I’m sitting here in bed on a Friday night covered in ice packs and taking care of myself after a long day working with coaching clients. I have some nagging injuries from before I started my prep for this next photo shoot that I am working with and instead of going out tonight, taking a minute to honor my bodies request for rest. This isn’t something I usually would do.

Every morning during the week I wake up at 4:30 am sharp and am on my way to the gym for a couple of hours. Being up at this time actually thrills me instead of acting as a de-motivator. I love blasting my music in my car, throwing down my pre-workout and vitamins before I get to the gym…but that 15 minute drive to the gym watching those night lights fly by serves as a time for me to check in with where I am at.

I often take that time pretty seriously…it’s my time…where I get to start my day off right and there are literally no distractions (not even cars on the road).

So where am I at?

This evening, I’m in a pretty good place. The fact that I’m even sitting here tonight writing makes me feel good, the ice on my legs feels amazing, having spent the entire day offering people who I care about and coach new ways of looking at the world and watching the little shifts in them as I spoke touched me deeply…but there was more to today than that. There was something that really came out of today that I felt compelled to write down.

Sometimes it’s not about adding things into your busy life and task list…sometimes it’s about addition by subtraction…sometimes it’s about taking the time and space throughout the day to really take care of yourself and to slow yourself down.

For a while now, I’ve realized that by simplifying my life, I can actually let go some of the complexity that evolved from having the wrong people in my life, too many things, doing things that I didn’t believe in – the list really goes on and on here. The more I got down to the core of why I am here on this earth the more I realized what I had in my life at the moment wasn’t congruent with that deep purpose. So I kept the people I absolutely adored and who took amazing care of me, I looked at the things I only needed and got rid of the things I simply wanted…and started down a path of expressing what I felt deep inside instead of falling into a place of trying to make everyone happy.

I unplugged myself from my own story and slowly but surely began to build a new one for myself.

I never wanted to be that scared, pissed off, loner, single-minded kid I was…I wanted to be a great adventurer/ explorer who was magnetic to those around him, could tell grand stories and walk as a expression of love. I wanted people to never forget the way I made them feel and to touch hearts in a way that could send positive ripples around the world with a few words. I wanted to be that man, and as time went on, whether I felt like I knew what I was doing or not…I started manifesting that reality.

You have to do the dirty work before you are really ready to get down to building the grand vision.

Of course you can do them close to the same time, but in reality, you have to unravel your past and all of the pain you are in to start accessing your deepest gifts and reasons for why you are here. You must work with your emotions instead of run from the. You must go to the places that hurt and allow your heart to heal. You must do this…because if you are on this planet and have grand ambitions and a desire to change this place…you have a responsibility to see those dreams through.

Begin the healing process and take care of yourself. Nourish yourself. That will unlock your love for life. When that happens…you never really know what amazing things are about to come your way.

Evan Sanders
The Better Man Project