Evan Sanders's Blog, page 107

How do we turn what is deep within us into something that is visible to the world? Like an iceberg, can we elevate ourselves beyond the current horizon and bring forth the honest and substantial principles that lay deep within us? How do we turn the invisible into something substantial?

We must devote ourselves to an ideal.

A man becomes more than the physical form he is attached to when he makes a decision to become something greater than which he currently is. But what do you devote your life to? What makes you itch? What is it that would make you push through all the pain of growth? What would fulfill you?

I have come across this question many times throughout my life so far – and yet the real answer has eluded me for quite some time. What ends up happening is that the answer you originally had often of times is only on the surface. It came from what you could see in front of you. But as we can see above, it is in the depths of our hearts that we find our  drive.

To inspire people to live their lives with relentless drive, bold risk taking, courageous vulnerability and inspiring action.

The vision is key. Without it – you represent an uncontrolled lightning storm.

- Evan Sanders

At times you can feel lost. But those time fade and then you are found. You find the answers you have been seeking. You hear the voice inside start speaking up again. And you look yourself in the mirror with a sense of clueless pride – not because you are clueless in your entirety, but because you are excited with where you have arrived – and happily baffled by where you will go next.

Vision helps you start the journey, but a great deal of the time we do not end up where we thought we were going to. That’s the point. There is always something great to be found on our journey towards achieving our dreams. A great deal of the time we get lost. I mean really lost – to the point where you almost lose your vision. But it’s okay to get stuck in the woods for a while. If it was easy, everyone would be doing it.

When you get lost, you have to go back to the basics. What got me here? What can I do that has made me successful in the past? What attitude  did I have when I accomplished that goal? Most of the time you have the answers, it just takes some patience to find them. Root around for a while – they will come.

I look back on the years that have come and gone and see great victory through fantastic defeat. There was a time that this was all I knew. Great struggle. But what has thrown me off  lately is that all of the work that I have invested into myself has prevented many of those great defeats from happening. Because they are not there and that is mostly what I always knew, life seemed pretty dull at times. But I think for me, the ability to slow down completely and appreciate the silence is huge. To be perfectly happy in the calm. Sounds a bit funny at times, but it is entirely true. The peaceful waters are a gift to the sailor who has been toiling on the high seas of life.

The rough waters will come again – that’s just life. But for the meantime, I will let my boat drift along and enjoy the quiet.

- Evan Sanders

Join My Dream

I always knew she loved the beach, but as I walked up the long staircase to the main floor of her apartment, I was taken aback…we were 45 minutes away from the ocean, but somehow she had found a way to bring it to her. I was now walking in an aquarium. Pictures, posters, trinkets, stuffed animals – if she could house a group of penguins she would – but she had to settle for the octopus salt and pepper shakers. Turn on “Sounds of Nature” and close your eyes…you could be in the wild smack in the middle of Los Angeles.

And when you sit down and talk to the creator of this Sea World-esque masterpiece, you quickly realize that she’s a little bit different from many of us – she has salt water running through her veins. Every once in a while, you will be going throughout your day and she will tell you a random animal fact – and you start laughing – not because it came out of the blue, but because you wonder where all this information is stored in her head. And if you inquire for more …it’s as endless as the depths of the ocean.

This post isn’t about our blooming friendship or how great Chanel is (she’s great) – it’s about someone who has the opportunity to achieve a dream. She belongs near the ocean or deep in the forest surrounded by nature. It doesn’t make sense to have her in the concrete jungles that many of us live in every day. The expert who is on National Geographic explaining the beauty of nature and her project to save a species or to help build back an entire ecosystem – that’s Chanel. That has to be Chanel. She may not be there yet, but she will. No one else could do it with as much passion or heart as she could.

Out of 600,000 applicants, she has made it to the Top 25 for a Wildlife Caretaker job in Australia. There are 6 jobs available. While there are thousands of people already engaged in helping her find ways to contact celebrities, wildlife experts, the media, online communities etc –  more help is still needed.  There is no one else in this world who has otters, turtles, kangaroos and koalas wrapped in the helix of their DNA. I couldn’t think of someone more deserving of this job – so do me a favor Better Man Project community. Take 2 minutes out of your day to help someone achieve a lifelong dream. Follow the directions below – you aren’t just helping a young woman get her dream job, you will be helping this world we live in.

1. Like / Share / Comment on her FACEBOOK PAGE

2. If you have any connections with Media, Celebrities, people who work in the Wildlife Profession – please email her at [email protected]

3. ReTweet her or Tweet @Australia and @TourismAus to pick her for Wildlife Caretaker – @PSChanel and hashtag #BestJobs and #ChanelWC

Last night while I was laying in bed getting ready to go to sleep, I felt this almost physical pressure that I don’t think I will ever forget. I looked up a the ceiling and felt it in my arms and then in my face. Everything felt like it was a thousand pounds. For a few minutes, it felt like everything was pushing me down into my bed…like a big machine press. And then, the feeling that I will never forget. It was as if something was pulling me up out of it, like dragging a piece of paper out of the stack with your fingertips. Seconds later…it was gone.

