When We Bloom

We bloom when we reach our edges and decide to jump off them knowing full well we only have one chance to build our wings on the way down to fly.

I had a pretty thought provoking conversation with someone the other night via my blog and it really got me thinking. The conversation was about fear and the existing of fear in your life as you grow older. Now the comment was coming from someone much older than me so I’m beat there in terms of “year into this life” but like I said, it got me thinking. We may not exactly agree on this point but that’s not really the point of this blog at all. The point of this blog is to spark conversation, thought, and bring out perspective that can change the way people see their world. Disagreement, if you actually take time to see a perspective from someone else’s eyes, can actually really offer you a different angle at your life.

That’s what happened for me.

I’ve been wondering lately if fear really ever does diminish or if we just get better at acting when fear shows up. I think the first real big step is learning how to work with fear and any other emotion really. For a great deal of time, I tried to push things away instead of letting them have a place in my life. That way of doing things really creates a lot of unnecessary tension in your life as you are stopping the natural flow of things. But I think the real art form is being able to get close to these deep emotions and feelings without being consumed by them…as well as keeping just enough distance to actually feel them in the first place. My conversations with mentor coaches and going through development has really given me a new access to this way of doing things  and the best way I have found to do this is through meditation with a purpose.

There are many types of meditation…one that I do every single day is simply meditation for the sake of meditation. But more specifically, I do a meditation with an intention of really going somewhere I don’t want to go.

This isn’t the easiest thing to do. In fact, if you are willing to do this, you might have to muster up some courage to really be able to deal with the consequences of doing some shadow work. But that’s ok. The consequences are short term – a bit of pain, tears, hurting etc. But the benefits of this type of work are amazing – clarity, unfolding, peace.

I forget who says this religiously, but it’s a pretty well known fact that most people will do anything to avoid pain. I can see that to certainly be true throughout most of my life. I avoided pain like the plague. The only unfortunate thing about avoiding pain is that you eventually numb yourself to life. When you avoid experiences you also avoid the positive in your life as well. It’s not on purpose that you are avoiding the positive…but you are actually numbing yourself to feeling those emotions as well.

Not really the best thing.

I really feel like we bloom when we start committing to actually letting the full experience of life hit us with all its got. Yes, some amazingly rough punches are going to be thrown, but you really have no idea how resilient you are until you go for it fully. You also have no idea about how present and how amazing life can be during those times when punches aren’t thrown. This, I can tell you from personal experience.

I remember hearing from Elon Musk himself “I think that’s the single best piece of advice: constantly think about how you could be doing things better and questioning yourself.” I guess that is how I’ve come this far in the game already. 5 years of thinking about what really matters to me and putting it down on paper almost every single day. I think questioning yourself is a great thing…looking at why you think the way you do and what really matters to you etc. But, eventually, you do need to be willing to pull the trigger and really go for it. You have to be willing to make decisions and follow through with them all the way to the finish line.

Some things are going to fail miserably – been there. Been there a lot actually. But your perseverance is going to be the one thing that sets your temporary failures apart from being a failure. There’s a huge difference. At times, when things are going downhill…you will fail. You will absolutely fail. But once you accept this in its entirety and make it a part of yourself as who you are as a human being…you’ve then labeled yourself as a failure. When that happens, it’s really hard to come back from. Dreams die during that time. I’ve seen mine shrivel up when it has happened to me.

Jumping when you are a little bit nervous can be tough…but we all reach that point. You’re standing on the edge and you know that feeling in your gut when you actually do…and it can either paralyze you are slightly motivate you to go. Every single time I go cliff jumping I get this feeling and it reminds me of all the other decisions we have to make in our mind throughout life.

So take that risk…because when you do something a bit beyond your current self, you grow, you bloom, and you become something you weren’t before.

Evan Sanders
The Better Man Project