The Letter To Self Activity

Letter To Self is a interesting exercise and powerful self-reflection strategy for reinforces learning in the future.

This exercise asks participants to write a letter to themselves, to be received sometime into the future. Writing a letter to our future self helps to remember to has been learned.

The timing is less important than the impact receiving this letter can have to reinforce and remind a person of something they learned or experienced. This future-dated reflection helps to reinforce learning and the commitments we make to ourselves and our groups.

Distribute paper and pens to your group. Pose a question that will invite your group to reflect on an experience.

Here are some possible ways you could frame this letter-writing exercise:

• What is one thing you experienced or learned today that you’d like to remember for many years?
• What do you want to tell or remind your future self in… ( enter period of time? )
• What is one goal you’d like to commit to in the next (enter period of time ?)
• What are you 100% committed to making happen in the next (enter period of time ?)
• How would you like to be feeling about yourself in (enter period of time?)
• Describe one thing you learned today you want to remember, forever.
• What sort of person would you like to become in ( enter period of time?)
• What behaviour or action are you committing to get better at?

Instruct each person to write a response or a short letter that records these thoughts. Tell your group that this letter will be returned/sent to them at a pre-defined time in the future, for eaxmple 6 months or 1 year.

Collect the letters. Schedule a time to remember to send these letters to their authors.

Moment of Reflection

• What did you have to imagine when you considered receiving this letter in (enter pre-defined timeframe?)
• Does it change your thinking when you know that what you are writing will be presented to you in the future
• What do you think your reaction will be when you receive this letter?
• What do you think are the benefits and limitations of forward-thinking?

The topics of this publication: reflection, self