Evan Sanders's Blog, page 93

Inspirational Quotes

It Would Be Spiritual Suicide

Not going after your dream is spiritual suicide.

It was fear that stopped me from taking my first steps. It was fear that prevented me from committing to a path that I knew was going to be incredibly lonely but worthwhile. What I couldn’t say for a long time is “I can do that.” However, now I say “It’s possible.” It’s possible to accomplish this dream. It’s possible to be what I know I can be. Will I have to change in order to accomplish this? Yes. I will have to do things I have never done in order to become the man I want to be.

You can become comfortable. You can become stagnant. You heart can beat with less passion. But when this happens, expect normality. Expect nothing short of mediocrity. If that’s where you want to live then fine…but for me, when I am looking into my heart and trying to find what I want to do with myself…there is no room for mediocrity.

It’s the small steps that climb mountains. It’s the daily efforts that are unseen by everyone that make all the difference in the world. Champions are made in the routine. The war is between you and yourself. Only you are responsible for the greatest amount of dedication you can bring forth. You have to give it your absolute all. You have to put your heart and soul towards it.

Bring forth your greatest asset – your spirit

Behind every fear is the person you want to be. But fear can paralyze us all. It can stop us from accomplishing what we ache to achieve. When fear is greater than our desire to see something succeed, we will never change. We will remain in tar. Your spirit will begin to flicker and soften.

Fear is a liar.

Fear will tell you no more than anything else in this world. Fear, the strongest type, comes from within. You can answer to it or you can be a slave to it. You can use it to motivate yourself or you can let it destroy your life drip by drip. Do not think for a second that the constant dripping of fear onto your dream is insignificant. An uncontrolled drip over time can put a hole in you.

It’s spiritual suicide to not go after the dream that has continued to remain strong in your mind despite the failures. You must answer the call. You must because you can. Without it, the dream will die with you and the world will never see what you could have truly offered it.

Take that dream out of your head and create it. Make it happen. You will be the happiest you have ever been.

- Evan Sanders

 

The Two Places You Absolutely Can’t Live

C.S. Lewis had it right. The future is far better than what we leave behind.

It makes me think. I’ll be honest, trips back to the past in my mind and sometimes in my life happen quite often. Sometimes I get caught up in thinking that things were a lot better back then than they are now. But that’s never really the case is it? Back then, well, we were struggling just as much as we are now. When you think of it that way, you begin to realize that you are so much stronger now in comparison to back then. You are now the future, at least I hope, of what you dreamed of such a long time ago. I know at least big parts of me are.

Living in uncertainty is one of the most challenging times you can ever have. But good things do come from it. That struggle to figure out what you really want to do and what is good for you hardens your resolve over time. It can be horribly difficult, but in the long run being tested is one of the best things that can happen to you. It forces you to adapt and adjust to the circumstance. You can either rise to the challenge of crumble. Up to you completely.

You can only live in the present. Not the past. Not the future.

When you try to live in the past or the future, well, you don’t live at all. In reality, there is only this moment. Our minds can drift, but as the world is turning, this moment is the only one that exists. When you can break it down to that, you begin to realize the importance of time. When life gets really loud and a lot of things are flooding in from everywhere but the present, that’s when taking a deep breath and realizing that nothing else exists but this moment comes into play.

Life can get really loud. I mean…screaming loud. But if you can calm those voices down in your head and find a way to get back into what you can do at this moment, well, you then have the world at your fingertips. You have the ability to separate, divide and conquer the moments as they roll in.

Live in the now. Live in the beauty of this moment…the one right here, here, here, here, here. Funny how you can say that, but it seriously is the truth. Stay out of the future. Stay out of the past. Create yourself each and every second.

- Evan Sanders

P.S. For the best speech ever on this…check this bad boy out

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The Dream Of Life – Alan Watts

There’s aren’t enough words to describe how powerful this video is for me. It’s in my iPod and every single morning before I lift I listen to this speech. It’s absolutely stunning. Inspirational. Motivating. It’s everything to me. I would like for you to watch it and tell me what you think.

- Evan Sanders

Upworthy Just Hired A Viking? 49 Reasons Why

So I thought in an effort to do things a little bit differently, I would compile a list of 49 reasons why you should hire me as your next Curator at Upworthy. In all honesty, this job sounds like it was designed for me. Here we go.

Call me Katniss…I hunt good content on the web like I’m in The Hunger Games
I can work from anywhere…except underwater
The bigger the project, the greater my excitement
I love the pressure. I was our closing pitcher in high school
I like to eat problems. They consist of roughly 15% of my diet
Majored in Marketing
Minored in Entrepreneurship
3+ plus years ago I started a journey to become a better man
If we ever have a team camping trip, and run out of food, I can fish…and fend off packs of bears
I prefer conservateur (curator in French)
I’m not scared of the dark
Social media runs thick in my blood (Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram) 
Love is at my core
Passion drives me
I will never quit
Data and I have a personal relationship…but not like the one in Her
The Container Store makes me warm inside
I like to think outside of the box…then take it apart and turn it into something else
I love creating communities of people. My tribe is around 60,000
I’ve written almost 600+ blogs

I Appreciate A Good Headline

When someone says smart, I think Specific Measurable Achievable Realistic Time based goals
I’m always looking to innovate and make things better
I’m a hopeful romantic
I want to make a difference in the world
My mission – to inspire people to live powerful and impassioned lives
This is a dream job. Nuff’ said
If I don’t know the answer to something, I know where to go looking for it
I aspire to inspire…which sometimes causes me to perspire
I have a slight obsession with personal development
Parents trust me with their children
I’m reliable
Mediocrity is the enemy
I’ve spent almost every day for the last few months looking at videos on Upworthy
Hard working? Up at 5, in the gym till 8:15, work all day, cardio at night
I have my sh*t together
On The Beauty Of Women
Flexible? I can touch my toes
I love to learn
“Make it simple but significant” – Don Draper
Editing is sexy
Teamwork? I envision the Spartan Phalanx
I Seek To Live A Bold Life
The visual aspect absolutely adds to the story – A little about me
“Write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence you know.” – Hemingway
You either have the results or the reasons why not
I like to change the game
I’m personally accountable
But really…my ancestors were Vikings. Comon’ there’s always room for a Viking

So how about we do this?

