Letters to my future self: A practice that allows me to live more fully in the present

Gazing into our crystal ball, there is a way of being that is grounded in the present while inspired by a vision just a little further ahead on the path, if we can imagine it.

On May 22, 2022, I wrote a letter to my future self to be opened a year later. I typed it up, printed it, put it in an envelope and tucked it in the pages of a journal with a reminder in my calendar to open it exactly a year later. This is how that letter began:

“I am so proud of you. Just one year ago your primary thoughts, beliefs and feelings were of a lack of abundance, possibility and belonging. You felt your life was lacking in fundamental ways. You thought you were not living up to your potential and you often thought, at age 62, that it was too late. You felt that to be a searcher was a curse: never to be satisfied, never to find the answers.

“Most days you felt frustrated. You felt small. You gave and gave and gave to others until sometimes you were screaming silently inside, but you did nothing to change what was harming you—physically and spiritually—in this pattern of self-denial, of martyrdom. It had been a (falsely) comforting cloak for a long time, and you were afraid to take it off: to reveal to the world who you really are.

“Too often you felt less than—not living the life you truly want to live, suppressing your voice in conversation with those who should hear it most—like your husband of nearly 33 years. You felt deep sadness over the lack of connection to him. You were inhabiting a lifetime of resentment and anger for your long years of being the sole breadwinner, postponing your own dream to devote more time to fiction, year after year, decade after decade. You felt lonely in your marriage. You felt such yearning. You would cry, listening to Judy Collins’ “Both Sides Now,” letting the line, “I don’t know how to love at all” break you wide open because you seemed to know nothing about love anymore. You backed away in fear from voicing the scary word: divorce.

“You carried on, you pretended everything was okay, you lived behind the façade because you were so damned good at it. You had a lifetime of practice. But all the while, you were pushing way down your own truth. And your body hurt. Your heart hurt.”

The advice to live only in the present and not in the future is misguided, and science backs me up. Psychologist Hal Hershfield studies the emotional connection we have to our future selves. As he told cognitive scientist Maya Shankar in this episode of “A Slight Change of Plans,” his work showed that “the future self that arose when we thought of our future selves looked more like the brain activity that arose when we thought of others. On a neural level, the future self looks like another person.”

In his work, Hershfield, author of Your Future Self: How to Make Tomorrow Better Today, found that “people who are connected to their future selves are more likely to have saved money over time, they’re more likely to have made ethical decisions, and feel more of a sense of meaning in their lives.”

That rings true for me, the idea that my future self needs my help today. My feet may be firmly planted in my present life, yet considering my future self, I am guided toward a wholeness and truth I aspire to even as it remains out of reach. A letter to our future self is not about resolutions or goals. It is an excavation, a visioning exercise, as fully expressed as we can make it.

I was moved by a lovely story I heard recently on NPR about a New Jersey family that created a holiday tradition years of creating time capsules in the form of chipwood boxes they decorate and fill with a handwritten message to their future selves about what was important to them that year. The father said that the family’s favorite part is revisiting messages they wrote to themselves years ago among the collection of now 100 holiday boxes.

Stumbling forward but making progress all the same

Opening that letter on May 23, 2023 was a gift. A year earlier, I was so anguished, still four months away from the day I would tell my husband I wanted a divorce, not knowing how I would find the courage to say what I needed to say. Yet, reading it a year later, it was uncanny how accurate my future vision had been. The messages I had for myself had been grounding me all along:

“Today life is very different. You are confident and determined and serene. You live in your truth and in your essence. You spend the majority of your days working on your novel and creative writing. You rise early, before sunrise, you journal, meditate, do yoga, eat a lovely plant-based breakfast. You sit in your beautiful, spare writing space, and you let yourself be who she was always meant to be: She Who Spins Words in Search of Meaning.

