What do you see?

What do you see around the bend?

Your future. Your dreams. Your aspirations.

What do they look like…feel like…move like?

Can you touch them? Are they pieces of you that you are waiting to be introduced to? Are they in your fingertips?

Do you believe in them?

Can you hear them whisper?

There is a calling I’ve heard for quite some time. In the past, I’ve written about my battles with it. I spoke about not wanting to give up the live I have lived in fear of what the future would bring.

For the first time in my life, I started to see why I was so hesitant to move forward on a new journey. I saw that there were still so many afflictions from the past controlling my daily dynamic. I didn’t have enough energy after so many disappointments and situations that went south. The events of life had taken a toll and I needed to pull back. I needed to readjust. I needed time to recover.

The hard part about all of this was there was this story in my mind telling me that I was somehow quitting on my old dreams or giving up. The truth was, my body and soul were forcing me to slow down and disconnect.

They shut everything off so I could listen.

So there I was, in the forest alone, listening to the faintest of whispers…and that’s when it started to all make sense.

Everything that had happened in the past set me up to live in a new way. I had gained an understanding of not just the depths of my own experience, but the experiences of many others who were trying to navigate this life.

And that’s where the lesson lived.

How can you understand the suffering people go through if you don’t suffer yourself? You can’t. So Nature made sure I did.

How can you speak to people about betrayal, abandonment, shame, and the darker shades of this experience if you’ve never had it yourself? You couldn’t. So Nature made sure I did.

And here I am now, though heavily scarred, battle tested and ready.

I am ready to rise to the potential of everything I have ever seen and to leave the other aspects of my old life behind. I am ready to tell the story. I am ready to write a new one that’s full of passion, wisdom, defeat and victory.

I am ready to step into my role, the one I have always known was waiting for me.

All of this came at a great cost. That cost was too much to even begin to write down here.

But the final note reads something like this…

It was all worth it.

Evan Sanders
The Better Man Project