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Using a Letter to Myself to capture your learnings

Dr Paul Duignan


You can always find this page at PaulDuignan.Consulting/letter.

When people are seeing a psychologist and working on their self-development, they often develop a number of important insights into how they currently operate and the ways in which they would like to change.

It is important to record these somewhere so that you can go back to them in the future. A good way to do this is to write a Letter to Myself. This is simply a letter that records for you the important things that you want your future self to remember.

You can write this letter in any way that works for you. You can start off with something like:

Dear Self,

This letter is to remind me of what I am learning about myself and how I can thrive in the world. The things I want you to remember are . . .


You are just writing this letter for yourself to see, so write whatever you like. If it needs to be confidential, then put a password on the file. Some people write it like a normal letter. Others write it like a journal. Others put it in the form of lists; some include questions they want to remember to ask themselves later on; other paste in inspiring images or quotes from others. Some people make short videos of them talking to their future selves. Feel free to put in whatever you would like to to continue being able to apply the what you are learning about yourself at the moment.

Later on, you can continue to add to your Letter to Myself with learnings and insights you develop over the years so that it becomes an important resource for you as you make your way through life.

 

 

Please note when you are doing any type of psychological or self-development work, if you find yourself feeling overwhelming emotions, troubling thoughts or actions, you need to talk to a health professional.


Research and theory that support this tool: This is a common sense-based approach to help clients clarify and take on board their theraputic learnings and to have them available in the future so that they can continue to apply them after therapy has finished.

Copyright Dr Paul Duignan 2020