change to find the real you, not the new you

​Well, we are officially over a week into the new year. For many, that means several successful or unsuccessful steps toward becoming the new you.

I'm reading the book: The Gift, by Edith Eger. I didn't get to chapter one before I read these words - "When you change your life, it isn't to become the new you, it's to become the real you."

We live in a world constantly trying to sell us on becoming a new and improved version of ourselves. Often, advertisements - commercials, they are the first hint we get of how much new we need in our lives. The television subtly gives us the solutions to all of our brokenness without ever telling us how broken we are.

They trust us to come to that conclusion on our own.

We paint so many pictures of who we want to be based on the pictures we see in the world around us. Which means, really, many of the pictures we paint of who we want to be - they are indirectly painted by someone other than us. Painted by people who are often more interested in us becoming who they think we should be and not who we truly are.

I get that - many segments of our economy would tank if this wasn't true.

But I wonder, as many of us have started our journeys into the new year, how many of us are looking for new yous this year, and how many are looking for real yous?

How many of you, this year, are looking to add programs, products and people to your life that change the way you look to the world in the light of the day? And how many of you are looking to add those same things to you life to change the way you see yourself in the dark of the night?

The first probably comes from a desire to become a new you. The latter most likely from a desire to become the real you. The first usually comes because we don't feel accepted by the world. The second because we have a hard time accepting ourselves.

So many people, and I've been one, spend so much of their lives chasing the answer to "who do you think I should be?" And, as a result, they get to the end of their lives never having answered - and in many cases - worse - never having asked: "who am I?"

I just want to encourage you - the world doesn't need a new you this year. The world needs the real you. I've gotten to know too many "real you" people in my life. They are often much more beautiful than the "new you" versions of themselves.

The "real you" version of them adds so much more to the world than the "new you" version.

I'm hoping this will be a year of living in the real world, not a new one.