- Evan Sanders

thebettermanprojects@gmail.com

What Goes Around Comes Around

Forgiveness. It’s the only way to settle your soul.

Thing is, it can be the hardest thing in the world to forgive. Everything inside of you wants to hold onto being right instead of just letting the past go and allowing yourself to step into the future. It’s easy to focus on how much you are hurting. It’s almost painfully difficult to let it all go and pick your head up.

Take the punch like a champion. Get your butt knocked down and get right back up and move forward. I say this easily…but I know it’s not that easy. The past does come back up. It stays with you like an unwelcome guest. You have to be cordial with it because “hey it’s my past.” However I can to the realization a short time ago that you can draw your line with the negative emotions that try to sneak up on you and decide that you are going to be more productive with your life instead of complaining and moaning about how much the old stuff happened to suck.

Forgive.

Forgive yourself. Forgive others. Open your heart and your mind back up to the possibilities of today and start moving forward from the past. There is nothing you can do anymore. You can’t erase it. You can’t delete the people out of your life. No…you can only move forward. The only time you can ever live is now.

The energy you put out into the world ends up coming back to you in one way or another. Karma, many call it, is a existent and present force in my life. It whispers in my ear, “I saw that” and I course correct. I know it’s going to come back and bite me in the butt if I don’t change the way I am acting or apologize for what I have done. A lot of the time it seems like there is a battle going on inside where one side tells me just to forget about it and the other urges me on to correct my wrongs. In the end, I pretty much always listen to the voice telling me to take the better path.

Developing ice and hate in your heart will destroy you from within. It will crumble you down to your foundation and then go to work on that if you don’t end up trying to stop it. It will destroy friendships, your will, and your life every single opportunity it can. Your shell will remain…but you will be a hollow version of yourself in the end. Numb. Passionless. Angry.

The only way to combat a cold heart is to forgive yourself and others.

Things will start to warm up after that…but you have to do the hard work first. The best news I ever received years ago was actually the worst news. That I was in a very bad place and I had a significant amount of work to do. The only way to go was up. So I did. Blew up those balloons, attached them to my house, and floated up into the sky.

If you haven’t noticed, today is all about forgiveness. One of the only ways you can move away from the old and into the new is through this route. It brought me out of hell. It has taken me beyond where I could have possibly been without it. And in the end, we can do amazing things with being able to open our hearts to people who have taken a swing at them before.

Life, emotions, thoughts, and actions in this world are very complicated. If you believe that it is black and white, well, then you are living in a world absent of color. Life is colorful. A massive amount of our life lies in the middle ground. People make mistakes. Very very good people make mistakes. It’s your job, if you are trying to make people feel loved, to forgive them.

Which path will you take?

- Evan Sanders

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What 1 Thing You Must Absolutely Believe In

Yourself.

You must absolutely believe in yourself to achieve your dreams. Because if you don’t think you can do it, well, it will simply never happen. Life is going to continue on with or without you. You might as well start believing that you are capable of amazing things.

I have battled many times against not believing in myself. In fact, I would say singlehandedly that the greatest enemy of my goals and dreams is myself. You could compile as many inspirational quotes as you want. You could read on how to be the best man you could be. You can study the most famous people in the world…but if you don’t have it inside you will never even make a dent. You will burn out and recede back into the darkness.

The key to success can be found within yourself. Yes there are others who you can learn from…however, at the end of the day, you are the only one who truly knows how to turn it on and off. You are the only one that can make it or break it. Look within – most of your answers are hanging out there.

- Evan Sanders

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Your Life Is A Jellybean – 2,740 Of Them

This video brought me so much perspective. You just keep watching the jellybeans disappear. We have a choice every single day of what we want to do with our time when we are not spending it sleeping, working, grooming, etc. What will you do? Who will you be?

I think it’s also important to do something you love in regards to work. If you are doing something you hate, well, you are wasting such an amazing amount of time. Think about it.

Check out the video

- Evan Sanders

The Iron Never Lies

 

The iron never lies. There’s something about gripping the bar and pushing yourself. Breaking yourself down to build yourself into something stronger. There’s nothing like it in the world. Unique in its own way. Punishing and rewarding. You set your own weight and it pushes you for more. 

But the one thing it does better than anything else is bring out your will. 

Your will for a few more. Your will to push through the pain. The vision hits your eyes every single time you look in the mirror. 

But I don’t lift for ego. For aesthetic value. For cardio. No. I lift for something far greater. I lift for greatness inside. I lift for the effects. Building confidence. Determination. Pursuit of a goal. Drive. Will. Tenaciousness. Because as soon as I’m done with that session, everything else in the day is subject to my attitude of how I am in the gym. I can tackle anything because I just tackled squatting with 400lbs on my back and struggling to get one more rep despite my body shaking and my mind telling me no. 

Nothing else in my day will challenge me as much as that moment when my mind, body, and soul are challenged to their breaking point. And if something does, well, I’ve been there a million times. A thousands of sets. Hundreds of thousands of reps. I live there. In that struggle and in that feeling of failure yet victory. 

That’s why I lift. Everything else comes secondary to my soul being ignited. 

- Evan Sanders

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An Inspirational Snack