Still.

Incredibly still.

There’s a strong relationship I’m building with silence. The walks in the night, the sitting in this little red chair hearing the same patter of fingers on the keys that I have heard for the past 5 years, the quiet. It’s all making more sense to me now. The silence isn’t as much about silence itself, but it’s about the development of patience inside of me.

And I’m becoming incredibly patient.

What’s interesting is that I am allowing for the things that are out of my control to be granted more patience and the passions and interests that roar like a hot fire within me to take up more of my focus. I’ve stripped away things that distract me and have fallen deeper and deeper into creating things that resonate with why I am here.

This patience though, it hasn’t been the easiest thing to cultivate in my life. That story of constantly rowing towards my goals and that being the thing that was going to make me happy had a major grip on my life until about 6 months ago. That island of “where it all turns out and it will be great” was seen as a mirage and I stopped rowing. But after rowing towards it for such a long time you have those compulsions to row from time to time and it takes a little bit to sit back and relax and see what’s truly there.

There are a lot of things going on in my life right now that I have been fanning the fire slowly so to speak. These things have been growing and growing and growing as time has gone on and I am starting to see what they can really make. A couple of these things are actually right around the corner from really happening and it excites everything inside of me because I am seeing the final stages of a dream coming true.

We have to be patient with ourselves and patient with others to see what life has planned for us. When we start trying to plan everything out and make sure things happen a certain way we cut ourselves off from experiencing what is really in store for us. I always come back to this saying…which is – if we try to analyze the future to the shallowness of our minds we will certainly fall short in what is actually possible for us. Time and time again I have ripped my mind back from being in the future and brought it here because I know that I am going to be taken care of and that I have nothing to worry about. I have a general idea of what really resonates with me deeply but I know that the moments are right now and these are the ones that matter.

There have been conversations about how hard I am working but I don’t really feel like it is hard work. I am enjoying what I am doing with every ounce of my heart and soul. Then there’s conversations about what I am doing for fun…but to be honest, I’m doing everything I want to be doing in my life right now. Sitting here and writing to you tonight does more for me than going on a 5 day vacation. This nourishes me. This puts water into my roots and helps me grow. I love doing this and that’s why I’ve made it part of my life.

Everything that I decide to do resonates with me on some level. That’s honestly why I can come here every single day and write something that is going on in my world because I have a whole lot that is in line with what my vision is. I don’t wander around without any direction…and while it is called “direction” it doesn’t restrict me in the slightest from feeling that I’m actually living my life.

I feel more alive now than I ever have before.

I had this overwhelming feeling a while back that I was going to have to do a massive amount of front end work to get this clay moving and when it started to roll into a ball life was going to absolutely take off. Who knows if that was 5 years of work or if it was when my purpose hit me 6 months ago, but what I do know is that this work has been done and there are the remaining pieces of it that need to be ironed out before all of this takes off. The momentum is there and I’m watching it happen every single day.

I’m trusting. I’m trusting in myself and who I am.

This is not something I could have said years ago. Why? Honestly, I didn’t even know who I was or what I was capable of back then. I was still trying to answer questions about what really mattered to me in terms of building some sort of foundation. But now, I feel like I’m being guided by some deeper current that I can’t really see. While my mind does run in the shallow end sometimes wondering if things are going to happen, or if this will go this way or that way, or blah blah blah…I now just fall back into knowing that things are going to work themselves out.

There’s a really interesting balancing act to this patience piece though that I’m still working with.

The piece I’m working with and that has been on my mind is understanding when things have run their course and knowing when there are still developments to be had. It’s interesting because it’s not like there’s a specific frame that helps you decide one or the other. Instead, it’s this gut intuition that guides you and tells you when it’s time to set your sails or if it’s time to stay. That has been an incredibly thought provoking aspect of all of this that I haven’t really thought  through in regards to everything in my life.

But hey, if you end up trusting yourself and what you know is right deep inside…you could always move forward right? You could always know that what you’ve decided to do was the right thing and continue trusting yourself no matter what.

I think that’s a pretty cool thing to have.

I think that’s what I’m being taught here

Evan Sanders
The Better Man Project