Take That Leap Of Faith

It never makes sense. 

Maybe that’s the first thing you have to look for? A lot of the time logic is thrown right out the window and you just have that feeling in your gut that you “have to do it.” I stopped trusting in my gut in high school when I always would leave tests thinking I had aced them and ended up doing horribly. What I later found out is that I just needed a little bit of extra time to combat horrible processing deficiency. A little extra time to think about things and work my way through and then I could utilize everything else I had in my arsenal. 

It’s amazing how much being patient can change your life. 

So my grades flipped, and I started to believe that I was actually talented at things regarding school. History became a love. I started to write despite the papers from previous years written were always dripping in blood. Seriously, I am pretty sure my teachers may have stabbed some of my papers with a knife or two. I’ll have to go back and check for puncture wounds. 

Even though your past may speak differently, your instincts are actually really hard to ignore once you being to…

Trust yourself. 

That’s what taking leaps of faith are about. They are about trusting yourself and knowing that what you decide is the best decision you can possibly make. You can always have the input of advice from others –  you can most of the time convince yourself out of anything – but the reality is, that little voice inside of you, or even that feeling of pulling you towards someone or something…there’s a reason for that. If you trust yourself, you will go after that. 

When you are doing something new, it feels strange. But that’s you landing outside of your comfort zone. That’s you doing something that you haven’t done before. And this could be anything. Reading a type of book you aren’t used to reading, fishing with a different style, dating someone that is outside your normal range or going on adventures to places unknown. They all take trust. Trust in yourself and trust that experiencing the new will deliver you something that you have never seen before. 

Life doesn’t always work like a scientific formula. 

Sometimes you have to taste new foods and experience new things to understand the breadth and depth of it all. You have to open yourself up to really giving things time to marinate instead of making quick decisions about what is right and wrong for you.

Because honestly, how many times do we get it right the first time?

How many times have you thought that you wanted something, and it ended up being the worst thing for you? Or to play the opposite side of the table, how many times has something completely unsuspecting just swept you off of your feet and you say “never in a million years did I think this would happen.” 

That is the magic of life.

Someone once said something like life is what happens when we are making plans. And it’s true. All of the plans in the world can still paralyze you from actually living courageously. You can plot it all. You can graph it out. You can make list after list and write out dream after dream on the wall…but until you actually take that first step, and the steps beyond that, and fully subject yourself to the fluidity of life…and go with the flow…you will never experience all that this wonderful world has to offer. 

59 days ago I started something that I had wanted to do for almost 7 years, and along the way I have realized just how amazing every day can be when you adopt an attitude of moving with the current of your dream. I think that I have failed in times past because if something didn’t go according to plan…according to the plan I made at the beginning, then I would fight it or believe that it wasn’t supposed to happen.

That’s not realistic at all!

How could you possibly know what is in store for you months down the line, in something you have never done before, that you are blindly going into and are just functioning on faith and your promises to get you to the end?!

Crazy people think they know exactly what is going to happen. 

Guess you could call me a bit crazy a while ago. 

No. You can only believe in the pursuit you are undertaking and know without a shadow of a doubt in your mind that you will achieve it. That is your job. Leave everything else to the heavens above. What happens will happen and breathe it in. The good and the bad. Celebrate the good and respect the bad. Use both for fuel. 

The world will see the clear smoke and see you are fueled on happiness…and in times of need, you burn the bad…and that plume of thick black smoke in the sky…people will smile because they know you aren’t defeated and you are just lighting what is in your soul on fire – so you can get to the next place. 

Open yourself up to the possibility that you effectively have no idea what the hell is going to happen…and my oh my isn’t that exciting. 

Evan Sanders
The Better Man Project