One powerful and fun exercise that gets overlooked is the act of writing a letter to your future self. Here is why you should write one.
There are all sorts of different exercises out there designed specifically for the purpose of helping you to increase your efficiency, set better goals, and become more effective at whatever it is you choose to do in your personal or professional life.
One very powerful and fun exercise that often gets overlooked is the simple act of writing a letter to your future self, sealing it, and making a note to open it by a certain date somewhere down the line – whether that’s within several months, or several years.
The idea is that in this letter you will speak about your hopes, ambitions, and motivations for the future, and will strive to create a sense of connection with the “you” of tomorrow.
Here are just a few reasons why you should write a letter to your future self.
- Because it will help you to clearly identify your goals and preferences for the future
One of the major reasons why people often don’t succeed in accomplishing their dreams, is simply because they don’t clearly identify and structure those dreams into goals and ambitions that can then be acted on.
It’s one thing to have some semi-abstract feeling that you’d like to have lots of money, or be in a job that you find more fulfilling, but it’s something else altogether to actually come up with specific ideas of what it is you want to achieve.
Writing a letter to your future self can help you to clearly identify your goals and preferences for the future. It will naturally put you in a state of mind where you are imagining just how the “future self” you’re talking to will look, and what position they will be in.
Whether you want straighter teeth, a career as an artist, or a big family, it’s essential to become clear about your aspirations
1. Because it will help to motivate you and give you a sense of urgency
One major problem with living life “for today,” and “going with the flow,” is that you can very easily end up without much – if any – of a sense of urgency.
The thing is, you need a sense of urgency and a sense of motivation for some future goal, in order to actually drive you to do anything – especially anything that requires focus, commitment, and hard work.
Writing a letter to your future self, and including ambitions and hopes for the future, can really help to motivate you and give you that sense of urgency.
2. Because it will help to make you feel more accountable to your future self
By writing a letter to your future self, you are essentially “creating a relationship” with that future self, and will in turn naturally tend to feel more accountable to your future self as well.
This can be an important thing for all those moments when you feel the urge to procrastinate, to stray off track, or to behave in ways that you wouldn’t feel proud of when using your better judgment.