I’m not exactly sure what is going on with me right now, but I guess that is half the surprise. I couldn’t explain it to you…it couldn’t really describe it…it just is. Maybe it will pass, maybe it will stay for a while.

But I will never forget that feeling.

- Evan Sanders

If you close your eyes late at night and just listen – you will hear the sound of nothing.  Before you close your eyes to fall asleep, open your ears as wide as you can, as if you are trying harder to hear something. You can feel almost the slightest of pressures on your eyelids…slowly rolling down to the tops of your cheekbones. Listen harder. And then, you’ll truly hear it.

Nothing.

No voice. No sound.

No chatter. No doubt.

Nothing.

And if you listen to this, the sound of nothing for a while, you begin to realize that it is that simple. Right now, in this moment, there is nothing. The absence of sound becomes louder – almost numbing the inside of your ears.

Your eyes blink open.

Then your eyes quickly blink back shut.

But that sound is gone. But the short grin isn’t. Because in that moment, you realized…

That from nothing, you can create everything.

- Evan Sanders

“Set sail sailor – it’s time to find that ever elusive island.”

Christopher Columbus was lost. Really, really lost. He ended up in the wrong part of the world…God only knows how clueless he actually was…and has been deemed one of the greatest explorers of all time. I give Columbus credit for something completely different than most. I give him credit for actually having the stones to get lost in the first place. To let the wind into the sails and to cast off on a journey, unbeknownst at the time, that would change the world. And as I stare at the screen…I wonder…how the hell did I get on the topic of Christopher Columbus?

You have to have the courage to lose sight of the shore in order to accomplish a dream. Dreams aren’t in a safe place. They are never the Easter egg that is hidden 5 feet away from your feet. They’re that egg that is buried in the fire place…fire burning hot…and behind the grill. You have to learn how to put the flames out before you can accomplish something truly remarkable. It’s a right of passage. I am not sure there is one fictional tale of a treasure chest that is completely unguarded. Usually, the hero has to confront a vicious dragon, traps of all sorts, or a gatekeeper wielding only the finest of weapons. There is always a final war…but along the hero’s journey there are always battles to test his/her strength. Even before this though, there is a threshold that the hero must pass through in order to start his journey. The mentor inspires the trip…and off he/she goes into the wild.

Fear is always present, but excitement is at an all-time high. I have started many a journey and realized I didn’t have what it took to make it all the way. It wasn’t a lack of supplies –  manpower –  right materials – or the right ship that caused my failure. It was something far more powerful. I lacked the reasons for my adventure in the first place.

They say that if you can give yourself 5 reasons for accomplishing a  goal, you give yourself a much better chance of succeeding. Why? You know why you are doing it. Your heart burns hot because it has all the fuel it will ever need to achieve the unthinkable trials and tribulations that are bound to come. Without those reasons, you will always turn back to shore disappointed. Trust me, I’ve been there.

But now I have my reasons.

Do you?

- Evan Sanders

Please Join My Dream https://www.facebook.com/BetterManProject

When you choose the path less traveled by you are always confronted with uncomfortable situations that will test the strength of your skin. On the journey there will be shrubs, twigs, and thorns that grab at your limbs and leave you with cuts. Some are little…some burn deep…and every once in a while you are delivered a wound that demands your full attention. Many turn away after starting down this road. “There’s no way through! It’s all underbrush. I can’t get  through that I will hurt myself!” So they turn to the path traveled by many…where the gardeners hedge back the bushes and a clear and easy road is paved for those to walk down. The easy way out attracts many.

What have I found? It’s not easy…and the crazy part of it is…I am still fully in it swinging away with my machete attempting to pave a path for myself. But I am at that point in the brush where I have to make a decision of which way to go  and what to do. I do know one thing though – I know who I am going to be while doing it.

There comes a point when you have to start enjoying how absolutely clueless you are. Yah, I said it. But seriously for a second. To be honest, I really have gone into this with no clue of what I am doing or how to get to the final destination (at least where I believe the final destination is). This is really scary at times. I have also let this fear of not knowing take focus away from what I was working on at the moment. But it dawned upon me today that to be given a gift and give it less than 100% is to completely sacrifice the gift itself.

So as I go into this next 30 days…I will go with a full heart and lots of passion. I will accept the cuts and scrapes that come along with the path not traveled by many. I will accept the fact that I don’t necessarily know where I am going…but I know the only way to get to where I want to be is by forging my own way. Let’s do this together.

- Evan Sanders

I’ve been stuck in a rut lately. I’m not exactly sure if the rut was extended or simply a short divot in the ground, but needless to say, it certainly was a thought provoker.

I’ve never been obsessed with the idea of “making it.” I guess I never really dreamed of the day where others would decide or say “Evan has made it.” When I think of this concept, I often get that looming feeling of settling. Perhaps it correlates with the similar thought that if you have made it, there is no more room to grow. I don’t think I ever want to get to the point where I have mentally achieved the time-to-stop-growing mentality.

