Dear Future Me – Write An Email To Yourself

A long time ago, at a motivational event that I can no longer remember, the speaker got us to write a letter to ourselves. This was a real letter, not an email – the internet hasn’t hit mainstream yet. The lesson that day was about being accountable to one’s word. Our assignment was to write a letter, addressed to ourselves, and state where we are six months from now. The letter was to be written in the present tense because we won’t be seeing it again until six months later.

The speaker took all the letters and stored them for half a year. By this time we have all forgotten about it. Then six months later, I check my mailbox and there was a letter addressed to me from me. After reading what I have wrote to myself I became completely disgusted and ripped the letter to pieces. I have not done one thing I had stated in the letter to myself. I felt like a complete failure. And it was the worst kind of failure as well. It’s one thing for someone else to tell you to do something and you fail. It’s something else entirely when that someone is you. I never forgot the lessons from that letter. It helped me to refocus myself and get back on the right track.

Now I would like to offer you the same lesson. Thanks to a service call FutureMe.org you can now send an email to yourself to be received at a future date. So, I would like you to write an email to yourself. In the email, state the following:

• What are you doing now?
• How much are you making?
• Are you married?
• Do you have any kids?
• Where are you living?
• Anything else you want to add.

Set FutureMe to send you your email six months from today. If you’re like me, you’ll forget about this within a week or two. Then in six months, you’ll receive the shock of your life. I challenge everyone to do this. I know it can be very scary to actually write down one’s goals but it’s something you have to do if you wish to be accountable to yourself.

Where will you be six months from today? This is your chance to tell it to yourself. And don’t worry if you fail at what you tell yourself. The path to success is paved by a string of failures.

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