Love letters to our future selves

I hate to admit it, but recently I've had a struggle around giving up smoking.

I knew it was bad for me. My 'daughter of a redhead' genes are sensitive to smoking, sugar, alcohol, high fat foods, pretty much all the good stuff when it comes to partying.

I kept going round and round in this emotional circle; I'd hate myself for lighting up, I'd ache, literally ache from all the toxins. And yet the pull of the nicotine kept me lighting up, hence hating myself.

There was something romantic about lighting a cigarette and taking my laptop out to the back porch. I'd puff away, watch the cockatoos and the king parrots squabbling and contemplate my writing. Yet at night, when I went outside to have that last cigarette, I could almost hear my dead father begging me to stop. (He died of mesothelioma, cancer of the lung lining.)

I seemed to be perpetually disappointing myself and it was starting to bleed into other areas of life. My fitness, my motivation, my mental health were all suffering.

I started to search around for ways to stop. Simple, teeth-gritting will power only seemed to get me a few days worth of reprieve. Seeing my daughter and mother helped as they both abhor smoking and so I would simply not smoke around them. However, when I got back home and hung out with any smoking friends, off I would go again.

I recalled my grandfather had said that when he'd quit, he'd had to get himself really mad at smoking. So I gave that a go. 'It's a filthy habit,' 'look at how you're coughing in the morning,' 'you're not smoking the cigarette it's smoking you,' I told myself all this stuff but it simply didn't work, I was still lighting up and emotionally flagellating myself for doing so.

Then one day, I was getting in my car at o-dark-thirty to go to pilates then work followed by calisthenics, my favourite team sport. I'd packed my gym bag with everything I needed and laid out the pilates outfit the night before, ready for when I staggered semi-conscious from bed that morning.

I remember getting in the car, and thanking my past self for thinking of what was then my future self, resulting in a day that ran really smoothly. I had all I needed to pivot from one activity to the next. My past self had engaged in all these caring activities to support my future self, kind of like a loving and very supportive parent. With my actions, I'd written a love letter to my future self, and that felt really good.

I decided that the writing of these love letters, in all aspects of my life was a really good thing. So often we stumble around in the present simply reacting to all the obstacles and problems that come our way without thought for our future selves. We're deeply entrenched in the immediate part of this space-time continuum. And in being this way, we loose sight of our goals, our dreams, who we would like to become.

The act of taking myself out of the immediate, thinking forward into the future and empathising with the pain and suffering of my future self was a powerful antidote to that lack of vision. It proved to be a very visceral thought experiment and ample motivation for giving up the smoking, which I then managed with relative ease.

It's not to say that I haven't experienced the pangs of withdrawal, but every time I cough and clear out my lungs just that little bit more, with every improvement in my breathing I thank my current self for sticking to my guns, and look forward to travelling forward in time, into the shoes of that healthier future self.

I've started to apply the principle to my writing, resulting in more consistent daily work.

I've also seen these love letters being written by others to their future selves. Case in point, my dear housemate and friend. During the pandemic, she was overweight and quite depressed. One day, she said to herself, "I'm literally going to die if I continue to sit here," so she took herself out and half walked, half jogged around the block. