Evan Sanders's Blog, page 88

The Necessity Of Great Men & Women

Courage is rightly esteemed the first of human qualities . . . because it is the quality which guarantees all others

- Winston Churchill, British Prime Minister 

It has been said that in order to know where you are going, you must first know where you are. Truer words have never been spoken to me. In fact, it reminds me of February 09, 2011 when I started this project and I made a vow to go spiritual cave diving to find out just what that phrase knowing where you are truly mean to me. So I went diving down into the dark and what I found at first was scary, discouraging, and slightly frightening. But after a while, I realized the benefits of knowing the good and the bad about yourself.

When you know who you are down to your core . . . you can change.

I am not a huge believer in the fact that people change for other people. At least, maybe not sustainably. And maybe to be even more fair, lets keep this about big changes in someones life . . . not changes like “You need to help more around the house.” I am talking about the big stuff. The severe flaws in our character, for whatever reason, that often of times manifest themselves through destroying relationships . . . or hell, even ourselves.

It’s not going to be easy.

Change is hard. Really hard. In fact, the longer you have been doing something, the harder it is going to be. It is engrained into your character and is going to take pure willpower to make a true long-lasting difference in your life over time. Time, that’s the key word here. We all want immediate results, especially when we are in pain, but the truth is it’s going to take some time.

We are creatures of habit.

That being said, if you want something in your life that you don’t currently have, you have to be willing to do things that you weren’t doing before.

Change is not immediate, but if you keep yourself open to seeing steady results, you will be impressed by how often positive signs of reinforcement come your way.

This is where I am getting to the meat of it all.

We need more men & women in this world who don’t just want to be average or even good . . . we need more people  who want to be great.

We need men & women who stand for their dreams and make the sacrifices necessary in order to achieve them . . .  who get to where they want to go by NOT stepping on others . . . who not only stand for an idea but also stand for the greatness of others . . . who understand that wisdom and virtue are, in the end, the only two things that really matter in this life . . . and who dedicate their time to bettering the generations to come.

We need more men & women who enable others, not disable their dreams or put them down because they actually fear being overtaken. We need more men & women who are celebrated for their grand deeds for humanity rather than those who are currently celebrated for their contributions to spreading poison, bad energy, controversy, or become famous and put on a pedestal because they put out a sex tape.

We need more men & women who possess true courage. The type of courage that is undeniably shown through action rather than someone inappropriately citing that someone had courage, when they may or may not have had it in the first place.

We need more men & women who will take a stand for what is right and act while keeping in mind the generations to come.

Yes, these are the types of people we need. The ones who live in the face of fear. The ones who seek to understand what they do not know rather than passing it off. We need men & women who are hungry and willing to take it to the next step . . . who are willing to be for others . . . who strive consistently to better themselves in order to better the world.

Those are the people we need.

Become one.

- Evan Sanders

#BetterMW

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The String And The Tapestry

A single thread isn’t impressive.

It holds a few uses. It isn’t visually appealing. In fact, when you hold a single piece of thread, it looks…lonely. Yes, the lonely life of the single piece of string.

But when you take a skilled hand in combination with a trained eye, and that hand begins to weave those pieces of thread with others, all different in color…something beautiful begins to birth. In time, with conviction and patience, that single thread is a fundamental piece to a beautiful tapestry.

Our lives, I argue, are very much the same.

The decision to follow small planned activities day in and day out for the growth of your character and the benefit of your soul, in the end, creates something incredibly amazing. Each day can be viewed as a thread. A piece of string that if taken care of will be able to be a part of something that represents a bigger picture. I believe in full that each of us have the opportunity to take our lives and create them into something that we have only dreamed of before. Many of us won’t take that step because we are scared or because the fear of failure seems so humiliating that it sends shivering cracks of paralysis into the spot in our soul called action.

We must overcome this fear.

