(Article Updated February 22nd, 2024)
Writing messages to your future self is a powerful way to connect with the person you hope to become. It’s like sending a time capsule into the future, filled with hopes, dreams, advice, and reminders that can guide you through life’s ups and downs. As we journey through life, our experiences shape us, and our perspectives evolve.
These 25 simple messages are crafted to serve as beacons of light on your path, offering wisdom, encouragement, and a sense of continuity between who you are now and who you aspire to be. Let’s dive in below.
How To Write To Your Future Self
It might seem simple enough to just write some notes down for yourself in the future. While the writing part isn’t hard, the process behind it can be.
It is important to ensure that what you are writing to your future self reflects important reminders or tips so that you can better shape yourself. But what is the proper way to write to your future self?
Well, the first step is to assess your life up to the point at which you are currently. A great to plan for a letter or message to your future self is to really map out where you stand in life.
Asking yourself some important questions is the best way to assess where your life is currently. What experiences have you had? What lessons have you learned from these experiences? How will these experiences shape who you want to be in the future? All of these questions are important, but you might think of some to ask yourself as well. These questions challenge you to really put some thought into how life has been going for you. Because of this, it provides a pathway leading to a better you!
The best method for writing messages to your future self is through using a journal. This could be in a notebook, a leather-bound book, or anything that has some importance to you. This helps keep everything organized and contained.
25 Messages to Your Future Self
Below are some great examples of messages to write to your future self. Remember, these are simply examples, and everyone’s experiences will truly shape whatever their messages will be.
1. Spend Time With Loved Ones
Spending time with those we cherish and love is something we can all relate to. Life gets busy, especially in this modern age of tech, so it is important to spend time with those we are close to…or even to reach out to those we aren’t.
Life is too short to stay distant. Find a way to reconnect with loved ones either in person or even via social media. Any time spent with them is important!
2. Put More Effort Into Your Health
Focusing on our health can be difficult if we are experiencing hard times. However, our health is what keeps us going, and it is important that we do everything we can to be in our best health.
What your personal situation is with your health, consider if you are putting enough effort into getting where you need to be. Not only is getting in better health (physically or mentally) a great idea, it helps you grow each and every day.
3. Take More Time For Yourself
Some of us find the need to always be there for everyone else. While this is a great thing to do, it is also important to take more time for ourselves.
This can transpire in the form of a spa day, sleeping in, finding a hobby, etc. The possibilities are endless but the bottom line is to spend more time doing what makes us happy.
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4. Surround Yourself With Positivity
It is important for our sanity to keep ourselves surrounded by positivity. Sometimes, the people we associate ourselves with or experiences we might have had might not be beneficial for our lives. Other times, people who try to stay away from drama still manage to find it.
When this happens, it is critical that we try to surround ourselves with positivity. The best way to do this more times than not is to cut out the people or things that are causing us grief. We will feel better about it!
5. Remind Yourself That The Little Things Matter
We often get caught up in the larger things in life. This is primarily because these things tend to be more pressing. However, it is super important to remind our future selves to take time for the little things.
Coffee in the mornings, small talk with the neighbor, appreciating things that we are most grateful for. All of these things, and so many other small things, add up to being big important factors in our lives!
6. Do More That Makes You Happy
Asking yourself if you are truly happy is always a hard question. Sometimes, we are in denial about whether or not we are truly happy.
A great message to your future self is whether not you are happy, and to be honest about it! Make any necessary changes to ensure that you are doing what makes you happy.
7. Set Goals For Yourself
Our early years are spent winging it, so our future selves should make an effort to set some goals. These goals could be as small as reading more books or as large as saving more money. Either way, setting goals helps shape our thought process in the future.
Moreover, these goals could be considered our “dreams”. It is extremely helpful to our future selves to keep working towards our goals and dreams.
8. Be Thankful For People
Throughout our journies in life, it can be hard to focus on who has gotten where we are. Everyone has someone to thank for giving them some insight into life along the way.
It is important to ask yourself, “Is my future self being thankful to people?” Being thankful keeps our connections with people strong!
9. Have Patience
Younger versions of ourselves undoubtedly have very little patience. Even still, in a world ruled by tech, we might find ourselves wanting instant gratification of something.