I know that others will always have their  opinions of what is going on in my life and what I have failed at or achieved. This is an absolute in life and I am sure that it is entirely unavoidable. Opinions of others will always be present and the sea of advice will always wash up onto the shores of your mind. This leads me to believe that it becomes even more important to listen to the guiding voice in your head for directions to take on the proper path.

I find myself in ruts not when that voice isn’t present, but when there is a separate louder voice bellowing in the deep of my gut overriding the soft but certain mini-motivational speaker in my head that often tells me to go after my dreams. This combative voice demands my attention and takes me away from simply being able to go with the flow of life. It also paralyzes me because of its booming tone of uncertainty and doubt.

But as I sit here outside staring at the fire I just made, I realize that life must always have fuel. The logs you put on 20 minutes ago are burning through and the starters are now gone. The fire starts to burn down because the once easily accessible dry flammable wood has burned away. And to my right I see the larger log ready to be ignited as soon as I get off my butt and throw it into the pit. And life works similarly to this fireplace. What  you once used to light your flame is now gone and you must put new wood into the pit in order to get yourself going again. You might be burning a bit less hot right now, but when you overcome that moment holding you back from doing more work you can create a flame that was even grander than the last.

The wood of old will never light the new – but feed the spark with something fresh – and the flame will always remain.

- Evan Sanders

This equation will always hold true.

A > W

- Evan Sanders

“I went to my room and I closed the door and cried,” Michael Jordan said. “For a while I couldn’t stop. Even though there was no one else home at the time, I kept the door shut. It was important to me that no one else hear me or see me.”

In a sense, Jordan owns the world. To me, though, perhaps the most remarkable part of the Jordan story is the fact that, as a sophomore in high school, he was cut from his school’s basketball team. I kept wondering about how it affected him at the time it happened. He wanted to play with the others, and was told that he wasn’t good enough.

One evening, as we sat and talked before a Bulls game, he spoke about it. I wasn’t surprised that Jordan remembered every detail.

“For about two weeks, every boy who had tried out for the basketball team knew what day the cut list was going to go up,” Jordan said. “We knew that it was going to be posted in the gym in the morning.

“So that morning we all went in there and the list was up. I had a friend, and we went in to look at the list together.

“We stood there and looked for our names. If your name was on the list, you were still on the team. If your name wasn’t on the list, you were cut. His name was on the list. He made it. Mine wasn’t on the list.

“I looked and looked for my name,” he said. “It was almost as if I thought that if I didn’t stop looking, it would be there.”

Jordan, as if envisioning the list anew, said: “It’s alphabetical. I looked at the H’s and the I’s and the K’s, and I wasn’t there, and I went back up and started over again. But I wasn’t there.

“I went through the day numb. I sat through my classes. I had to wait until after school to go home. That’s when I hurried to my house and I closed the door of my room and I cried so hard. It was all I wanted — to play on that team.

“My mother was at work, so I waited until she got home, and then I told her. She knew before I said anything that something was wrong, and I told her I had been cut from the team. When you tell your mom something like that the tears start again, and the two of you have an after-cry together.”

At the end of that basketball season, Jordan said, he asked the coach if he could ride the bus with the team to the district tournament. Just to watch the other boys play.

“The coach told me no.” Jordan said. “But I asked again, and he said I could come. But when we got to the gym, he said he didn’t know if I could go in. He told me that the only way I could go in was to carry the players’ uniforms. So that’s what I did. I waked into the building carrying the uniforms for the players who had made the team. What made me feel the worst about that was that my parents had come to watch the tournament, and when they saw me walking in carrying the uniforms, they thought I was being given the chance to play.

“That’s what hurt me. They thought I was being given a chance.”

He is very likely the best basketball player who ever lived. If you ever wondered why he continues to work so hard, the answer may lie in this story. It must be so rare for a professional athlete to have once been cut from a high school team. The men who make it to the pros have always been the best on every playground, the best in every class, the best in every school.

“It’s OK, though,” Jordan said. “It’s probably good that it happened.”

Good?

“I think so,” he said. “It was good because it made me know what disappointment felt like,” he said. “And I knew that I didn’t want to have that feeling ever again.”

~ Bob Green – Chicago Tribute

I got cut from the final round of TEDx interviews for my school. When I found out, I can’t tell you how disappointed I was in not having made it. I had been dreaming about making this speech…a speech that would knock the audiences socks off. But after my sadness disappeared, there was one thing left: fuel. Fuel to propel myself to a point where I don’t have to be interviewed for anything anymore. To a point where I will be asked and paid for my time as a speaker. Where hundreds to thousands of people will come to see me and hear me. I want to be the best there is…and I have a plan to get there.

I hate losing more than I like winning. It’s the way I have always been. One of the best things you can do for me is tell me I can’t do something. I will make sure that one day, I can. It’s time to launch past where I was. Let’s go.

- Evan Sanders