Courage. Courage cannot possibly exist without fear. In fact, courage is acting in the presence of fear. It is pushing yourself just beyond your limits and testing new waters. When we act with courage, we build momentum. In one way, you almost have to seek out situations that will test you. You have to confront your past…talk to that person you don’t want to…go skydiving or anything else that makes your heart race and is a testament to overcoming a fear.

This tapestry I speak of is a physical manifestation of our dream. The dream that umbrellas over all other wants, goals, needs and desires. It is overarching, powerful, and whispers in your ear late at night, “Chase me.” At times we get a sip of the life we would lead if we were living our dream and that only adds to our addiction to it. You must chase it. It is yours to have and only you can create it.

If you don’t chase it, you are committing spiritual suicide.

I have another fear to face and the momentum I have from the past almost 4 weeks of flawless bodybuilding, eating clean, and rocking work is going to help me. For a long time I have wondered how I could take The Better Man Project from where it is now to something else. I didn’t know what that was for a while, but after having this moment of clarity when I was watching a motivational speech given in front of 20,000 roaring fans, I knew what I wanted to do. Something inside me clicked and what came out was this…

I want that. I am going to go do that.

This moment made me think of the future with this project and how I should delegate my energy. Writing will always stay a constant, however, something new is brewing in the tank. I know exactly how it is going to look like at the beginning, and it is launching next Monday morning. I am spending this entire week building the foundations for it and as of next week, we are off on a entire new journey. For those who read this blog, I will tip you off.

Video. Speeches. Recommendations. Books to read. Poetry. Lyrics. Quotes of the day. All of which are going to be in video format.

Time to stretch myself. To give a little bit more. To enter into a world with blinding positivity and innovate in an area.

But here’s my challenge to you this week. At the beginning of every day, think about one positive character trait you want to focus on. Maybe your conviction in the conference room, your confidence in the gym, your charisma, your courage….but do it every single day. Stretch. Get uncomfortable and push yourself past your limits. The only way you are going to grow is if you constantly look for ways to do things a little bit better. Sure you are going to fail some, but it’s not going to kill you.

At the end of the week, you will have a pretty interesting looking tapestry. And who knows? You might just do this for the rest of your life.

- Evan Sanders

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The Dream Is Free. It’s The Hustle That ‘s Going To Cost You

I’ll tell you right now, the dream is absolutely free. Won’t cost you a dime. But the hustle? Oh that is going to cost you everything you have.

Tomorrow is an incredibly special day for me. As soon as the morning hits, that will mark three weeks of eating clean. It marks three weeks of cutting a substantial amount of calories, avoiding bad food, and working my butt off in the gym. I’ve lost 10 lbs, feel fantastic, and every single day I go at it again with renewed vigor and enthusiasm.

But it was hard. And I am about to make it a lot harder.

The first few days of this entire expedition were the worst. Cravings. Wanting to turn back. Doubt. Anxiety about the whole situation and some memories of how many times I have failed in the past all came up. But I didn’t look back and continued on. I set sail for that open ocean and now I am at the point of not even being close to seeing the shore. I am three weeks into open water, and I have another 79 days in front of me.

There is still a lot of sailing left to do.

Why is it about to get harder? As I have left the safety of the land and the shallower waters near the shore, I have started to enter into a place where the big waves occur. The monster ones. Those rogue waves that have rocked ships before. But as they say, a smooth sea never made a skilled sailor. I am ready. And more importantly, I am commanding my crew with confidence and conviction.

Three weeks marks another special occasion for me. Besides seeing my body change in front of me every single day (yes I have done fist pumps on the scale in the morning) it will represent achieving a milestone that I have honestly missed every single time I have tried to attempt it. It is the first big step, one of many, and yet, I am still so proud.

I know what is in front of me and I am taking this pride there. I will be tested. I am sure that adversity is going to find its way to challenge me again and again, but there is something different about this go at it. I think it’s the fact that my mentality has changed. What is that mentality?

It’s not over until I win.

