Today, I begin building upon something that was once broken.
Here are all the things that a small misdiagnosis on my knee stopped me from doing.
Here are now all the things that I will be doing once I can walk again: my first triathlon, dunking, running, swimming, biking, hiking, climbing, squats, crossfit, football, basketball, baseball, taking walks, rowing…the list goes on and on.
But I promised myself something. I promised myself that during this period of recovery, I am going to eat unbelievably well to give my knee the best chance to recover.
I also promised myself, that I would get on the horse that is called my life. To begin creating! What am I going to create during this injury phase? I can’t wait for you to see.
I have a lot of time laying here in bed in between doctors visits, so this gives me a great opportunity to think about my goals and my future. My goal for today is to entirely complete all my goals for the next few months and how I am going to get there.
This is something that I will be implementing in my life every day…writing out my day in the morning and my goal for that day.
This will make sure I stay on track and don’t waste any time during the day.
One of my main goals is really to start putting together a lot of my writing and submit it. I think it would awesome to write to a lot of people.
More importantly though, I think I have learned a lot through the past few years which people may relate to.
There has been one thing that really has caught my eye over the past week though. The question has been posed to me a few times, “What one word would you want to describe you?”
Persistent, determined, bold, loving…but these words just kept popping up and none of them really took any ground in my head. I think that resilience is one of the greatest character traits to have.
If you are resilient, you can withstand anything. Any challenge, any obstacle, and fear. I have learned so much from someone who despite their inability to see this in themselves, they have so much resilience.
How do I know this?
I have heard the goals, I have seen the tears, I have felt the pain of not being where you want to be. But its so important to understand, that just because you aren’t where you want to be yet, doesn’t mean you can’t get there.
You just have to look at your life, your complaints, and everything else objectively and realize that you are having a breakdown in your life. How do you fix that? You create a new possibility for yourself.
You create something that you stand for, and stand for it. A strong person will only do strong things. A motivated person will never act lazy. It is in what you create. You can fully dictate your entire life.
While things do happen to you, you decide to either let them “happen” to you or flipping the cards you’ve been given and doing something with them.
Just listening to her speak, while she may not see it or hear it in her own mind, is motivating. But isn’t that a little off?
How can you hear someones resilience through tears? Actually, its easier than you think.
When someone wants something bad enough and is willing to do anything to get there…you can almost touch that drive.
I realize how inauthentic I have been throughout parts of my life. Saying I will do some things and then not doing them. That is inconsistent with the person I want to be.
No one said that after coming out of the Forum things would be perfect. But the matter of the fact is, I have the skills it takes to make them happen.
So, from this moment on in my life, I have created the possibility of being a person whose will is iron casted.
You know that big metal fist in detroit that symbolizes the cities car manufacturing and the heart it has even after it traveled through hell…think that.
So what does this entail. This entails actually doing everything I set out to do. Keeping my word.
Never breaking my integrity. And all around being something one day worth talking about. Thats what I want to do in life.
Make the biggest possible difference in this world that I can.
God only knows how Im going to get there, but I know that starting with building a iron casted foundation will be a good base for me.
I felt for a long time that I just needed to shut everything down and rest for a while. I think that is called getting burnt out.
What I am super excited about is being able to lift with a purpose again and training for something.
I wanted to compete so badly in a triathlon but then my knee gave out. I then wanted to compete in a Crossfit competition, but the same thing happened.
Well, I am keeping in my mind that “Impossible is Nothing.”
Sunday afternoon, I am crutching to the gym and working on my core and my upper body. My surgery simply means that I will not be able to lift on my legs. That is perfectly fine.
However, I am committed to doing everything else I need to do.
I chose the title Break to Build for this post because of my knee, but also because of my life.
Sometimes, you need to break everything down to build a new foundation.
Life will come at you in many different ways but its what you chose to do with it that will make all the difference.
Tomorrow, I begin this choice.
Evan Sanders
The Better Man Project