width grows quickly, it is the depth that I appreciate the most. I hope to never stop learning how far down the rabbit hole you can really go. 

To the great arena I dance. 

- E

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The Scar Gardens

Be proud of your scars

The ones inside and out

They are stories

Some you might be to afraid to tell right now

But you will find the courage

To bring them out to the light

And expose the blackness for what it is

A shade of light

It’s only when we start loving what’s inside

The good and the bad

The light and the dark

The things that make us human

That we will truly love ourselves

I spent so much of my life

Hiding

Running

Wallowing

Drowning 

In it all

Rather than accepting it all

Hugging it

Because by embracing it

I embrace myself

Instead of fighting it

I am at peace with myself

The past is a tricky thing

One that can destroy you or make you

Or, it may even permanently control you

Dictating your every move

You can live blind if you live from the past

You can live clearly if you live with it

You can’t take it personally

The things that people have said or done

Most of the time, it’s not even about you

And if I look at myself

And put myself into anthers shoes

Who may be hurt by something I’ve done

I realize that it was usually because of my own fears

Having nothing to do with them at all

Living scared isn’t living

A petrified life is exactly like the tree that has been battered by the elements

Frozen in time

Lifeless

Rooted but never going to impress anyone again

With how tall it grew

We are not celebrated by how safely we lived life

We are celebrated by the times we courageously fought in the arena

Win or lose

At least we were on the hard dirt floor 

Fighting for something we believed in

Whatever that may be

At least we fought for it

Instead of letting it pass by us

- Evan Sanders 

 

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Like A Fist In A Bucket Of Water

I usually don’t do this, at least, the past 700 blogs I have written have never been a look into my week in hindsight. But this week seems to demand that type of writing, or at least, maybe my scorching heart.

One very important realization came to mind for me today when I was thinking about everything that has happened in the past 7 days.

When you spend your life trying to be a rock, you end realizing that you should actually be like water.

I realized that the most successful people in this world, the most adaptable people, are not made of concrete or iron or steel…because with enough force those can be broken – it’s the people who are like water that continue down the path with grace.

Thick skin can be penetrated.

If you are a person who survives on peoples compliments you will die from their criticisms. That reminds me of someone who is ever shapeshifting to please the people around them. The middle ground, I thought, was to have this exterior that was impenetrable to things that people would say or do. I found out that this approach really doesn’t work. Like I said before, I spent most of my life trying to harden up to protect the things that were inside of me. It looks like we are having a pretty honest moment here.

But this idea about water really stuck with me. Then I went digging and found the famous Bruce Lee quote about being like water and that really got me thinking.

It made me think of the situation I was in earlier this week. If you are a bucket of water, someone might stick their fist in to punch a hole in you, but as soon as they take it out the water flows right back into place. Sure the level raised a bit. There may be a few drips of water gone here or there…but in the end, no hole.

There are days and sometimes weeks when I really wonder when the next thing I am going to learn will be. Then…days like today hit. These are the days I love. Not because everything changed, but because I was given a little nugget in which I could send myself down a better direction.

In the past, I was easily offended by those who forgot about me, didn’t respond, or mistreated me. That was my “thick skin” or what I thought was thick skin, being cracked at left and right. But now, I realize, I don’t have to have thick skin at all. I have to adapt and adjust as I go…sometimes completely in the moment.

I have to be like water, so when I need to crash I can, and when I need to flow…I will.

- Evan Sanders

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Lightning In A Bottle

I have always felt that a politician be judged by the animosities he excites amongst his opponents.