There’s no room for failure being the end product. This dream, this wonderful dream that has always been free, is testing me and costing me dearly. Not in a financial way, but more in the spirit of sacrifice. Sacrifices are being made in order to achieve this. These are sacrifices I knew I needed to make, but never made because they caused me to feel incredibly uncomfortable in the past.

As I go on, every day I learn how to do something a little bit better. I am not demanding perfection out of myself, however, I am demanding I give my best effort. While my body and mind feel different every single day, I do not walk into the gym until I have decided that “I am now a bodybuilder. I am a professional. I will do whatever it takes tonight in order to achieve my envisioned end result.” Then, I go to work.

Most walk right in and start lifting. I know better. 10 – 15 minutes of warming up on the cardio machine just to get my mind prepared and the blood flowing. 20 – 30 sets of different types of abs. A meticulous stretching routine and then I am ready. Sometimes, it’s not rare to have had 40 minutes go by and I haven’t even started the core of my routine yet. But thats the sacrifice I had to make in order to get ready to give myself the best chance to grow and stay healthy in the gym. That is an example of one that I have never made.

But the challenges don’t end there. The challenges continue. Forcing myself to do the cardio that is necessary, making conscious food choices at home, avoiding foods and beverages that I now will only deter me from my dream and take my a few steps backwards…these decisions and daily obstacles exist in full. They are constant daily reminders of what I need to do and that I need to make the right decision…one that keeps in the end in mind.

These are the costs of your dream. Many people say “don’t count the costs of your dream…just do it.” I don’t really agree with this. I think you should know exactly what you are getting into, as much as you can at the beginning, and go from there. Because honestly, if you know what it is going to cost and you just give up on it…it wasn’t your dream. It was your interest. Theres a great old saying that says “There’s a difference between interest and commitment. When you’re interested in doing something, you do it only when it’s convenient. When you’re committed to something, you accept no excuses; only results” (Kenneth Blanchard).

And that is another new mentality that I have brought into the gym. It is a mentality that has whispered to my heart every day, “Can you give a little bit more today?” The answer, as my experience builds, is always yes. I can always do something a little bit smarter, better, and with more conviction.

If you have a dream, you have to leave the harbor.

You will never accomplish what you want to if you stay near the shore in the protection of the surrounding land. You have to grab you crew and head out. You can only bet that Columbus was excited and yet scared out of his mind of traveling west. That much open ocean could probably drive you mad. But he did it. You have to do the same.

Your special stuff, your magic, is going to come when you start to get really uncomfortable.

And then…poof…you became something that you created in your mind. You did the most amazing form of alchemy…turning dreams into a reality. That is worth it’s weight in something more than gold.

- Evan Sanders

The post The Dream Is Free. It’s The Hustle That ‘s Going To Cost You appeared first on The Better Man Project.

True Love’s Perfect Imperfections

Heartbreak and I have shared the same couch many times. I have been on the receiving end and I am sure that I have delivered the bad news on many occasions. When things spiral out of control, or sometimes, when you see them fall apart even before it actually happens, the reality begins to sends cracks of pain down into your heart. Like the frost crystalizing across a window, your love and emotion begin to have the sharp jagged edges of ice creep and crawl their way into them.

If you aren’t careful, the frost can turn into something much worse. The shaking hands you have of receiving horrible news while looking at the screen on your phone can turn into ones clenched. Many will not strike anything, but those clenched fists send this horrible energy right into your chest. Your once overwhelming moments of joy turn into anger, pain, and at its worst…hate.

You let that into your life. You allowed that moment to destroy you. And it will, I promise you. For as long as it takes, you will battle the feelings and memories of love you have with the current feelings of pain, regret, and the looming weight of hate. Jung said, “The brighter the light the darker the shadow.” I would have to agree. I have found that as I try to break out of my shell more and more as time goes on, I also find that the moments of darkness get blacker. The opposites polarize even more.

