This place I’m crawling out from…it’s not that easy to explain.

But I’ll try my best.

I feel like I’m emerging from this bank of fog that’s been clouding me and my path for such a long time. The fog was made of many things – fear, doubt, worry, anxiety – and they controlled me to a very large degree. I couldn’t decide fully because I wasn’t sure if what I was doing was the right thing in the end.

I could see the big picture, but there was this moment of paralysis that I faced because of not being entirely sure if it would land me at that big picture. 

So instead of going into it fully, I spent a lot of time tiptoeing around it all.

What changed?

For a long time, I’ve been wanting to read Robert Greene’s book “Mastery” because I had a feeling it would give me newfound perspective into what it really took to become great at something. To a degree, I understood many of the concepts already, but what I didn’t expect was how it took me far into this moment of clarity of what “I really wanted to become great at.”

I think that’s a question that has eluded me for some time.

“What do you really want to do.”

Without that pulling force at the end there wouldn’t be much room or possibility for creating a driving force at the beginning. So I would dabble into things and continue wondering to myself, “What do I really want?” for quite some time.

There’s been some serious self-reflection going on lately. After being sick for a week and a half, I already had come to many realizations about my life. But this book took me into a place in my mind that I’ve never really been before. It took me deeper into understanding what it actually takes to become a Master and the focused process you have to go through to really get there.

What I came to understand, in looking back at all of this, is that I never really went to the depths necessary to take on this process wholeheartedly.

In retrospect, I dabbled.

In fact, I dabbled in many things.

But now I know where to focus my energy. Now I know that I have to go as deep as I can into understanding the human soul in order to help as many people as I can transform their lives. Writing is an expression of this journey. Social media is an expression. The things I post are expressions.

But it starts with me and it starts with my understanding that I want to learn as much as I possible can about what’s possible for us as human beings and how that translates into our ultimate form of transformation.

There’s this phase called the apprenticeship phase, where the apprentice spends roughly 7-10 years of 3-5 hours of work a day practicing his/her craft. From this amount of time, roughly 10,000 hours, you cannot help but transform your mind into this creative machine in which the craft just pours out of you at will.

Then you go off into the next phase and truly explore your creativity.

I didn’t know any of this. I had no idea that the path I really had to head on – for the sake of mastering something – actually required this amount of focused dedication.

But now, at 27, I understand more than anything the journey that lays ahead.

I have emerged from the fog…and it’s time to dive as far as I can into the depths.

This is my path.

In fact, looking back, it has always been my path and I experienced what it’s like to lose my way and not even know why I felt lost.

So here’s to the journey.

Evan Sanders
The Better Man Project