Hello beautiful people!
Let’s dive in on writing two letters. Give today’s MP3 a listen. And read on!
The first letter is one to your childhood self. The one with all the dreams and hopes and joy for playing make-believe. Write to him or her or them — by hand — and explain why you’re not living out those dreams and hopes with joy right now.
Even if you are living a storytelling life that’s pretty dang close to what your childhood self dreamed, maybe you’re not doing it as often as childhood you would’ve wanted. Or maybe you aren’t giving yourself as much time to run and play or sing and dance or nap and read as childhood you enjoyed.
Spend time in silence — no TV, no music, no internet, no gadgets, no multitasking — and write this letter by hand. There’s great power in hand-writing a letter like this. Don’t concern yourself with wording (like, “I can’t use this word; three-year-old me wouldn’t understand it”) but instead with feelings. Honor what you feel and when you’re done, decide what you’d like to do with this letter.
Tear it up, burn it, put it away in a journal, share it with a loved one, whatever it is that feels good to do with what ended up in that letter. Before you write the second letter, really connect with what you’d like to give back to childhood you, going forward. Think about what you’d like some future letter to childhood you to say instead of what today’s letter said.
The second letter is a letter to yourself 100 days from now. Again, with no distractions and in your own handwriting, begin to pen a letter to yourself as you consider the shifts you’ll have experienced as a direct result of having shown up for yourself every day.
Future you has exactly the level of success you mapped out when you sat down with your Get in Gear for the Next Tier Welcome Kit at the Start Strong page and set some goals. All the kickass qualities you know can exist when you nurture them into reality over an extended amount of time are now knitted into your youness.
Every hope you have for what you can accomplish has materialized. You are exactly “Next-Tier You” and it’s as delicious as you had dreamed it would be… but were too nervous to believe it could be. It’s real. And you’re today writing the letter that thanks future you for having done the work, for having cleared the clutter, for having hit the reset button on some limiting beliefs so they just don’t have the weight they once did in your reality, and for moving something forward in your creative career every damn day.
What does the best version of your future self need to know about how happy you are that he or she or they made things happen? Write this letter. This one, you’re not going to tear up, burn, or even share. You’re going to put this letter away, as we’ll come back to it on another day in this program. (You saw that coming, didn’t you? You so smaht!)
Resist the urge to check in with this letter except for on your checkpoint check-ins. On those days (no more frequently than every five days, no farther apart than every two weeks), you may choose to pull this letter out and peek at it. That’s legal. Just don’t post it up somewhere like you did with your focus word for these 100 days! This letter has a different purpose.
Be observant of — but nonjudgmental about — any emotions that surface as you write these two letters. In fact, if you want to journal further about THAT, that’s cool. Take the time you need to really let this land. If you’d like to share anything that came up for you with your #SMFAninjas community, pop in some comments below! Just promise me you won’t judge yourself for what you feel. Every emotion is valid, here. It’s all just DATA!
Mindset work is some of the most challenging we will do, but there is a purpose for every bit of it. Trust the process. Do the work. And when blocks present themselves, let us help you work through them. That’s why we’re here — to get you on the road to the next tier. And that takes progress with each of the framework‘s zones AND on lots of levels simultaneously.
’til tomorrow… stay ninja!
