Writing down your goals in great detail, including in a letter to yourself, might feel a bit awkward, but it's a practice that's worked for many successful people — and neuroscience supports it.
"I shall be a bestselling writer," renowned science fiction author Octavia E. Butler once penned in a letter to herself in 1988. "So be it, see to it."
"I will live the way I please and achieve inner harmony and happiness," Bruce Lee, a famous actor and martial artist, wrote to himself in 1969.
Writing your goals on paper can improve your chances of achieving them, largely because of a concept scientists discovered in 1978 called "the generation effect." Essentially, ideas you generate yourself are more likely to be stored in your long-term memory than thoughts you read in passing.
Writing yourself a letter can also do more than help commit your goals to memory, says neuroscientist and author Erin Clabough: It can instill a sense of self-belief, and the motivation that comes with it, that you wouldn't necessarily feel otherwise.
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Setting intentions for your path ahead can nudge you in the direction that you want to go, and give you the confidence to pursue it, says Clabough, a professor of psychology at the University of Virginia. Similar to the placebo effect, believing that you'll achieve your goals can influence your ability to be successful, she explains.
But what exactly should you write to yourself? Clabough recommends building your letter around the following five questions:
- What's working well in my life?
- What's not working?
- What doesn't feel in alignment with how I want my life to be?
- How am I spending my time, energy and resources?
- What are my priorities and values?
These questions can be a useful gauge for whether you're heading in the direction you desire, says Clabough. If you aren't, "you can identify those places in the letter and say, 'My intention is to move to make those things match up more closely to what my value system actually is,'" she says.
A strategy for 'all sorts of people, no matter their walks of life'
This exercise works best when you keep your intentions open-ended and try to be as compassionate with yourself as possible, says Clabough. The more letters you write to yourself, the more you may notice the same themes popping up — which you can take as a sign that you're making strides toward your goals, even in small, unexpected ways, she says.
"Do the best that you can towards that intention, every day. You're going to make progress towards that, but sometimes it won't be in the way that you thought you were going to do it," says Clabough.
Use these five questions when goal-setting in a letter to yourself, says neuroscientist Erin Clabough.
Clabough tends to write letters to herself "when I'm going through a hard thing," she says: "I have in the past flipped ahead 40 pages [in my journal], and I've written my letter to my future self at that point, so that when I'm writing in my journal, at some point, I'm going to hit it."
The exercise is useful for other scenarios too, she adds, like simply trying to advance your career. Writing letters to yourself at least once per year, and reading them weeks or months later for reflection, is a useful tool for everyone, she says.
"Setting intentions makes a difference," Clabough says. "I think this is something that should be utilized by all sorts of people, no matter their walks of life."
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