Gentlemen, you’ve heard it a million times – “Nice guys finish last.” But I have something much deeper to offer you today. I am here to tell you why you are going to come out on top by leaps and bounds. First, I will start with my story.

Let’s go back 10 years when I took my first steps into high school.

I remember being dropped off that first day, 6’1 a buck seventy-five at best, tucked in collared shirt and tan slacks. I walked through those main doors and felt anxiety running through my veins and like a 30lb weight was in my stomach. Girls everywhere. Upperclassmen everywhere. What the hell was I doing here? Not a lick of confidence and didn’t know a single person. Here I was. High school.

Throughout high school I attempted to make friends, date girls, be like the cool kids – in fact, I tried to be like everyone and everything I could possibly find. I molded and morphed myself into personas that I thought other people would enjoy, but that only left me feeling lost and helpless throughout my early schooling years. Along the way I began to find some things I liked – sports and guitar – but continued to struggle finding a way to fit in to a community that had been pretty tightly knit since they were all in grade school. So I didn’t fit in. In fact, besides having a handful of friends, I found myself wandering around alone at lunch trying to relax. I was going through some pretty rough times for a few years and didn’t really have that many people to help me along.

Fast forward to college and entering in as an athlete, I was surrounded by a team atmosphere where all of the guys spent time with one another and drank like crazy throughout the week. I inserted myself into that culture in the first few months but quickly felt that same type of feeling of lack of connection because the activities really didn’t resonate with me. I guess you could say that the years of my life before I started writing were as much about finding out what I didn’t like vs. finding out what really got me ticking. To add onto the fire, my personality really started morphing into someone who really didn’t give a sh*t about much except for baseball – only leading to more emptiness inside. As my elbow began to deteriorate more and more, that feeling of purpose loosened from me daily and everything else around my started to fall apart. Then a few months after I had to quit sports altogether, it really did all fall apart…and I would have to pick myself up from the ashes and start all over again.

I didn’t realize it then, but that urge to pick up and start writing what was going on in my heart and mind was in fact the deep bubbling up of my purpose that I continued for many years after that moment to look for. I nourished myself. I soothed the pains. I brought up things that I was too afraid to ever tell anyone and admitted them to myself. I healed and began to defrost everything that had frozen over. The horrible writer in high school that had all his papers ripped to shreds by red ink because a writer about life, love and passion. Who would have thought?

The Better Man Project started about a year after I began to write, and once again, I realize now that it was simply an expression of my purpose in a deeper way. I decided to put these thoughts out there for everyone to read – another way of freeing myself from the restrictions of my own separate self and beginning to let other people into my life. This process of vulnerability every single day brought out lessons that I never knew I would learn – the importance of love, passion, integrity, perseverance, and many more character traits. These were all things that were taught to me throughout the years, but I never came to the conclusion myself that they were anything more than just things that you could bring forth in yourself when you really needed them…until I started writing.

Writing continued to heal my wounds. Tears came out, smiles came forward, and moments of deeply resonating passion came through me throughout the years. I went from very dark masculine energy to being able to bring out inspiration from feminine energy. I started to become motivated, saw that I could do things with my body in a positive and constructive way, and that all of the things I feared in my high school years and my early college years were only fears…they didn’t have to control who I was or what I was going to do in this moment. Philosophy books started to open up. Reading became a very regular thing for me…and the continued search for deep purpose – even though I was doing it already – continued on and on and on.

I softened significantly over those years of writing. My heart began to open up to people and I also went through a lot of pain and suffering at the same time. Love gained, love lost. Friends gained, friends lost. And yet throughout the development of myself, I still felt off center. I was always searching for something. I was always in the place of wanting and getting. I was offering myself to the world but at the same time, I was blind to the fact that it was exactly what I should be doing. I think mostly because I wasn’t making any money off of it or because I was trying to figure out if it was just a hobby or not. Needless to say, my centered self was ready and waiting for me to just realize it but I continued to live in the past or the future…disconnected from the present.

