Who Will the next version of you be?

​We all get to a next version of ourselves.

Sometimes it's drastic. It's me on the other side of a broken marriage. It's you on the other side of a new job or moving to a new state. It's all of us slowly moving to the other side of a global pandemic.

Sometimes, though, next isn't so drastic. Sometimes next is called today. It's simply waking up knowing today isn't the same version of me that yesterday was.

Whether we are on the other side of yesterday or the other side of a broken relationship, the choices are the same. Do I leave behind all the reasons I couldn't accomplish the ambitions I failed to accomplish, or do I bring those reasons with me?

Does next look like something new and hopeful, or does next look a lot like previous? We have a lot more control over that answer than I think we realize.

The landscape of next often looks drastically different. Life can be unrecognizable on the other side of a broken marriage or the job you left behind. Tuesday looks different than Monday. Georgia is another planet after living all your life in Maine.

But if we bring previous attitudes and habits from our previous versions of us into the next versions of us - life won't be much different at all - no matter how different it might look.

Accomplishing our ambitions requires us to be more ambitious. Sure, maybe there were things in our old versions holding us back; maybe there are things in our next versions that offer us more hope. But no matter what version of us we are in, previous or next, we still have our greatest friend and our greatest foe tagging along - us.

It's ultimately us who decides what we make of our next versions. It's ultimately us who decides - more of the same or more of what I've always known I could be. We can move next as far away as we want from previous, but if we bring our previous attitudes or habits with us, next and previous won't look much different at all.

We all get to the next version of ourselves. Who will you make of it?