Estimated Reading Time 7 Minutes
Hey You! Happy New Year and welcome back to The Vibrant Life Podcast. I hope you had a fabulous holiday season and that you are as psyched as I am for 2023. I had a great time. I was able to be with my family playing games and making memories, and life doesn’t get much better than that. Also, the celebrations took a bit out of me, so I’ve been taking it easy this first week which has been good too. That’s a lesson that I’ve been learning over the course of some time now, there’s no shame in resting when you need it. And it’s also so great to be able to do the things we love with the people we love. So life is good.
One thing I am so excited about this year is continuing with this podcast. It’s a genuine pleasure for me to reflect on how to live my best life and to invite you along on the journey with me. And if you feel like you’ve benefited from The Vibrant Life Podcast, then I’d love for you to hit that subscribe button and leave a quick review on Apple Podcasts or whatever platform you like to use. I’m all about living a vibrant life together and I appreciate all of your support so much!
Today I want to give a different take on goals and resolutions. I think we can be very hard on ourselves and if we aren’t careful, then we can beat ourselves up more than making positive changes in our lives. I think most of us are familiar with the saying ‘New Year, New You’. All of the fitness industry capitalizes on that mindset this time of year. Today I want to offer you the idea of embracing a new year and the same you.
Here’s the truth my friends, you are a beautiful, worthy, special, and simply awe-inspiring person. You always have been and you always will be, no matter what mistakes you may have made. We are often sold lies that because we make poor choices or because we don’t stand out in the obvious ways in the world that we are somehow less than what we should be. I know I’ve fallen into that trap many times. But that is false with a capital F.
Have you heard of or read the book by Max Lucado entitled You Are Special? It’s one of my all-time favorites and it illustrates one of the points I want to stress today. I’ll put a link in the show notes if you want to check it out.
Anyway, Punchinello lives in the town of Wemmickville. The residents there give out stickers every day, with gold stars going to Wemmicks who exhibit talent, intelligence, and beauty, and gray dots going to those who fall short, are ugly, or simply unexceptional. With his body coated with gray dots, Punchinello begins to feel worthless. Then, one day, he goes to see Eli the woodcarver, who is also his creator, and finds out that his value originates from a different place. The inspiring tale by Max Lucado serves as a reminder that God loves us unconditionally just the way we are.
That is what I want you to hear today, my friends. You are a Child of God and as such, it’s impossible to measure your worth by standards imposed by the world or even by yourself. Also, as a Child of God, your potential is virtually limitless. You are full of wonder, and love, and light, and you deserve to be happy. And like magic when you start to embrace the truthfulness of these things, then the labels from others or from your negative self-talk won’t stick anymore.
I’m here to challenge the idea that you need to find or create a so-called ‘New You” in order to achieve your dreams. Yes, I think we should be moving forward in our personal development journeys, but only because that’s the way that true joy lies. It’s in our natures to learn, to grow, and to become in the end like our heavenly parents. But the trick is to realize that we are learning to shed off the things that are really not part of our true natures. The secret is embracing our highest selves.
You’re getting a lot of book talk from me today, and I love it because books are a passion of my heart. And one of the nearest and dearest series of books in my life is The Chronicles of Narnia. I could talk for days about C.S. Lewis and what a genius he was, and all of his books are amazing. But for me, it all started when I was probably 9 years old and I read the Narnia books through for the first time. I loved these stories so much that I recounted them in my own words to my little brothers at bedtime. So my friendship with these stories has lasted most of my lifetime.
Anyway, in the fifth book, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, we get the story of Eustace Scrub. Up until his encounter with Aslan, Eustace is a kid you love to hate. He was conceited, haughty, and generally obnoxious to everyone.
Eustace discovers a dragon’s lair on an island the group arrives on and is eager to get his hands on the treasure. He wears a gold bracelet and drifts off to sleep; when he wakes up, he’s been transformed into a dragon. According to Lewis, “Sleeping on a dragon’s hoard with greedy, dragonish thoughts in his heart, he had become a dragon himself.” Eustace briefly felt relieved to be the biggest thing around, but he soon realized he was isolated from his companions and the rest of humanity. He now feels a heavy sense of loneliness and is determined to change.
Eventually, Aslan visits Eustace and takes him to a deep well that looks “like a very big round bath with marble steps going down into it.” Later, Edmund hears Eustace narrate the scene. According to him, the water was so clear that he believed taking a bath there would help to relieve the pain in his leg (from the gold bracelet he had put on when he was human). But Aslan told him that before he could get in the water he had to undress. Eustace discovered, however, that no matter how many dragon skins he was able to shed, he was still a dragon.
“Then the lion said – but I don’t know if it spoke – ‘You will have to let me undress you.’ I was afraid of his claws, I can tell you, but I was pretty nearly desperate now. So I just lay flat down on my back to let him do it.
“The very first tear he made was so deep that I thought it had gone right into my heart. And when he began pulling the skin off, it hurt worse than anything I’ve ever felt. The only thing that made me able to bear it was just the pleasure of feeling the stuff peel off. You know – if you’ve ever picked the scab off a sore place. It hurts like billy-oh but it is such fun to see it coming away.”
…
“Well, he peeled the beastly stuff right off … And there was I as smooth and soft as a peeled switch and smaller than I had been. Then he caught hold of me – I didn’t like that much for I was very tender underneath now that I’d no skin on – and threw me into the water. It smarted like anything but only for a moment. After that, it became perfectly delicious and as soon as I started swimming and splashing I found that all the pain had gone from my arm. And then I saw why. I’d turned into a boy again…” – C. S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
I love this story so much. And let me ask you, who was the real Eustace? The annoying, mean boy who wanted to make everyone as miserable as he was, or the new undragoned boy who had learned a painful lesson? I think we can agree it’s the new boy, right?
Here’s another question for you, how did Eustace become mean in the first place? I don’t believe he was born that way. In the books, we learned that he went to an awful school where he was bullied and therefore he became a bully himself. Also, his parents weren’t very nurturing and you get the idea that there wasn’t much tenderness for him at home.
The miracle in the story happens when Aslan helps Eustace to shed his dragon skins or his old self and truly become his highest self again. He is restored to a point before the boy he was when the story began. And this is our story as well. We don’t need to become someone new in order to reach our potential or become our best selves. We just need to remember who we are in the first place.
So I hope we can all remember this as we move forward with our resolutions and our goals. Making good changes in our lives is great, but we need to be gentle with ourselves. In the story, Eustace sheds many skins himself before Aslan finally helps him transform completely. We might have to make more than a few attempts in shedding our bad habits or negative thoughts as well. But as we make the effort we will become more of who we truly are than before we started.
So Peeps, don’t fall into the misguided idea that you need a new you for the new year. Just be who you truly are deep down. I love you and I believe we all have bright things coming our way. Thanks for listening and live the vibrant life!
