I don’t know how else to explain this but saying it exactly this way…I’m about to go off this year.

The past 5 years have felt like a gigantic first draft of this whole entire project. I’ve dealt with challenge after challenge, had to build some pretty significant characteristics into my life that were lacking, saw dreams crumble and fall, and time after time got back up again. But there’s something different about what’s going on now. There aren’t these massive dragons to be played, these horrible habits to overcome. There’s no feeling of needing to conquer myself because I understand that everything I need is in fact already stored inside, I just have to access it. There’s no desire to start over completely every single time something goes wrong. There’s just what is right now.

And what’s going on right now, on a macro level, is pretty damn exciting.

For a long time, I’ve loved the imagery of a rocket launching. I loved it so much because it was like this massive amount of energy needed to be put into play to get this object moving and taking off towards something. That imagery has been replaced by a lone man sitting in a boat. Pretty different huh? That lone man is happy as can be and loves stopping off to visit other people in their boats as well. Anyone is welcome to come say hi and many times people ask him where he is going. He just replies, “I’m not exactly sure, but I like the feeling of all of this.”

My life has drastically changed from a goal driven mentality to accessing this type of vibe. I have a grand vision yes…and I think it’s important to keep one of those for yourself, but there are many things in terms of exactly how it supposed to look that I leave up to the cosmos. I’ve found and studied a pretty interesting fact – the more you try to constrict and control things, the more insecure you are.

True strength has many forms. You don’t have to become an immovable rock or a fortress to feel safe. You can become like water, you can bend like bamboo, or…you can bring other elements into your life as well. The danger in shutting everything out is that you do an excellent job of….well….shutting everything out. Then, you find out pretty quickly as the years go by that you are alone in this world. You built up all these walls because you were scared of what could happen – not because you were doing it out of love.

As time goes on, I’ve learned more and more than taking walls down that were built out of fear is actually a way to show people that you love them. We’ve all been hurt. We all have damaged parts of us that we are trying to heal. Thing is, the walls have to come down to truly heal in the first place. Letting people into your world can be really tough, especially if it has to do with emotions. But being willing to feel pain in this life is actually a sign of strength in of itself. Avoiding pain actually makes you numb. I’ve been there…oh man have I been there. Some of the worst mistakes I have ever made came when I couldn’t feel anything…and was begging for anything to give me some sort of feeling.

So as all these walls have come down, I’ve started to become more and more free from this cage that was holding me. I felt constricted even though I was granting myself more freedom. It truly was a honest moment when I saw myself as being caged in the first place…and that I created that cage out of fear.

As I said last night, this year is dedicated to putting it all on the line. Last year was an incredible learning experience, but this year is about taking the big steps towards the vision. I’m actually incredibly pleased with how last year turned itself around and gave me some serious momentum to get into this year. I never really thought I would be where I am at right now. But hey, I’m definitely not complaining in the least.

You can’t hold us.

Evan Sanders
The Better Man Project