There’s something exciting, bizarre, and oddly peculiar that at any point in your life, you can completely start over.

You can head down a new path.

You can decide to do something wildly different.

You can abandon an old plan, make a new one and head down it.

And then there’s that word — choice — which usually stops us from doing all of those things.

Are you willing to make the choice?

Are you willing to decide once and for all that you are going forward with unfolding a new destiny versus traveling the old path again and again?

I wasn’t.

I stood at the gates of that new path, running a few steps forward and then heading back to the threshold again.

Month and month.

Year after year.

A lifetime.

You can look at that and say…

Well you didn’t know any better. You were young. You didn’t know what you didn’t know.

And while all of that is true, there’s something to be said for the fact that deep inside my bones I knew that it was the way to go all along.

I am guilty of taking far too long to throw myself in 100% to things. I’ll get in 95% and go for a while, but then there’s something that stops me, throws me off track and then a very long time comes in between when I finally get back around to it.

I’ve seen this. I’ve recognized it completely. Now, I just have to do something about it.

I have this strange relationship with myself and my inner wisdom.

The “old soul” inside recognizes exactly what to do but it takes me (me?) some time to catch up to that thinking. I think there’s also been a side of me — that critic — that loves to rip me apart for not listening as much as I could have.

This year was many things to me.

It was brutal, incredible, insightful, healing, troubling and everything else in between.

This year, I lived.

I know that when I’m an old man, I will look upon this time I spent here in the mountains on my own as one of the most transformational years of my life.

I saw a different path — a new way of living — and while I struggled with a lifetime of old habits and ways of thinking, I kept on coming back over and over again to give it one more effort.

I have signed on to do some of the hardest things there are to do.

I know I have to give myself a little credit for that.

But as for now, here I am taking a stand for what I know is right and what I truly need to do.

Not 95%

Not 98%

100%

It’s all or nothing.

All in or all out.

I get that now. I understand that fully. And, I know that if I do go in 100%, that this entire story is going to change beyond belief.

I’ve seen it and I know what’s coming.

All I have to do is give myself that gift.

Challenge accepted.

Evan Sanders
The Better Man Project