Listen to your thoughts, emotions and feelings. Hear what they have to say.
What are they telling you when they aren’t controlling you? What do the deep beckoning messages chatter in your heart? Are they telling you which way to go? Are they telling you to head in the other direction? Can you really listen to them despite the troubled relationship you’ve had with them in the past?
As time has gone on, there’s been a much healthier relationship with emotions developing.
I can work with the blackness. Listen to the messages forged in the dark and maintain my light despite their ever consuming nature.
I can feel them. Feel everything about them – the troubling thoughts and the brighter memories. They used to run my entire life. The past would unravel itself in my mind day after day revealing to me things that would spark memories…only to render me useless in this moment.
But not anymore.
I’ve learned to let go of those moments, after they arrive.
I’ve learned to heal the things in me that were always begging for my attention.
But I had to go through hell to get there. Dragged through pain in order to prove that I still believe in the brighter sides of life. I can see how it all connects now. If I had the choice to do it all over again, as tentative as I would be, I would. It brought me here.
It brought me to the place where my heart has truly let go of many different things and let me be excited about what’s here again. And the future, as much as I don’t live there anymore…I have that spark of excitement about what’s possible.
Yes, the future. I am looking forward to you again.
I have often believe that there is no light at the end of the tunnel, but rather, you are the light.
Yet at times, it’s hard to even see the light you produce on your own. It can get so black at times that it seems to snuff out anything you are trying to create. I’ve been there. I’ve been through that many times and I am sure I will go through it many times more.
This is a reality that I have come to accept time and time again and know that it’s part of how I grow as a human being.
Because as much as I love the times of grace and peace, I know that I have developed and grown significantly more from the times I have been through the worst of it. It’s not exactly something I look forward to, but at the same time I don’t push it away.
There’s something to be said for being in moments that test you beyond belief.
I really know, and can go back to blogs from a long while ago, that I didn’t have the confidence behind me to be able to understand that I would get through these moments. It was always an uncertainty. However, as I have gained more and more momentum and refused to fall apart in these moments, I know that no matter what I will be able to get out on the other side.
This life has been challenging it its own ways.
But that’s how it’s supposed to be. It’s supposed to grind you, tear you apart, put you back together and do it all over again for eternity. That’s how you become something truly remarkable. That’s how you become everything you were ever meant to be.
Most refuse to engage in life because the tearing apart feels awful. But when you get put back together again…there’s something about that feeling of coming back with a stronger and stronger foundation.
You break to build.
And for the brave, you do it again and again.
Heading back into the ring for one more fight just after the previous one almost caused you to not get back up.
Because you know, without a doubt, that something great will come from the challenge and the struggle.
So keep getting back up. No matter what. One more round. One more fight.
Evan Sanders
The Better Man Project