Forget resolutions. Write a letter to yourself each year instead
The beginning of the year is a natural time for reflection. Many of us look back at the year that’s passed and think about the year ahead. While you can make changes at any time, the New Year is the best time to commit to leading your best life. Goals and resolutions, however, can be impersonal, says Scott Simon, author of Scare Your Soul: 7 Powerful Principles to Harness Fear and Lead Your Most Courageous Life.
“A study from 2016 indicated that only 9% of people feel that their New Year’s resolutions were successful at the end of the year,” he says. “People are left feeling like they didn’t hit the mark.”
To encourage people to hit the core of their goals and values, Simon suggests taking time to write yourself a letter.
“This is a letter that nobody else will see,” he says. “It’s not about resolutions; it’s about feelings and values, and it comes from your heart. Most people have probably never taken the opportunity to write a letter to themselves, but when you do it, magical things start to happen. You start to lead your life according to your own set of goals and wishes that that come from within.”
How to Write Your Letter
Your letter should talk about the year you want to have ahead. Simon says the letter should answer five questions:
“These are the key questions that seem to evoke the deepest reactions,” says Simon. “They are what bring up key issues. They’re not necessarily what you’re going to do in Q1 and Q2 for goals. It’s deep, internal, intimate value work.”
Reviewing Your Letter
Once you write your letter, refer to it over the course of the year. Reading your letter over again will become a key motivator throughout the course of the year. Since it’s personal to you, it will remind you what your key values and goals are.
“It really keeps you on track with what are the most important aspects of your life,” says Simon, who suggests keeping your letter nearby, such as in your nightstand. “Don’t be afraid to revise it. This is a living document.”
Be sure to review your letter at the end of the year before you write the one for the next year. “When you take a look at that letter after a year there is something really special about that moment,” says Simon. “You are talking directly to yourself, saying, ‘This is what I cared about a year ago. How did I do? Did I hit those values?’ I make reading it at the end of the year a big deal.”
When you go through the process of reviewing it, look at where you hit the mark and where you don’t. Give yourself grace and the ability to be human. “Know that there are times when you will miss the mark,” says Simon. “You won’t always do exactly what you think that you will do; life intervenes sometimes and sometimes we fall short.”
For those things you failed to do, say to yourself one of two things, suggests Simon: ‘Yes, I want to do this better, and I’m going to recommit to it,” he says. “Or it turns out that this wasn’t really what I needed to do. It wasn’t that important to me now that I’ve been through the year.’”
View your letter as a gift. “Use it to push through and say ‘yes’ to something that may feel uncomfortable but that you feel is the right thing to do,” says Simon. “It can be an incredible upward spiral where one thing will lead to another, then all of a sudden you are leading your best life.”
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