Your decisions to live uncomfortably today eventually lead to a greater comfort down the road. Your decision to dedicate yourself to a value driven discipline will lead to success. Yeah, you might have to give up a lot: drinking, some eating, some sleep, partying, your favorite foods, horsing around, chilling, and a few other things, but you have to consider the end results. The end result is that you get incredibly comfortable with giving up these things. Progressively, I have spent more and more time dedicating myself to the few ideals I composed for myself months and months ago. My priorities are now set.

There is a philosophy behind what I am doing. It is not a selfish philosophy because my philosophy is this: if I want to inspire people to live powerful lifestyles, I myself must first live a powerful lifestyle. I must make the full transformation. I must overcome all the obstacles in the mind and in my body. You have to really make things look ugly before they can look pretty. I have been tearing myself down every day, looking critically at the things I want to change and work on, and then doing them. There is no plan B because it distracts from plan A. Go all in and don’t plan if there is a failure, because then you have a crutch to fall back on.

In the 1500’s Hernando Cortez was the captain of eleven ships with more than 500 soldiers headed for Mexico to conquer the Aztecs and bring back gold and treasures. As you can well imagine, after his ships arrived in Mexico, the sailors and soldiers were not in the best of shape. Some of them fell ill on the journey, some had lost their motivation, and their quarters were not exactly shipshape. Several of Cortez’s crewmates wondered what would happen to them in this strange new land. If they faced challenges or resistance, how would the crew return home? The crew asked Cortez what the plan would be to get back home. The captain had the perfect response: He burned the ships

There was no going back

The only direction to go was forward

The old way of doing things were about to be rethought.

In fact, there were no more “old way of doing things”; a new way had to be defined.

I may fail, but I am not a failure. There is a significant difference here that we must learn to accept. Failure is an amazing thing to learn from. In fact, every day I’m in the gym, I’m failing at nearly every set I do. I feel that a lot of people these days have an issue being 100% true to themselves. I still sometimes struggle with this. Don’t feel like you have to live up to some other standard set by society. Society will tell you no. In the face of it all, you need to set your principles and ideals and ultimately tell them to shove it. To be a maverick and a true original, you must believe in something different than what has occurred in the past. You have to believe in something that has been created in your mind alone. Only then will you break out of your shell and the shackles that have been placed upon you. Only then will you be part of that small percent who has achieved true success, not just material success, but self-actualization. This success is founded around a sound mind, a strong body, and an indestructible soul. Material success will dwindle, and no one remembers a hero for how much money he or she had. Everyone remembers a hero for who they were at their core.

Who will you be in this moment? This moment determines who you are and who you will be for the rest of your life.

Evan Sanders
The Better Man Project