- Winston Churchill

I bottled that comment

Lit up with lightning

Buried it deep down inside

And going to feel it burn

Every time I’m weak

Im going to feel it

Scorching hot deep down inside

See I think you forgot

I love that

I always have

I learned that lesson a long time ago

When my pitching coach told me

That if no one is talking about you

Criticisms, critiques or positive feedback

Then they have forgotten about you

You are nothing to them

It’s true

So thanks for the feedback

Thanks for the lightning

I feel honored to have such a worthy adversary

And behind that smile

I know what lurks deep within

That blackness spewing

All I can hope for is you have a chance to get it all out

Because that type of hate will ruin your life

It ruined mine once

Tore me apart

Bit

By

Bit

Destroyed my relationships

Made my love murky

And caused this addiction in the first place

Sent me spiraling down this road for 7 years

What you don’t understand

And what I never told you

Was about this story, about this problem

That I had

I know why I am doing this

And to think that it would destroy my tracks

Is dead wrong

Because this is bigger than me

It’s not about me

It’s about dreams, it’s for the countless people

Who have in one way or another gone through what I have

And to do anything but put that black coal in the fire

Would mean I didn’t to be the one to make this happen

Sure accomplishing this will feel great

But I have another half a trek to go

The steepest part of the mountain to climb

Don’t think that yelling from the base of it is going to change my mind

Or that it is somehow going to send an arrow sizzling into my back

I’ve thickened by skin there

Fell to many times

But always landed on my back

Because I knew that if I could look up and see the stars

That I would always get up

You are right

You have me thinking about what you said

But I love it

This is new territory for me

It’s a type of water unexplored

I can’t tell you how excited that makes me

So watch what happens

Keep an eye on what goes on

Find yourself getting anxious for September

I want you

To witness.

- Evan Sanders

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Not Everyone Likes Peaches

Someone once said it…something like

If your value is determined by people compliments, then you will also be destroyed by their criticisms.

I didn’t really understand this quote until today. But now, I really get it. Before I get into this, I want to share an amazing quote with you by Don Miguel Ruiz.

Ignore the rude people who talk about you behind your back. Being strong doesn’t mean you always have to fight the battle. True strength is being wise enough to walk away from the nonsense with your head held high.

I guess this is the first time in a long time that I have heard about someone saying bad things about me behind my back. For a second, it rocked me. For the minutes to hours after, it fueled me. I put those comments in a special place inside of me that I can go to every day when I need them. The truth is, motivation is many things for people. Ideally you would want to set a very positive goal for yourself and work towards achieving that goal. However, the fuel we must use may not always be clean.

Sometimes, it’s going to burn black.

I always talk about the balance of life…light and dark…especially within the soul, and I believe that we can find things within ourselves that will fuel our actions even if the fuel itself isn’t pure. I am talking about the times someone said something hurtful, hateful, rude or just brutal in all. For some, those things can absolutely ruin their ambitions. To be honest, that happened many times with me. I didn’t have the belief in myself yet to “do it” no matter what anyone said.

These things that people say, in the end, aren’t even really about you. I know cause I have been on the other side. I remember a time when I couldn’t say nice things because I hated myself. I hated that they were doing it and I couldn’t. I hated everything about that person because they could make the sacrifices…they had the willpower…they were actually…doing what I had always dreamed of.

You can spend your life blaming other people and trying to bring other people down because you have a crappy life or you can focus on loving yourself and others, something you actually really need in order to be a positive person, and encourage other people and their dreams. In the end, spewing hate only tears you apart. Karma comes back around in one way or another and takes care of business. Been there as well.

You are either for people or against them.

Be for people. Be for their dreams…that makes you a warm person inside. That cold heart you are harboring is only going to freeze harder and eventually split into hundreds of pieces. Hate, jealousy, and anger will cut you in half and you will spend years battling between the loving side and the hateful side. Once again, been there.

No matter what you do, people are going to not like you for some reason. They will be rubbed the wrong way, they won’t like your hair, your eyes, your nose, your scent, your image…they will find a way. Don’t sweat it. You’re on the right track.

Because no one has ever talked shit about someone who didn’t mean something to them in one way or another.

Remember that. Not everyone is going to like peaches.

So you must really matter to them. So much, in fact, that they are taking time out of their day to talk about you. What an honor.

This train isn’t stopping. In fact, if I let it stop because of a few stupid gossipy comment about me, I don’t deserve what I am going after. What I am going after is bigger than this…and in the end, bigger than me. It’s about supporting other people’s dreams. To really understand what it’s like to make a dream happen, I am going to have to accomplish one of my greatest ones.

So cheers…haters…I tip my cap to you. I must be headed in the right direction.

Yours truly,

- Evan Sanders

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The Mountain – Part I

We all have our mountains to climb. Mine started 50 days ago. Today, marks my halfway point up the mountain, and to be completely honest, I couldn’t be happier with how things have gone. 19lbs down. Inches gone. But most importantly, my mind has never been sharper.