On one end you may see this as a really bad thing. Why in the world would being susceptible to a deeper shade of black be a good thing? This darkness, while uncomfortable, has given me the ability to appreciate the moments of light. This darkness, has given me the ability to not only understand myself at my worst, and know that I can make a choice to stay in it or get out of it, but it has also given me the opportunities to empathetically feel other people’s pain. To be able to look them in the eyes and without them even saying anything…I can already understand what they are going through. This, is something I was never able to do. I was never able to connect with people on that level because I was afraid of the dark. I was afraid of the pain.

These things, these emotions, these uncomfortable thoughts are nothing to be feared. If you leave yourself open to the true possibilities of life everything is going to be presented to you. Great angst follows the suit of great celebration as does the moon following the sun. You must realize though that we are never left without light. There is light in every single situation. The shaking hands that I talked about earlier – there was light in that. There was freedom from something. Wings were given. But at the time, I sure didn’t see it like that. In time though, it all came around.

 

Love is giving someone the power to destroy you…but trusting them not to. That trust is the most important thing in the world. But I want to talk about something that many quotes or sayings don’t talk about.

It’s ok. It’s okay to have your love burned to the ground.

I believe, and many might disagree with me but this is the choice I have made in my mind, that each of us do have someone on this planet whose heart will match up perfectly with ours. Many times throughout my life I have found that things were incredibly good and that there was a warmth inside that started to heat up. You can call it love, call it whatever you want to, but the reality is that the frost from the old was starting to recede. That the soul was beginning to light up and that feeling was pain leaving the body. Maybe it wasn’t the right one or as many call it your “soul mate” but you caught a glimpse of that feeling that feels so good inside.

It’s okay to get burned to the ground for many reasons. The first being that you immediately know that it wasn’t the right person for you. Funny enough, we get little twinges along the way in most of our relationships that tell us it’s not right in some way or another. True relationships take work, but you always have to trust your gut and intuition – there are many things that go on in our lives and in our minds that lead us to the right path and we just have to trust that it is indeed right for us.

Getting destroyed teaches us a lot more about ourselves that anything else. We get to see how we react to adversity. We can begin to understand how we process pain and the negative emotions that come along with it. Most of all, we get to make a choice that can be one of the most difficult decisions there is out there: play it safe and guard myself in the future from more pain or break out of this and continue giving people and the world my best – and another heartbreak may come – but I refuse to die and unlived and unloved life.

That’s the key.

Because in the end, that’s the biggest decision you can make…and it ends up translating into the rest of your life. Play it safe or give another trusting wild go at it. The power of the heart and being able to deliver passion and love into your life trumps everything else. While I do believe that the world is very balanced in its ways – what goes up must come down – I do believe that we can make the ups last longer and decide to hike out of the lows faster. I would venture to say that is the greatest lesson I have learned over the past 7 months.

When you decide to give your best, when you decide to love your heart out, when you decide to take a risk, you are not just making a decision about the people in your life, but you are making one of the greatest decisions you can when wanting to follow your true calling and dreams. That type of energy is infectious and magnetic. You will attract things into your life because you are looking for them.

You will love yourself.

Loving yourself starts with the clearing out of everything else that you are holding onto. Pain from past situations. Regrets. Anxiety. You have to get it all out. There are situations you need to resolve and there are many things you have to let go. With all of that frost in your soul, you have no shot to love yourself, love others fully, or even treat people right.

If I had to tell you one of the most influential things I have ever done in my life, it was clearing up my past. It was making the phone calls, writing the letters, and getting really uncomfortable. “You must do the thing you think you cannot do” said E. Roosevelt. For many, it’s looking into our past and resolving the conflicts, admitting our wrongs, and giving ourselves the opportunities to be freed from the mental shackles of something that doesn’t even exist anymore.

Free yourself.

Love deeply.

Build yourself back after you have been destroyed.

Live now.

