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Self-help
Writing Letters to Yourself Beats Journaling for Useful Insights
I learned the hard way to read the letters I write to myself.
One day I stumbled on one sealed and written on my 1 year wedding anniversary. That was 27 years later, also the day of our last marital therapy session. My brutally honest letter was freakishly prescient in its details. If I’d read it sooner I would have spared us both a lot of pain.
Writing letters to yourself serves a different purpose than journaling.
When you are your own pen pal is different, you are talking TO yourself, not AT a blank page. This shifts your perspective and tricks your brain into creating more value: clarity, wisdom and self-compassion.
Having an audience forces intention.
This creates clarity. What is the point you want to make? You have to process your stuff in order to communicate it. You have to make meaning of it, and it lifts you out of the weeds of your stuff.
You can see the whole landscape.
Because we treat others more compassionately than we do ourselves, writing a letter also diverts our “hot mess” energy into “connection” energy. We are literally reaching out of our self-absorption to share something with another human (in this case, our letter…
