As I See Around The Bend

My entire life, I’ve been able to see around the bend.

I never really believed what I was seeing at first, but as time went on and things started to come more to light as I found pieces within myself that I had been out of touch with for a long time, I realized that these things around the corner were real.

Some may call that vision. Others, the future.

The word to describe it didn’t mean much to me. What mattered more to me than anything else was the growing belief that I could in fact create whatever the hell I wanted to make. For a long time, these visions eluded me. I didn’t have the ability to sit down and dedicate myself to something until I saw it all the way through.

Was that because I lacked work ethic? No. I had been working hard at things my entire life. It’s because I lacked something far far more important.

Belief.

Belief that whatever I happened to see around the bend would come to fruition if I trusted that it would. That first journey, the journey into the fitness world and making something come to life that took over 7 years of time…that was the first moment where I truly understood that a vision executed over a period of time (unknown) inserted with infinite amounts of patience could be created.

I learned another lesson along the way.

Goals have timelines – things that are accomplishable in the foreseeable future.

But dreams…dreams are beyond your scope of time and understanding.

They are fluid. You don’t really have a sense of when they will come to be…but if you have the understanding that it’s only the honest nature of patience that will get you there…they will happen. They happen on their own terms…not yours.

You have to become something else in order to make them happen. Not changing who you are fundamentally as a person, but changing the way you show up in the world. Your story has to change. You have to write a new one. You have to be willing to let yourself drop all of the bad habits, adopt new techniques, acquire new skills, take new risks and run straight into fears in order to start morphing yourself into the type of person that can cross that line where the dream is.

Without that attitude, it will never happen.

But here’s something else. You have to get really familiar with pain and fear. Pain in the sense that these moments of growth aren’t always going to be pretty. You will have addictions you need to drop (there are so many different types of this) and darkness that you will have to let go of. At times, they will feel like they are ripping out of you and you will want to gravitate back. But you can’t. You can’t because in order to achieve that dream…you have to keep saying to yourself, “I have to become something beyond what I am now.”

Running from fear gets you nowhere.

The truth is, you are who you are. The things you are susceptible to. The darkness that lives within you. The ways you disintegrate under stress. That’s you. The sooner you can accept those things and come to terms with that, the faster you will move forward.

It’s my sincerest belief that the reason why most people never move past where they are is because they don’t want to admit to themselves the black wolf that lives within them. When you can begin to accept that it lives within you, and start giving it the care that it needs, you can tame it. It will never go away, and at times you will slip up and make mistakes – but you can’t take it personally that it starts to rise with excitement when you start letting yourself go.

It’s not personal. It’s simply the darkness that lives within each of us.

Coming to terms with this place and accepting that it’s there gives you the opportunity walk alongside it – even use it – when necessary.

But running from this wolf – no matter how you do it – it will tear you apart from the inside. There’s many ways it will manifest that pain…but it will. Trust that. I’m sure you already know this.

Separate yourself from the past.

Never rest on it. In fact, burn it. Burn it to the ground. There’s nothing to be gained in looking back day after day wishing or worrying about things that you can never go back to. The good moments – smile at them – but they are gone. The bad moments – cry if you need to – and move on.

The past is done.

There’s only what’s to be created now. You can completely reinvent your entire life with the daily stroke of the brush if you stop looking at the paintings you’ve already made. No matter how good they are or how bad they are, they are finished.

Right here. Right now.

That’s all that matters.

Dissolve your fears with love and compassion. Elevate your faith by heading straight into what scares you. There’s nothing to be gained by living a life where you don’t go for it.

Dive in.

Be fearless.

Evan Sanders
The Better Man Project