Thank You Letter To My Future Self

There’s something so exhilarating about the beginning of a New Year. It almost feels like preparing for the first day of school: you make sure you’re clothes are neat, your shoes are clean, your bag is packed. Every beginning of a New Year is an opportunity for a fresh start, a clean slate.

I believe that all people can change for the better. I believe in resolutions and have tried every year as far back as I can remember, to come up with a goal or a purpose that I would work towards in the upcoming year. Every time it feels exciting. I think long and hard about the things that I can do to better myself as an individual and nurture those relationships that are important to me. I burst with new hope and a genuine belief that I would follow through and work out actions that would help me reach those goals. But often times along the way, the excitement dies out and I lose steam. I end up feeling defeated or as if I somehow failed at becoming a better person.

This year I’ve decided to try something different, use a different approach. I decided to write a letter to my future self, a year from now at the end of 2016. I start by picturing myself on the last day of 2016 and reflecting upon the year that just passed. The letter is a thank you letter for all the hard work I’ve put into becoming a better person and developing and maintaining healthy habits. Instead of enumerating a list of goals that I would like to accomplish, I envision myself as already having accomplished those goals and being grateful to have had the courage, strength and passion to carry on.

I try to cover every aspect of my life from emotional and mental to physical state and appearance, personal growth, relationships, career, travel, and giving back. I describe how I would want to feel day to day, visualizing how I would want certain relationships to be, or accepting certain things about myself or my body that I cannot change.

Volumes have been written about the power of envisioning; they say you visualize and then materialize. I remember trying it out in college and later on at my corporate job. Every time I had to take a test or give a presentation and emotions were running high, I would envision myself as already having accomplished the task. Somehow that seemed to lift off some of the pressure and ease the anxiety. And the best thing about visualization is that it’s free. Try it, you’ve got nothing to lose.

I’ll leave you now with an excerpt from my personal letter:

Dear Cat,

I am so excited to be writing to you on the last day of 2016. It’s only been a year that went by, but it’s been such an amazing and fulfilling year. You have accomplished so much and have come so far. It’s so impressive that you’ve managed to fight off your self-doubt and started believing in yourself. You changed your thinking from I Can’t to I Believe I Can and I Will. Approaching everything with an attitude of positivity and gratitude has really allowed you to see how beautiful and meaningful your life really is and to enjoy what you do daily. It’s so great that you started meditating 5-10 minutes every day in the morning before beginning your day. Thus you have been more emotionally stable and tolerant and less reactive to negative situations or negative people that you’ve come across. You stopped comparing yourself to others and learned to stand true to your beliefs.