- Evan Sanders

 

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My Time Will Come

In time, I will join the party

But I am still getting dressed

I’ve past the stage of not knowing what I want to wear

Oh lord did I pick out something nice

But it’s going to take time to put on

It’s going to take help

But when they open the door for me in the car

And I take that first step out

I will have arrived

It is not my time now

Oh, but that time will come

It is not that time now

But, in time, I will arrive

I can see the end even at the beginning

I have the reasons in my mind for even starting

Yet even during this journey I know there will be a series of course corrections

Minor alterations

To make sure this suit fits perfectly

Oh, it is not my time now

But that time will come.

And when it comes

A voice will come out that has never been heard before

A stage set only for me

And I will command it

I used to not only fear failure

But I used to fear success

What would happen if I achieved my dream?

And couldn’t handle it?

But weeks ago both fears dissipated

Sifted through my fingers like sand on a beach

Now, only left with moments throughout the day

In which I can create at will

All for that moment

When I am fully dressed

And fix my tie one last time

To capture my destiny.

- Evan Sanders

 

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Shine Bright Like A Diamond

It’s only when you really start looking at it do you realize how much other peoples actions, attitudes, and the things they say take a toll on our own moods. At its worst, it can take a toll on your ambitions.

These past few months haven’t been the easiest for a few reasons. One of the first is that I really had to take a hard look at my life and realize who is incredibly important to me. Not that other people aren’t important, but I am talking about those that would be there I had to make a dream team of people around me. The people who would sit at the table with me after everyone else has exited the room and give me their counsel and best advice. My most trusted crew. Because of this, I have gone through some serious growing pains. It made me realize that there will always be those who want to come and help when the time is right, but they cannot be expected to be there at all times. There will also be those who will only arrive when you’re fighting the battle of your life. Like I said, they cannot be expected to be there at all times.

But these growing pains made me realize just how much my life was being driven by the actions of others. I think its really easy to get caught up in what other people are doing and forgetting about what you are supposed to be doing. There is a concept of “locus of control” which talks about if you are driven by exterior or interior motives. In terms of motivation…I would be incredibly internal. But what I realized was that my attitude and a great deal of my emotions were driven by external factors – not how I was feeling inside.

Maybe this is just a piece of who I am, but the reality is that even though you are someone who derives a great deal of pleasure and happiness by making other people feel good, you cannot expect reciprocation or appreciation. In fact, you cannot expect at all. You must do it because you feel that it is the best thing to do for you, your friends, your family, and the world. You must give your best no matter the outcome.

All of this made me realize that I had to match up my control mechanisms. To give great amounts because of what is driving me inside, and to make my worth based on how proud I was feeling about what I have done. Of course it is always nice to be appreciated, and there will be moments where I look for positive feedback, but the sliding scale of how much I base my emotions and feelings off of others needs to change a bit.

 

I love with my heart full and it feels like crap when I feel like I am alone. But the reality is very far from that. I am greatly loved, and I just have to know that. I have to know deep down no matter how quiet it gets that this is a fact. An indisputable fact.

Growing pains suck, but the results will change your life. Speaking of growing pains…you are going to see some serious results of dreams in action as I approach the end of the 3rd week of my personal challenge. 11 more weeks to go, but I have been going strong and learning more about myself than I possibly could have imagined.

Happy Fathers Day to all of those dads out there. Thank you for helping create great sons.

- Evan Sanders

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Confidence Is Key

If you can determine a way a man thinks about himself, you won’t even have to watch what he will do.

Confidence is one of the hardest things to develop. Real confidence. Not the fake stunting and fronts that people put up. I am talking about the type of confidence a man can have when he doesn’t even need to play himself up or talk about himself. I’ve seen this in other people and you know, even behind their nice demeanor and great smile, that they have a “I am going to eat this opportunity alive” type of confidence. I wanted that. I am developing it.

The last time I had that type of confidence was when I was on fire pitching in my senior year of high school. It didn’t matter who was coming up to the plate I was going to throw my pitches with conviction and I knew that I was going to get them out.

