How To Write A Letter to Your Future Self

An excellent mindset exercise that many counselors, teachers, and life coaches assign to their clients and students is to write a letter to their future self. You should do this too because it can really help you figure out what you need to do to achieve the future you imagine while also recognizing where you are falling short now so you can improve. 

You can choose any type of letter to write to yourself, and it can be about your future relationships, your career, your business, or whatever you want it to be about. The best future letter is specific so that you can fully describe the vision you want to achieve. 

Visualize Your Future in Ten Years 

Put yourself in the headspace that you are in the future ten years from now, living your best life based on the topic you want to write about. This might be a letter describing your perfect spouse, or your children, or the dream house that you’re going to live in. It’s up to you what you focus on in this letter. 

Contrast Your Future with Your Current Life 

As you write the letter, note the places that are different in ten years from what is happening today in your life. For example, if the letter to your future self-images a six-figure career, going on long vacations, and being a healthy weight, what are you doing to ensure that happens now, and what are you doing that is working against that stated goal? 

For example, if you currently don’t eat a healthy diet, you may want to mention that you begin eating a healthy diet, setting the date that you’ll start, and you’ll want to define exactly what a healthy diet is by describing a meal you love in the future. 

List the Helpful Actions 

As you write the letter, note the areas of your life that you need to take action on to ensure that you reach this imagined future you. For example, how did you save the money for the dream house you’re going to buy in ten years? How did you meet your future spouse, and what are their characteristics? 

Being as detailed as possible in the letter will help you visualize not only the success of meeting your goal but the process of reaching it too. After all, the only way to ensure that you experience the life you dream of having is by understanding what it takes to get there and what you can do, step by step, to achieve it.