Tonight, I want to talk about going after your goals, and how putting your heart and soul into one thing will positively infect the rest of your life.

We each have demons, dragons, and obstacles to overcome. Sometimes, well, most often there are many journeys we know we have to take. We have seen what is inside of us, things that we have let take safe haven inside of our hearts and we fully understand that sooner rather than later, we are going to have to head down into those caves and battle for our lives.

Don’t be mistaken, this is a battle for your life.

I continue to come back to this image that I have in my head, of the end. That moment when I am lying on my deathbed and the two options that are possible. Yes things may be slightly different depending on the situation, but this is about the last moment of life. In that last moment of life, you could be surrounded by light because you have  truly exhausted the gifts you have been given, or you could be surrounded in a moment of darkness, living fully in your knowledge that you didn’t give it a shot because you were scared – that last moment would be filled with regret.

But to take it even farther, for the person who didn’t leave it all out on the field, the ghosts of the dreams and talents they didn’t use would meet them in that last breath, along with the ghost of the person they could have become.

To me, this would be my worst nightmare…to make it to the end only to realize that I had never truly lived life at all.

So 50 days ago, I started a climb that I had never even truly scratched the surface of before.

And here I am, not in disbelief…because trust me I remember the hours that I have put in, but sitting here with a completely baffling thought – what else can I give?

The truth is, along your way, while people may drop off and things get very silent, you start to hear this voice inside of you. Life continues to throw its best at you and this little voice continues to say “Duck…dive…do whatever you have to do! You got this! Don’t sweat it.” Eventually, everything silences and you are left with just and that voice…the voice that no one else in the world can hear.

That voice, when you reach milestones, will ask you if you have more in you. Today, I was asked the question…and without regret I said yes. I have more. I can perfect the routine more. I can give a little bit more of myself to the process. As the weeks go by, and the effort continues, I am sure that the answer will be “Yes I have more.”

I would venture to say that this answer will never change for the rest of my life.

 

In terms of this goal, success is when I have reached 100 days of clean eating. It hasn’t been about the weight loss, it hasn’t been about creating something aesthetically pleasing to look at…those are byproducts of something much larger. Yes, the primary goal was to take care of my body in the best way I could, in order to take care of my mind and my soul. But in the end…it’s about proving to myself that I can do it. That I can create a vision, and see it through all the way to the end no matter what.

I will have more obstacles thrown at me…I know this is going to be the case…but I won’t be stopped.

This is titled The Mountain – Part 1 because there is another part to this journey. The second leg is the hardest…but the second leg has a different type of motivation – you know you are halfway there and every single day is a day closer to raising your hands in the air in victory.

Lastly, I want to say thank you to everyone out there who has supported this dream of mine and who has encouraged me daily…it means the world to me.

What mountain are you going to climb?

- Evan Sanders

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Writing Your Own Story

At times this next statement I am about to make may sound like the most unreasonable thing in the world…but in all honesty, it’s true. 

You can write your own story.

Our days are white pages. Yes the page before may have been extraordinarily painful or happy, but indeed today is a clean fresh sheet that you are capable of doing anything you want with. It is at your will. Whatever you wish…you can write on that sheet.

Do not soak todays page with yesterdays tears.

You story is your own. 

Do not let anyone else write it for you. Don’t live someone else’s life. Stand up for what you believe in and never sacrifice your quality of character for things that aren’t of value. Sometimes you have to make a stand for what is right. Sometimes that is going to bring you bad looks, arguments, and enemies. But you can spend your life scared of looking bad or making other people unhappy, or you can actually live. No matter how bright you shine, there will always be people that hate the sun, put up an umbrella to tone you down, or those who will bask and play in the light all day. Keep that in mind. 

There will be times where things come easily and there will be times that things get difficult. I love those challenging moments because they take what I have already and they demand me to do something I have never done before. In those times, I grow. In those times, I morph into something that I wasn’t before. I believe that the challenges that lay before us, while we still have the choice to actually face them, are something that we must mandatorily rise to in order to continue moving forward. Too often did I find myself stuck in a place because I hadn’t faced a challenge that I had for years.

You can write your own story.

Today, you can change courses wildly. You can head into the other direction. You can decide to take a leap into the deep forest of dreams and start searching around. 

The choice is yours. 

- Evan Sanders 

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