There are some decisions you know will change you for the rest of your life.
You don’t even have to make the decision to actually know this beforehand. You can feel it. You can feel it deep within your bones and you just “know.”
You know that if you head that way that something great is going to come out of it. You don’t know what that will be exactly. You don’t know when it will likely take its form. But you just know that’s the way you are supposed to head.
I’m in this place right now.
After having come out of what feels like a bit of a hibernation for a couple of months – internal hibernation I suppose – I realize that the decisions I’m about to make are going to impact me for the rest of my life. Today will be one of those rare moments where I actually give some specifics about what I’ve been dealing with.
Wolves.
As your audience size grows, there are people who come out to get you. I wasn’t exactly ready for this. I wasn’t ready for the things that I create to be misconstrued by people who don’t have the ability to really even take on perspectives that aren’t of their own. I wasn’t prepared for someones blindness to intention and the resulting attack.
But over the past few days, I’ve realized that I’ve needed a perspective shift.
On one hand – you can focus on the few who take something good and try to make it into something bad…or, you could focus on the many many people who are supportive and appreciate of what you do.
That’s been one thing that I’ve been thinking about.
But as yesterday came to a completion, I realized it goes much farther than that.
The moment I put something out there it doesn’t necessarily just belong to me anymore. It become everyone else’s. All o those eyes land on it and it goes through thousands of filters and interpretations. All I can do is put my best work out there with a great intention and then learn how to let it go.
And I think that’s been the lesson that keeps on coming back to me over and over again – you have to continue to learn how to let things go.
For a while, I’ve been nervous about taking the next step into gathering a larger and larger audience because I’ve been nervous about more wolves coming out for me.
That’s just a fear that I’ve truly been dealing with.
But yesterdays perspective shift of continuing to go on my path and not be derailed by praise or by criticism really locked me back into place. I meditated with the fear. I worked with the fear all day. And eventually, I just came to a place of “I would rather go out on my terms than be dictated by something that may not even be that bad.”
So I’m going to create more ripples.
Big ones.
Like that huge rock you throw into a lake…waves.
This is what I have in me and I have the ability to do it. I can’t go on throughout life worry about what everyone else is going to think after the wave has been created. I just have to make it and leave the commentary up to those who feel it. For me, it’s about making the next wave.
Create…don’t look back.
Create…don’t look back.
Forward.
Waves.
So this is one of the fears I’ve been working through.
The second thing is not so much a fear, but rather a feeling and a pull I’ve been getting over the past month +.
There’s been a huge pull to go surf in Portugal for a while and learn how to be fluid with a wave itself. Throughout this year fluidity is one of the biggest learning points for me and I’ve been working on bringing more of that into my life. But to develop the practice of being fluid in practice – surfing – is just going to do something for me that I really can’t understand.
So there’s that angle, but a spiritual angle that has been calling me as well. When I hear people talk about their experiences with surfing it’s almost a religious experience. Being completely in tune with the ocean as if it’s alive around them. When I close my eyes and think back to my days in the water, I’ve never been more clear in my entire life.
For me, it’s almost bringing out my inner child again – the kid that used to play for an entire day in the water skim boarding and bodysurfing his life away. The inner child is excited, so I couldn’t be more excited myself.
I have stood in the face of fear many times and there have been moments I have lost.
Lost out on the day because I decide to burrow myself under the sheets and put off dealing with it. But I always come back to face it again. I know there’s no way around it. Another effort. Another round in the ring.
And eventually…you land a punch that allows you to move through it.
I’m through.
Evan Sanders
The Better Man Project