“You also began saying no to a marriage that was making you unhappy. You began asserting your own voice, your own needs, and desires, firmly and without apology. You became a fierce warrior! You realized that you must have your own back, always. And that no one can do that for you. Not a husband. Not any of your wise friends or coaches or therapists—they can have your back, but they can’t do the work for you or find the answers for you. You came to the painful realization that this marriage was complete; it was time to end the marriage and move on. You came to that conversation with so much love and compassion for yourself, your husband and all that you had created together, even as you remained true to your heart and the way forward.

“You are surrounded by so much love: the love of your daughters, your mother, siblings, many, many friends. You now feel an abundance, you feel possibility in every day and a greater sense of belonging to yourself. It’s not perfect because nothing is. Sometimes it is lonely. Often it feels hard. But you have chosen your hard and it was the right choice. You’re breathing in love and acceptance and most of all, love for yourself. You are married to yourself first and you will never abandon her again. 

“I love you. I admire your courage and your wisdom and your persistence for staying on your path and following your dharma. We cannot be anything other than what we are, the true expression and essence of ourselves. In the words of Krishna, we are what we seek. So, finally, you called off the search. Congratulations!”

Manifesting a future I could only glimpse

I believe there was a reason I chose the word “manifest” as my word of the year for 2023. So much of what I envisioned a year earlier had manifested itself in my life. I was in fact more confident, determined and serene than ever before. I enjoyed an early morning creative practice that had become sacred. I had completed my marriage with love and compassion for the both of us. I had chosen the right kind of hard and every day I was breathing in love and acceptance for myself.

I realized that even before I began the recent practice of writing daily letters from love to myself with

Elizabeth Gilbert

‘s Letters from Love community here on Substack, I was already letting this voice of love guide me. She was the one writing the words, imagining a future for me when, mired in the quicksand of the present moment of divorce and the demands of caregiving for my mom with dementia, I couldn’t imagine it for myself.

Letter to my 90-year-old self

I encourage you to write a letter to your future self, to be opened a year later—or six months later, or even decades later, like this letter to my 90-year-old self I wrote in August 2022. Here’s an excerpt:

“Amy, I am most proud that 30 years ago you took your life into your own hands, at last, deciding to live truthfully and fully in your power and authenticity. You felt at 62 that you were looking at the end of your life but look at us now, 90 years old, and still here. Still living, loving, learning, experiencing every moment as a gift. That wouldn't have happened had you not moved from the place where you felt stuck, small and fearful and stepped into the light of deep self-regard and appreciation for all that you had been and all you had yet to become. 

You are most proud that at this tipping point, at this time of necessary decision in your life, you went for it. You completed with love and compassion your marriage, stood tall and strong in the face of inevitable hurt and heartbreak and you chose yourself. With that incredibly brave and difficult decision, you could begin to focus more fully on living with purpose--your purpose, your bigger yes. You finished that novel that was calling to you, and you published it, and you wrote another, and another novel after that. You continued to tell the stories inside you and bring them out into the light so that others could read them. 

But while you are proud of seizing your dream in the last third of your life, you are most proud of the woman you became--able to love more freely, openly, authentically, to model for your daughters the way to live a life. Because you never again abandoned yourself or made bargains with your honor and authenticity. You embraced your dignity.  You stood taller and took up more space without apology. You began living with grace, divinity and compassion, for yourself and for others, and that made everything....everything...possible.”

This 90-year-old woman doing zumba is my vision for myself!

Let the understanding rise from your center

This idea of calling forth a vision of your future self reminds me of the beautiful poem “Pilgrim Island” by

David Whyte

and this stanza in particular:

It took you so long
to see the way
understanding rises
from the very centre
of your own body
everyday and luminous,
from arriving waves
of what only seems
like the ordinary

The shortcut to your own understanding may be opening your heart to the vision of yourself at some point in the future, a self that has been waiting patiently for present you and future you to become one.

Questions to ponder and share in the comments: Have you ever written a letter to your future self? If not, are you inspired to try it and how do you think envisioning that future self will inform how you live in the present?

3 Songs for 3-D

Divorce

“April Come She Will,” Simon & Garfunkel

Dementia

“In My Life,” The Beatles

Destiny

“You Can Get It If You Really Want,” Jimmy Cliff