It’s still tonight. There’s a little bit of a chill in the air. I’m sitting here in that little red chair I always talk about, laptop perched on my legs…headphones in my ears…I’m breathing. I’m breathing. I’m…breathing.

There’s some beauty in everything going on. In that, there’s a whole lot of uncertainty and a pile full of potential as well. I can’t really give you the 100% accurate version of what the feeling is welling up behind my eyes, reverberating throughout my heart, sparking through my mind and flowing through my body. But it’s all happening at once, and at times, I am absolutely moved to tears.

There’s something more to what’s going on at this moment than just me being here. Something else is with me. Once again, I can’t really explain it. What I do know however, is that whatever I am connected to right now is not messing around with me at all. Whatever I’m connected to, is directly speaking into my mind and my heart. I can feel it coming through my writing, my actions with the people around me, and what’s coming into my life day by day.

Most of the time, there’s this dead silence that runs throughout my day. This silence I used to fear a great deal of the time. The type of silence I’m talking about used to drive me crazy because I would start to hear myself think. All of the things I would try to avoid would come to the surface and I would look for the quickest way to distract myself from what was going on. But the silence now…as dead quiet as it can be at times, is actually rather calming. Why? Because there’s really not a whole lot of negative chatter going on in my mind right now.

So what is actually going on in my mind?

I’ve had rare opportunities in this past month to connect with people who are beginning their own journeys. These journeys, in their own ways, are exciting and evoke significant memories, feelings, and emotions within me. I remember the journeys I have started throughout the past 5 years of my life and the amount I have learned from undergoing them. I feel, in my heart right now, that what I have started will be the greatest one of my life…one that will actually never end. Usually, at the beginning of something I’ve started I used to play around for a couple of weeks and then get serious. I would put the work in that was necessary but the amount of focus that the journey called for was fleeting. This really hasn’t been the case with me over the past month+. In fact, I’ve put all of my time and effort, weekends as well, into creating something new and of value for others. While I am waiting on specific parts of the process to start generating results, I continue to have faith in what going down this path means.

Patience is coming to mind right now.

Real patience. Deep patience. Patience heavily rooted into the earth. I’ve been incredibly patient with myself and things going on in my life lately…and have discovered something pretty interesting about myself lately. When I start stressing out about things, I’m being incredibly impatient. I want things to happen right now. That’s me not letting things unfold naturally. I’ll never forget what one of my coaches told me…”you can’t make a plant grow faster by yanking on it.”

Isn’t that the statement of a lifetime. Everything in this life has it’s own course and you have to let it come to you at its own pace. This is a pretty interesting statement, coming from me out of all people, a person who has spent the greater part of this life looking forward and creating big goals etc. But there’s a certain grace in developing a mission and vision for yourself and then letting things commence as they will. What I’ve found, is that developing this type of relationship with your future actually makes the things you desire happen a whole lot quicker than trying to force it. Another thing I can’t really explain about how the world actually works…but it has been working for me and I thought I would throw it out there.

I’ve been a lot more steady lately. Steady within myself, with myself, and with others. There’s no need to move quickly anymore. No need to get to the next part of the conversation. In fact,  there have been some semi-awkward moments for me in talking with other people because I am so engaged in what they are saying I actually have to stop and think about what I am going to say next. That’s the processing deficiency in action right there. It happened about 5 times the other night in having a conversation with someone…where they were talking and I was enjoying what I was hearing so much…they stopped talking…and I was just there kind of smiling and then searching for what I was going to say. Guess I’m a bit of a dork like that sometimes.

I have a great deal of work that I need to continue putting out and there will be many many many more hours of writing waiting to be done after that. But, what’s coming into my world, is that something I had always dreamed of – being able to unplug my entire life from location, to travel the world, to write for a living, and to earn a living from doing something that I had created in my own head…well it’s coming into reality. I didn’t know that would take 5 years…but I’m glad it actually took the time it did. When you are in the thick of things you can’t really see the path clearly, but when you reach a clearing in the woods it’s far easier to see why things happened the way they did.

Were some parts of that journey incredibly hard? Oh, the worst. I mean really bad. But did they develop specific things in me and send me down paths that helped me step – as hard as it was at times – into building something new. Yes. Yes and yes time and time again. All of the events actually have sent me down rabbit holes that allowed me to come out with certain bits of information that would serve me well in the future. I never really knew when those bits would come in handy, but each time they have.

It’s interesting being in a place right now that has a different feeling from “I have to start everything over.” Those places were hard to be at. Honestly, I was in that place for a long time. The…take a last stand, light myself up, build it all over again…type of place. But now, after having done that for a long time, I realize that the only place I really need to be is here. I don’t need to start anything over…to make it perfect…to do it perfect. It has nothing to do with my desire to do things well. It’s just that…I’m out here actually doing it. Day by day. There’s no projection of what it looks like. No control on what happens when I sit down to write or to go in the gym etc. There’s just me, being here…fully here…fully present…and trusting what I have in me and that it will do the right thing.

That trust, the inherent trust in myself and who I am…has been the greatest gift from almost 5 years of writing.

How can you put value on that? How can you even predict what that will create in the future. You can’t. But I know…without a shadow of a doubt…that the value created from this entire process is absolutely priceless.

To trust yourself and what’s inside of you in a world that is trying to change you into becoming everything and everyone else…

I’ll never be the same. In fact, I could never go back in the first place. I don’t even know what back would even look like. What I do know about my life right now is this – i’m open. I’m open to all sorts of things happening and for the first time ever I haven’t tried to stop anything from happening. I’ve stood in the midst of chaos and enjoyed the sideways rain. I’ve developed a density that has made me unmovable in specific situations. I’ve started to develop a type of trust in myself that I know will take me to the right places. I’m open to all types of love coming into my life…and I’ve torn down the greatest walls I had ever built.

I could even venture to say that I enjoy walking in the ruins of the ancient walls that I built long ago.

It’s a new life completely…built on the foundations of past learning. To me, that’s a good life. To me, that’s worth it.

Evan Sanders
The Better Man Project