Our confidence takes hits throughout the years. When baseball ended, my baseball mentality started to dwindle. That mentality would have kept me out of a lot of bad situations in life. Because when you walk someone in baseball, you have to keep your eye on the runner but focus on the batter at hand. If you mind is elsewhere, you are going to have a horrible inning because the negatives are going to start piling up on you.

Life works in the exact same way.

If you take your mind out of the now and you start focusing on the past or the future, you are going to get raked. Not being present and going through the motions because of it is one of the worst habits to fall into. You become a gigantic self defeating ball of mediocrity and if you even have some great dreams and take some shots at them, you are going to take yourself out in the end anyways.

You have to develop confidence

But how?

Focus on the small wins of the day. You might not have any confidence now, but if you focus on the small stuff, those little steps that climb mountains, you will start gaining momentum. When you focus on the small things and understand that they are part of the bigger picture, you give yourself the best chance to succeed. I have always felt like I got lucky when I didn’t prepare and I did well. Luck is the worst thing that can happen to you. Why? Because you were rewarded for not preparing and came out successful. Thing is, your mind will tell you that you can do it again because hell…it happened and worked out last time right?

Wrong

Prepare your butt off and be ready for an opportunity. It is better to be prepared and not have an opportunity than to have one and be underprepared. Keep that in mind. Do what you have to do day in and day out and you will be ready for the chance the rolls across the table.

Strike at it.

- Evan Sanders

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Courage Does Not Always Roar

 

There’s an old saying – courage doesn’t always roar.

When I was little, I used to think that an act of courage was defined by how much it was recognized by the rest of the world. How much press you received, how many people saw you in your moment of glory, and the aftermath – the people patting you on the back and loving you for what you did.

I’ve grown. Literally and figuratively.

Courage for me has changed time and time again. From that view the little boy had to now…a developing young man. I am always in the mentality of “bettering.” How can I bring something better to the table today? Can I work a little smarter? Can I lift a little harder? Can I write a little more from the heart? The answer is always yes. You can always do something a little bit better. You can always put in a little bit more effort. Truly, I believe, we actually have no idea what we are capable of.

But like I said before, courage doesn’t always roar.

In fact, it rarely does. In all of the things that happen every single day, how many of them do you actually see or hear about? Not many at all. But they are happening. For me, at the inception of this project, the greatest courage I could muster up was putting my trembling fingers to the keys. To write down my feelings and what was in my heart, no matter how painful, and at the same time try to protect the privacy of others and in all…do it all out of love. It was hard. Really hard.

Sometimes it still is really hard when life throws its best fastball high and tight up in around my chin and knocks me down.

I remember back in the early days of my baseball career, walking up to the plate against pitchers who were throwing really hard and fearing that I was going to get hit. I wasn’t even negatively thinking about striking out. There was something associated with all of that pain that I just couldn’t get over. When I actually started viewing it all as a challenge that I was willing to accept, and gearing myself up get a hit instead of getting hit…my batting average changed significantly.

Life works a lot in the same way. Sometimes you get hit by a pitch or you get knocked down and you find it hard to step back into the batters box.

Events happen in our daily lives that frankly, scare the living hell out of us. People get taken too early, we lose friends, we get cheated on, we get our hearts broken, we get stuck in abuse, we abuse drugs, alcohol, food, and add anything else you want to this list. The scroll of things we can get ourselves stuck in is close to endless. And on the other side of all of the ways these things make us feel – the grief, shame, fear, anxiety…hate… – there stands a light on the other side.

I will be the first one to admit that when you get stuck in the dark, it becomes very hard to see the light. I used to be so scared of the dark. But I don’t think I was scared of the dark as much of as being scared of what I could not see. I would fear the fact that I was surrounded by blackness, rather than focusing on the fact that I was the brightest thing in that night moving through waves of colorless night.

See yourself as a light.

When you begin to see yourself as a light, you find the inspiration deep within to create. More importantly, you take what is in your heart, what you know you should be doing, and start making it. Because you are the only one that can actually make it happen. You are the only one that can take that dream, just like it is in your head, and turn it into reality. It’s you. It’s only you. When you realize this, man, the world starts getting out of your way and starts helping you out.

