Things change like you would never believe.

Change though, is an amazing part of life. There is this great quote that I read over the summer. If you are going to play a big game in life, you are going to have big problems.

The bigger the game, the bigger the problems. I never really was used to this. After competitive baseball ended for me, the constant challenge of really really tough situations and high stress moments where I would really have to buckle down and dig deep ended for me (or at least I thought so).

That transition from playing sports to becoming a normal every day human being was really different. It took a long time to adjust to that. I really missed coming to the field every day, suiting up, and trying to get better and better.

I lost my way. 

Almost all of us dream. In fact, I don’t think you can’t dream.

I have been dreaming of becoming this type of person for a long time, and its funny how things used to elude me. I took it as failure. As being a failure. But, what I have learned over the past few months is that just because you fail at something does not make you a failure. It just means you failed.

Thomas Edison failed at creating the lightbulb thousands of times, and when asked what his opinion on this was, he answered by saying he effectively identified thousands of ways to not create the lightbulb…and that he was that much closer.

That, is how I have been thinking recently. You are going to create some messes in your life that you need to clean up eventually. It’s going to be really uncomfortable, and people are not exactly going to be sure of what your intentions are.

The only way you can prove your honesty, is to have integrity. Integrity to me is you honor your word as yourself. You put your flesh behind your promises. I really am trying my hardest of putting myself behind my word.

And when I break my word, I clean it up, and recommit to people.

I had the hardest time writing for a while. I am not sure why, but it doesn’t really matter does it. It was what it was, nothing more, nothing less.

There were some things that I needed to handle before I could come to this place.

I feel really good about a lot of aspects of my life right now, and in terms of the wheel of integrity, I have been keeping my word in 99% of the places that are important to me.

However, I really want to be at 100%, and to do that, I have to honor my word in my diet and in my health and fitness goals. I think mastery of cravings and of health goals is one of the hardest things to do.

You have to fight body sensations and the slew of crazy feelings you get when you are around the things you always used to eat. I think its about commitment though. You either have the results or the reasons why not.

I try to keep that in mind every day. 

Something else that is coming up for me is this constant recognition of feelings and thoughts. This is not something that I have had before.

Before, my feelings and my thoughts were so real to me and they became me. However, after this summer it was brought to my attention that this isn’t true.

They aren’t real, they are produced by the mechanism that just shovels junk into your head all day with judgements, interpretations, and just pure garbage about yourself. You can never turn this mechanism off. It will always be there.

However, knowing that it is producing this kind of stuff is really important. While it takes a while to get used to, it is nice to know what this part of your brain is creating. It’s nice to know because you can put a stop to it whenever you wish. 

I felt like I was in a small rut for a while, but after talking things out, I realize that it was just some of the problems that were coming up with having big goals.

These problems are going to arise and you have to deal with them carefully. Also, something I have kept in mind, is in order to add something new into your life, you have to subtract something old.

The moment you just keep adding and adding and adding you get overstocked with tons of things to do and wear yourself out.

I feel that I am at a good place right now, and that even though the ground I am walking on has been untouched, and I am slightly unsure of what I am doing, I feel great about taking that leap of faith. 

Evan Sanders
The Better Man Project