It is important to remind your future self that patience is necessary. It helps make you more tolerable of situations and creates an overall better feeling about things that used to make you impatient.
10. Step into Other’s Shoes
A good message for your future self is to remind them to step into other people’s shoes. Everyone’s situation is different and remembering that we don’t know everyone’s lives is important to shaping our future selves.
11. Don’t Beat Yourself Up
Everyone makes mistakes and sometimes, you might feel the need to beat yourself up over a decision you’ve made.
While mistakes are painful to live through, it is critical that instead of beating yourself up, you move on. Your future self can take a memo to simply learn from the mistake and use the experience as a means to make things better in the future.
12. Life Is A Journey For Everyone
It is true that we all go through different things. While it is a different journey for everyone, no one is quite prepared for adulthood or the future.
A great message to your future self is to remember that everyone’s figuring out life as we go along.
13. Don’t Take Things Personally
It can be hard to remember that not everything that happens to us is a personal attack. More times than not, things shouldn’t be taken personally.
As the old saying goes, let things roll off your back!
14. Be Inspirational To Others
Whatever we do in life, we should strive to be inspirational to others. This can be done through actions we take to help others, actions we are taking to help ourselves, just to name a few. It feels good to lift others up!
15. Smile More
Smiling is a great picker-upper for anyone’s mood. Whether or not you like your own smile, it is a great idea to write a message for your future self reminding them to smile more.
16. Worry Less
Life has its moments where it gets stressful. Everyone goes through this. It is critical to remind your future self to worry less.
A part of worrying less is trying to see the good where things are bad. Nothing is always bad forever and worrying simply adds to that stress.
17. Save Money
Your future self can certainly benefit from having more money! Open a saving account and attempt to save more money. Even if it is only $20 a paycheck to start, it is something rather than nothing.
As time goes on, you can learn to adjust your lifestyle a little so that you can save even more money. Seeing the money increase from saving it will help your future self keep your mind on the right track!
18. Less is Better
As we grow older, we find ourselves needing a little less than we needed before. It could be less space, worries, or just about anything.
Less is certainly more and reminding our future selves that life is better with less is a truly freeing feeling!
19. Stay Persistent In What You Want
Failure is hard to deal with. It makes us feel like we aren’t good enough. However, staying persistent with what you want to achieve is important.
Your future self will thank you for keeping them motivated on their goals. If at first, you don’t succeed, always try again.
20. Quit Saying “No”
Life pans out however we choose to shape it. We are in control of it. The best way to keep your control and be happier is to tell your future self to quit saying “no”.
Take a little bit of a risk on something. Unfortunately, life is sometimes full of missed opportunities.
21. Have More Fun
Being responsible is important but so is living a little. Having more fun is a great message to your future self can benefit from!
This could be through hanging out with friends more, picking up a hobby, or simply doing something that you enjoy.
22. Don’t Hold Grudges
It can be hard to let bygones be bygones, yet it is so important. Grudges end up being something that stews inside of you for however long you decide to hold the grudge.
Let it go and forgive whoever and whatever the situation is! It will bring your future self so much more happiness.
23. Have Faith In Yourself, Even If Others Don’t
No matter what anyone else says, have faith in yourself. Faith in the decisions you make, the things you do, etc. Having a little faith in yourself truly goes a long way.
Live life the best way you know how to and keep your faith and confidence in knowing you can do anything you set your mind to!
24. Splurge Sometimes
Saving money or watching your
Whether it is to buy yourself something you’ve been wanting or eat a treat you have been missing, indulge sometimes. Depriving ourselves of the things we don’t think we deserve is more damaging than helping.
25. It Is Okay To Be Emotional
Showing our emotions can be relieving in times of stress. Reminding your future self that being emotional is okay is really important. What is even more important is that we strive to refocus after we’ve gotten out our emotions.
Cry a little, be angry at something, be sad about something, but never let these emotions consume you. Try to remind your future self to refocus and regroup, using those emotions as driving points for the future.
The Importance Of Writing To Your Future Self
You might be asking, “What’s so important about writing to my future self?”. While it might seem silly to write down messages or thoughts to your future self, it is therapeutic to your mental health.
When times get rough, get out the messages, and smile knowing that you were looking out for your future self! These messages help us be motivational for our future selves, to be our cheerleaders so to speak!