Don’t fight the current of your heart. No matter how strong you try to row that boat, eventually you are going to continue to drift downstream with what you are supposed to be doing. Don’t fight this until you die. Instead, turn that boat around and rip roar downstream. Enjoy the current. Enjoy the speed. Enjoy the rapids of your passions.

Grow. Grow for you. Grow for your family and friends. Live like you were going to die and be ridiculous like you were a crazy man chasing happiness. Love. Love not only as a way of connecting with others, but as a way of healing your own heart. Bringing warmth into your life comes from within. It is much easier to defrost by starting from the inside out.

Heat up that core. The world will benefit from your love. And even though they may not appreciate it in the moment, people will always remember you for how you made them feel.

- Evan Sanders

 

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Last Night In A Dream I Died

 

Paraphrased from the Beats commercial

Today is another important day in our lives.

So…today…live

Live like it’s the last day of your life

Live like…

You’re a crazy man chasing happiness

Live for your family and friends

Today be happy

Enjoy life

Alright?

But there’s one more thing…

It’s important that you don’t hold back.

This quote has been recently written on my large blackboard and I have read it every single morning out loud. But I don’t want to talk about this quote, I want to talk about this dream.

Last night, I saw myself die an old happy man. My wife’s hand was there holding mine and I somehow knew that there were thousands of people outside the hospital. That room was bright, it was peaceful…everything was whiter than white. As I held her hand, and I could feel my own breath slowing, I whispered something into her ear. “We really did it didn’t we.” I looked down at my bare feet as if to make sure I had no rubber left on my shoes, and then whispered once again, “All engines burnt out. It’s been a wonderful life.”

Then it was all gone. Perfectly gone.

I woke up from this dream around midnight and knew exactly how I needed to live. I needed to not hold anything back and to roar ahead to the end. We are all given a death sentence in this life. Some of us are here for longer than others. But there is something about seeing your own that makes you look at yourself now and really see things precisely for what they are. What I saw, presumably many many many decades down the line, was a man who went out happy because he stayed in the game his entire life. He never stopped producing. He never stopped doing. He never stopped creating. That man was surrounded in light because he created his dreams.

I am in the process of birthing those dreams.

For the past almost two weeks I have been giving my complete and undivided attention to my health goal. Needless to say, it has been one hell of an experience and I have been wildly successful in doing it. As proud as I am of the first baby steps, there is still a long way to go. In fact, to be precise,  there’s 89 days left. But these first 11 days have been flawless. They are a foundation in which I have built upon actually making the sacrifices for what I want.

Every person who has ever achieved anything will tell you that…that you have to make the sacrifices to get what you want.

You have to give things up. You have to believe in a grand vision and know that not only you will be a better person when you walk out of it, but the world will also benefit from your sacrifices. In order to become the person you want, to be the person you want to be, to improve upon yourself and to take things to the next level, you have to be excited about growing pains.

It may not seem like much to the outsider, but to me, over the past 11 days, I am most proud of that one day I walked out of the gym exhausted, pouring sweat, knees and shins hurting, and talked myself into taking a 2 mile run. Every step was agony. 3/4 the way through I wanted to stop. Just to walk the rest of the way because I was in pain. My muscles were already aching from the start from a brutal leg workout and I was at the point of not being able to take anymore in my head. But I kept going. I said to myself repeatedly

It’s not over until I win.

And it isn’t. This whole thing isn’t going to be  close to over until I stand at the end in victory. No matter how hard it gets. No matter what the setback may be. I will control whatever I can control and this is not over until I win.

Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes, courage is dropping the weight, realizing that you had a crappy set, and even if its not on your game plan picking it back up and giving it your best effort. Why is that courage? Because you had the ability to look yourself in the mirror and admit that you didn’t give it your all. Your ego doesn’t even come close to manipulating the situation and you give it another go. To me, small acts of courage throughout the day are what builds champions. Eventually, those small acts just become part of your routine. I am sure that there are some things I do throughout the day that people must think are ridiculous, but they are a part of me. They are a part of the formula I have tried and failed at over and over again…but have somehow through failure found things that work.