Couple more years went by and that purpose I am talking about started to become louder and louder and louder. I started adding things into my repertoire such as podcasting, video blogs, different social media accounts to promote different types of content, etc…and all of these were natural extensions of those first few moments of deciding to write to bring out light and love. Everything, now that I look back on it, was simply an expression of that deep purpose. It was all rooted in love…and it took me roughly 5 years to really see that it was the case.

Whether I knew it or not, that purpose directed my life more than I could have possibly imagined. It allowed me to pull the trigger on going to coaching school, on starting to begin my speaking career, and taking the next steps with my fitness life and many other things. That purpose allowed me to see the weak spots in my life, to start diving into gaining skills in the fields of relationships, success, living, fitness, etc and helped me start a life long learning process. I began to morph and change over time, and as time went on itself…things really started to pick up some momentum. And now here I am April 9th with the feeling of some serious energy behind me.

So where does the concept of nice guys finish last in all of this come into play? Well if you’ve stuck with me so far…right now.

I have spent years and years and years working on myself, my life, my goals, and helping other people achieve their ideal lives as well. I believed that I had to be a “nice guy” in order to date girls and to get along with people in the world. But I’m here to offer you something far deeper than just being a nice guy today. I am here to offer you a different way that may help you change the course of your life – something I wish I had known 5 years ago when I first started writing. Don’t get me wrong, I am very very glad I went through this entire process because I have learned so much more along the way, but it would have saved me a lot of heartbreak and grief throughout the years.

Spend more time finding your purpose, than chasing girls, going out and getting drunk, hiding in your house away from others, looking through social media on your phone, or any other surface level distractions there are out there.

Men, find your purpose. Find what really resonates with you and throw yourself into that without any compromise on your character and values. How do you find your purpose? Well I can tell you for one that it isn’t some cognitive exercise that you can go through. No, it’s something that deeply resonates within you…beyond your mind and beyond your body. What makes your soul stir when you think about it? Is there that very deep resonating frequency that you may have tuned into once in a while? Tap into that. That whisper. That inner voice that eggs you on to really try something. It may or may not make sense to anyone else at all, but that doesn’t matter. All it has to do is make sense to you. I spent years ignoring this vibe because I thought that I could never be doing what I am doing now. I didn’t think I could create a profession out of writing, coaching, speaking and helping others bring light and love into their lives. I didn’t think it was possible. But the energy was always there…and the more I tap into it now the more I know how true and honest that energy is.

Be a man of purpose. Be a man of uncompromising character. A man of purpose knows how to make decisions in this life because if he is ever confronted with an obstacle or a situation, he dives deep down into that energy and asks himself, “If I make this decision, does it serve as an expression of my deepest purpose?” You will know the answers very very soon.

These types of men, the men who go through the process of tapping into their deepest sense of self and purpose, and use that purpose to help bring light into the world are the ones who change the world. I am not simply trying to pat myself on the back here, but I know without a shadow of a doubt in my mind that the energy that is inside of me can help make a difference in the lives of other people around the world. I ignored for a long time the effect that I had on other people because I didn’t know that this was what I was supposed to be doing. But now that I see more clearly, I look at the tens of thousands of comments, the hundreds of emails and the hundreds of thousands of followers, and know that if I continue to really open up, to throw my heart into my purpose and to bring the gifts I have to this world…things can change…and they are already changing.

You may be wondering…but what about all the other stuff? The girls, the friends…the everything. When you are coming from a place of depth, your character and your dream will take you in the right direction. You have to trust it without a shadow of a doubt. I know that I have floundered in my life, that I have shown unnecessary insecurity, that I have talked myself out of dates and torn apart relationships because I didn’t know what I was up to in this world. I can guarantee you that the same thing will happen to you if you don’t understand what it is that really makes you tick. Find that, and bring light into this world, and everything else will pan out exactly the way it’s supposed to. You will begin to express yourself in ways that you never thought possible. Everything you do in terms of “future dreams and goals” actually become “future ways of expressing my deepest gift.” There’s a huge difference. You will end the unsettling and unsatisfying process of chasing things that you will never actually be able to grab…and you will bring yourself into the present…always asking yourself “How can I give in this moment.”

So find your purpose. I promise you that if you take that path…you will reap all that this life has to offer.

Evan Sanders
The Better Man Project