I have absolutely no idea what in the world is going on with me right now.

Not in the way of being uncertain about myself – that I am very connected with at the moment – but there are some strange events happening and it’s…baffling me. You see, this is all relatively new – this whole courtship with uncertainty. I had to tear some needs out of myself that I thought were foundation builders. I erased my timelines off of my chalkboard, put away the goal sheets, and let that part of my life up to the heavens. I exited that place…and when I did, and I finally showed up here things started to change. Really change. I’ve changed. My world is changing.

This is going to be hard to explain, but I’m going to give it a shot. In terms of what’s in my heart, that’s changing as well. A few months ago, I had someone close to me take me to a place, “the darkest place I could allow myself to go” and showed me that despite the blackness of it all, there was a little light there. I mean this light was tiny…flickering in the upper right hand corner of my mind – and as I was soon to find out, that was the presence of joy despite everything that had happened. I never thought that was possible in that moment, because that moment was hands down the worst moment of my entire life. As the months have gone on, and challenges have continued to surface, there’s been this flooding out of deep compassion for people and situations. I’ve stepped out of my shoes…inserted my feet into theirs…and saw things from their eyes. Hard to do? One of the more challenging things I’ve had to try yes. However, there’s incredible value in this. It strips you from being judgmental and throws you into honest compassion.

This flooding out of compassion and kindness has allowed me to understand something else about myself that I was pretty sure I had cooked all the way through – I wasn’t completely defrosted yet. Once upon a time, this kid had a pretty cold hard heart. That may be hard to believe, but way back then…I was really struggling. It took years of work – writing, daily practices etc to start to heat that sucker up. I guess that’s the lesson here in a lot of this – that the truth is, your journey is going to be a lifelong one. But how exciting is that? The fact that we are given the opportunity to learn about others and ourselves every single day is pretty astounding…if you take advantage of it. If you don’t, well, good luck going anywhere. Why? Life works – as I have been told and experienced over and over again – by giving. The more you give, authentically…eventually, the right things come back to you in time.

But there’s something else at play right now and I really can’t tell you what it is. The matters of the heart are in a world of their own right now. Thing is, I’m not trying to control them at all. There’s been a tendency for me in the past to want to really make things happen which is an aspect of control in itself. Not the type of tight gripping control where it has to be a specific way, but if I was being honest with myself, the type of control where you have an agenda and you want to see it through. Not all agenda’s have bad intentions, but they can discourage you from going with the flow.

So things are flowing right now…

I’m showing up in this world in a very different way than I have in the past. Above all of it, there’s like a personal renaissance of expression divulging itself. Every single day I’m taking things a little bit farther, not out of seeking a goal, but out of creating art. This new site I have thrown myself into, everything in there’s a little piece of me in one way or another. And honestly, I love that. Because that’s me putting myself out there for the world to see. Maybe it’s not exactly the way they think of it or anticipated it to be, but it’s the way I painted it in my mind. What if you could paint your own world instead of having to create it with a ruler and strict lines. I mean, seriously getting into all of the different paints and brushes at your disposal. That’s expression at it’s finest. It’s when we get into that linear way of thinking about things that it all gets mucked up.

Examples?

Linear thinking is very structured, time based, A to B thinking that doesn’t have much wiggle room for the finer things in life. Now I am not saying this type of thinking isn’t valuable. What I am saying is that it can’t be a place from which we deeply express love, passion, expression etc. How can you put love on a timeline? You really can’t. Or expression of deepest purpose? What is that, from 7pm to 8pm at night?

You’ve got to come from a different place. A place of depth and flexibility. Just because it’s not working out in your mind the way you thought it should doesn’t mean that it can’t happen. That type of thinking is exactly the thinking that got me into so much trouble in the past. Again, it’s forward projections onto the future trying to paint the whole damn thing before you even get there. There’s so much room for things in your life right now you just have to be a little creative with it. If you look at your schedule and go “I don’t see any time for this” you’re going to be right 100% of the time. You can’t check off friendships, love, expression, purpose, dreams on your task list of things to do every day. It’s not something to be done and then onto the next thing. No, those things deserve better than that. They deserve you investing your time into figuring out how those all can work with everything else. That’s an integrated life. That’s a good life.

So as long as I am going through these wicked games that life is playing with me right now, I’m going to enjoy it for what is is. Everything is happening all at once. I’m alright with that. We will see what happens tomorrow.

Evan Sanders
The Better Man Project