So I close my eyes…and what can I see?
The future in vivid color. Flashes of moments. Scenes. Feelings. Opportunities. People. Friends.
I see these things and they move me. I feel these things run through my body. I know that they are far more than just figments of my imagination. They are things to come. They will be, if only I act.
Every step I have taken in my life has brought me to this point.
I am a complete product of the thoughts, actions, and results I have generated up until this time. The good. The bad. Everything I have generated has come from who I showed up in the world to be. For a while now, I have been asking a lot about who I wanted to be going forward. I knew that the last handful of years didn’t have to be like the next handful of years.
That question has been rooting itself in my mind for quite some time and in some moments of frustration felt quite impossible to ask.
But as time went on, I started to discover that with patience those moments of clarity would show up and I would find exactly what I was looking for. They came in pieces. They showed up and hit me like sacks of bricks. And, for the first time in a very long time, I reconnected with my inner desire to dream as big as I could ever dream.
There were a slew of things that have happened over the years that kept me out of dreaming big. I downsized because of the broken promises of others that left me stranded. I was 90% in on myself. But now, I’m all in. I am 100% doing my own thing without being dependent on others for income and that is the most liberating feeling in the world.
I can completely understand the feelings of those who are sent off course by tragedy.
I know that in my heart. I also know the terrible feeling of having to go through the growing pains to reconnect with your sense of self after you felt like you’ve had the chord kicked out of the wall for so long. These past handful of years have been amazing in many ways but they have also been incredibly challenging. In no way shape or form has it gone all according to plan or been easy.
It’s been hard.
But in many ways, that amount of difficultly has been a gift. It has been a gift to be able to grow from adversity and forge stronger ties with what I know to be true and what I stand for.
In many ways, I drifted.
I hit a series of doldrums and the ship just seemed to completely stop. That time, as frustrating as it was also served me…because the great big pause that was bestowed upon me developed an even deeper conviction that this is exactly what I want to be doing. The rushing blood going through my body wanting to head forward in a specific direction solidified my belief in the path. And when the winds came about again, I charged forward with a sense of purpose that I’ve never experienced before.
There have been continued challenges throughout this path.
There have been moments of relapse into old ways. There have been times when I have been completely thrown for a loop and didn’t see what was about to hit me. There have also been times of deep connection with this wiser sense of self that has brought me into a much better place.
All of it, every last step of the path, has given something to me as a gift.
Sometimes those gifts are disguised as boxes covered in mud and dirt. However, when you open them, you find something pure and gold on the inside.
Maybe that’s the entire idea of me coming here to write every single day: to find the gift in whatever comes across my path.
This isn’t about starting over or building myself back up from anything, but rather about continuing on the path that I know is true. I believe in the way I’m headed. I know it has heart.
Evan Sanders
The Better Man Project