There’s an old saying…”Even a broken clock is right twice a day. Fail your way to success.”

I will end with this today, and I hope you wish this for yourself as well. I don’t want this to be easy. I want this to be the hardest damn thing I’ve ever done. I want to earn every last inch of this with sweat, blood, and tears. At the end, I will have conquered all my fear and set fire to all my doubts. I will stand a changed man not because of luck, but forged from iron and the product of pure will.

Live today, like you are a crazy man chasing happiness.

- Evan Sanders

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What Pain, Regret, Fear & Shame Taught Me

“There’s a difference between interest and commitment. When you’re interested in something, you do it only when it’s convenient. When you’re committed to something, you accept no excuses; only results.

- Kenneth Blanchard

You can’t always start out doing things to the best of your ability. You can try, but the fact of the matter is you need a little bit of a warmup period because of the learning curve. This past week for me has been huge. Not only have I officially accomplished my first week of training, but I succeeded in losing almost 5 lbs, staying entirely invested in my health and the foods I was putting in my body, and gearing up for week 2. Week 1 was deemed the “getting the ball rolling” week where I could focus on the most important thing on my mind, my health, and then letting some of the other things slide if I needed to. I have built the foundation for this 13 week commitment.

You need to surround yourself with winners, dreamers, strivers and seekers. You can’t expect yourself to stay happy and racing towards your dreams if the people around you are dragging you down. You need to surround yourself with people who are better than you so you can grow. You need to surround yourself with those who you can pull strength from when you need it. Yesterday specifically, in between an incredibly hard 10 minutes in the gym, I sat down on a bench and thought about my friend who is dancing away with her dream right now and got back up and worked for another hour and a half.

When you begin to make your pain part of your story, you will write an even greater adventure.

Pain can be fuel if you view it that way. For the longest time, my pain, heartbreak, regret and shame destroyed me from in the inside out. Instead of using all of this as a mechanism to fuel my tank, to show the world who I was, and to prove those who had hated on me wrong – I allowed it to sink in. Worst of all, I started to believe what they said about me.

What other people say about you can hurt. It can make you shut off. It can make you hang your head. It can make you avoid groups of people altogether. It can turn you into a recluse and retreat within yourself. In high school, I would avoid people altogether because I was tired of being made fun of. I felt like I had lots of things to say, but they all would get stuck in my gut because of fear. So I would just leave large social situations or not even go in the first place. Eating lunch by yourself isn’t really that fun.

But all things pass. The worst of the worst passes. Your fear begins to turn into courage if you begin searching within yourself for change. I found out that a lot of the things that were destroying me were allowed by me. I let them ruin me. I let them tear me apart as much as they did. Eventually, I stopped caring about the negative and started focusing on the positive. Once I started making that choice, I started looking for things that would reinforce my mindset. Music, specific people, books, tapes, writing, the gym. If it didn’t make me feel good, I would avoid it. I got stuck in a few things along the way, but that’s what I am fighting against right now. To release those last remnants of my past and to become a new man, free of chains and bonds of old, on my 25th birthday next month.

It’s hard to see what is controlling you without being honest with yourself. When you can finally say “I need some help with this” you open yourself up to a world of possibilities. The people around you magically say the right things to you, you start to bring things into your life that you didn’t have before, and your pain withers away as you are focusing on bringing light into your life.

You have a choice: light or dark. As we go throughout life, of course there is a sliding scale of what actually is occurring in our world. Sometimes its a bit darker than normal. Sometimes it’s a bit brighter that normal. But the fundamental question you have to ask yourself is “Do I live in a world full of light or a world full of darkness?”

I chose light a while ago.

And here’s the thing, no matter how dark it became, there was always a little flicker of light.

- Evan Sanders

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