You can make it happen today. It takes mental strength to take charge of your life. There is one great thing about life, and it is the mind. The mind can tell you to do anything, to be anything, to do what you want. You have to tell yourself though, I deserve to be there. I deserve to see that long-term goal and end up there. But you have to believe it inside. You have to know that you will get there or else you will never get there. Trust me, I know….this process can be incredibly scary at times. But attribute succumbing to temptations as a lack of focus. Whatever it is in your life, if you know its bad for you and you do it anyways, you might want to sit dow and look at what your goals are and what your current dedication level is to your plan and just wonder ‘how committed am I?’ I have struggled with this a ton…I think everyone has…but its how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward right?

I am going to start doing book reviews and putting them up on the main page of The Better Man Projects. I read and listen to so many books on life and development that I think its time to share some of them with you and suggest some great books. Tomorrows post will be catered much more towards that idea, but I wanted to share one with you tonight. The book was  called Who Moved My Cheese? by Spencer Johnson. Without ruining the actually storyline of the book, I really want to tell you the main point I got out of it.

What would you do if you weren’t afraid? This is one of the greatest messages of the book. The main concept of the short story is that change is inevitable. Things are always going to change around you. That is just life. It is not wrong or right, good or bad…it is just how life works. With every sunrise there is a sunset. So what if we just adjusted simply with change when it happens. What if, instead of trying to analyze what is going on, we just looked at the situation, saw it for what it is, and adapt in a new way that will yield us more success. The problem is, and once again I am incredibly guilty of doing this, is trying to figure out what to do or why something happened that shouldn’t have happened. We all have those moments of playing the victim. But playing the victim only yields you with no success because you are afraid to move, to act, to throw those irons in the fire. You keep wishing that the Cheese you were eating hadn’t gone away…instead of running to find more cheese. Those who realize the Cheese is gone and then go to find different Cheese are the ones that are constantly eating success. Eventually, they will find all the Cheese in the world. As we go through life, things get taken from us…that is just part of life. Things we were holding on to dearly, things that meant a lot to us…the list goes on. But its only when you accept your current situation and decide “THIS IS NOT IT!” Go outside and yell “THIS IS MY TIME!” I don’t care if you are embarrassed of someone seeing you. How the hell will you go after what you truly believe in if you are too embarrassed of what other people will think of you. On just a quick side note, and I think this will definitely clarify a lot of my usage of the word you, I am speaking to myself a lot when I write. So when I use you now you know where I am coming from. I have always found it incredibly helpful to use the word you in talking to myself because I try to separate that weak part of me with the part that says “you can do it.” I learned something great this summer, and this is for real probably the most helpful thing I have learned in my life so far. You are not your thoughts and emotions. I will give you a short example of how this works.

It was described in an interview with Helen Keller that in the first 6 years of her life she was completely and entirely stimulus – response. Everything was a reaction to something. She described her life and completely black without thought or emotion.  However, after she started to learn language, she began to feel all sorts of emotions and had incredibly racing thoughts. It has been widely studied throughout psychology that our words and language create our thoughts and emotions. Whatever you say and write will eventually turn into what you are feeling and thinking about. This has incredible positive effects, but can also be massively detrimental to your mind if you continue to live in a state of depression. Then, if you continue to write about it…it will only live on with you each day through your language. The second example is to look at a gazelle out in a field…and all the sudden a lion comes and chases the gazelle. The gazelle gets away and is standing alone out in another field. Do you think the gazelle is picking up the phone ready to go talk to its shrink because it has gigantic vulnerability issues and is paranoid about going out into the field again. No. It is completely stimulus response. Fight or flight. The point of all of this is that you are not controlled by what you think or what you feel. Those are just little emotions that pop up no matter what. Go ahead and try to stop them. You can’t. But, you can recognize when they are coming up for you and what they mean to you. Then, you have the power to decide.

Effort. Putting in the effort and giving it your all will get you noticed and get you to where you need to go. Nothing short of 100% each day. No excuses. Go be the best there is.

Evan Sanders
The Better Man Project