![]() How do you be more realistic than optimistic in your letter to your future self? Such over-ambitious expectations do nothing but discourage you when you almost certainly fail to live up to them. Don’t expect to be married to the love of your life by the end of the coming one if you haven’t convinced anyone to go on a second date with you for years.Don’t expect to magically “cure” your fatness and get back to your ideal weight this year if you’ve been putting on five pounds a year for the past decade.Try to set realistic expectations for what you might accomplish between the time you write your letter and when you read it. Step 3: Look back before you look forward. Use past performance to temper your expectations for the future. Write about what you have today that you may not have a year from now. It will help them remember just how much you’ve changed over the past year.Īnd be grateful. Not only will it feel cathartic to do today, but your future self will also appreciate it. They will rekindle more accurate memories.īe honest. What’s going on in your life and the world at large?Īdd details like the color of the coffee cup you’re drinking from or the dinner party you went to yesterday.What are your worries, frustrations, and insecurities?.That’s why it’s a good idea to start your letter to your future self with what’s going on in your current self’s life. It goes to show that “memories” are often lies our brains tell us to keep us happy. What does this have to do with writing a letter to your future self? They’d forgotten what their favorite pastimes were, how much they disliked homework, and what they thought of their parents. Though confident in their answers, the adult’s accuracy in recalling what their 14-year-old selves once thought was no better than wild guesses. Thirty-four years later, he found 67 of them and tested how accurately they could remember what they had said. In 1962, psychiatrist Daniel Offer asked 73 14-year-olds questions about their parents, home, friends, and school. “I’m writing this to you wearing my super cool Tilley hat on the sunny deck of our new apartment in Cape Town.” Step 2: Don’t forget the present. Taught me lessons about myself or my psychology that I can learn from and share on this blog.Reinforced my patience, long-term thinking, and intentionality.Made me happy (or feeling some other emotion) when I read it.My letter to my future self will be a success if, when I read it a year from now, I am grateful I did it and Future Me wants to pass on the favor by writing another one the following year. How will you know if the exercise has been a success? Or, maybe the better way to put it is this: So what’s the purpose of writing a letter to your future self? Dinner parties with friends are more memorable.The more mental effort you put into clarifying the purpose of any activity you take on, the higher the returns you get out of it. Here’s another lesson I learned more recently: Kennedy Step 1: Come up with a good reason to do it. “Efforts and courage are not enough without purpose and direction.” – John F. And I’m putting a ton of thought into my letter because I want my future self to be extra thankful for it. I don’t care if other people think it’s uncool. Today, I’m writing a second letter to my future self. Most importantly, I learned the value of doing favors for my future self.Įver since, I’ve tried to apply that lesson by working to give my future self a healthy body and mind, ample savings, fond memories, and close friends and family. How much you turn out differently from expectations.How much life turns out different from expectations.I learned a lot from reading my letter to my future self: My predictions were even more hilariously misguided than I recalled, and I could hardly believe I’d written some of the things I read. ![]() I was giddy with nostalgia, anticipation, and appreciation to my pre-teen self for making the effort. The cool kids had nothing much to look forward to. We reassembled in the same room as Day 1. I filled it with YA-novel-worthy predictions/goals/dreams about how many girls I’d kiss and date, who I’d be friends with, and what university I’d be heading to.įive years later, my classmates and I metamorphosed into the future selves we’d written to. ![]() I was dorky enough to write a four-page letter. Most of my classmates were too cool to put any effort into it. On my first day of high school, our guidance counselor had our class write letters to our 12th grade graduating future selves. ![]()
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