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Letter To Myself To Clients

by | Jan 27, 2010 | Articles

As the New Year begins to take hold, Colman Knight intends to resume our monthly connections through this communication medium. Topics will vary and inspiration will be sourced from our personal and professional experiences, as always. This month we offer you a clever idea to contemplate and perhaps engage. An old but meaningful exercise is making the rounds these days in the financial planning community. It is also really simple: a letter to yourself.  More specifically, this is a letter from your future self to you, today.

Come again?  Imagine yourself in five years (or three years or one year), assuming everything has gone more or less as you hope it will, maybe even much better. You’re healthy, in good financial health and – well, you know your desires much better than we do.  The point is that the You-In-The-Future is writing a letter of thanks to the You-Today.  Future You might thank Today You for exercising regularly, because Future You is fit, trim and enjoys great energy.  Future You might thank you for being thrifty and watching your budget, because in that future date, you’re on track to transition to “what’s next” comfortably – or you may even BE living in what’s next.

Future You might thank you for taking the time to smell the roses along the way, for maintaining close relationships with friends and family, for spending a little more time accomplishing goals (Writing a book?; Starting a side business?;  Traveling to see relatives or the world?), instead of unproductive downtime in front of the TV or worrying about matters beyond your control.

Whatever it is, you are thanking yourself for taking these actions, so be specific about what you did.  Then look over the letter, and know that these are all actions, which you will thank yourself for someday, make a commitment to do them, and save the letter. (Or, consider an alternative below)

Every month, take the letter out and take another look at it.  Are you on course?  Are you earning the thanks that Future You gave you? 

The point here is that you want your future life to be as good as it can be – expanded fulfillment and happiness, joy and prosperity, and your actions between now and then will, or will not, make that happen.  The letter to yourself is a powerful reminder to you that you’re really counting on yourself to take care of yourself in the future. 

Meanwhile, in between the times you spend with the letter, you can get to know a variety of Future Selves (You-Next-Week, You-Next-Year, You-Five-Years-In-The-Future), and begin to ask these future versions of you about decisions you make now. How much of the money you earn should be given to your future self for retirement?  What would you, a week from now, like to have cleared off your desk? Would you like to have learned a new foreign language by this time next year?  Are there aspirations which are hard to do now, but which you will wish you had done?  Chances are, you know the person who will be you and what you would really like to be doing now, which lets you navigate through the complexities of your life with very clear vision.

And if you can do THAT, you’ll be one of very few in a world where most of us are muddling through our days.  You could be one of the few who arrives in the future with no regrets about how you spent the precious, irreplaceable hours of your life.

Send us a copy of your letter for us to offer gentle reminders every so often as a nudge, surprise wake up call, or however you would experience the connection. It is our pleasure to help you chart your course through life.

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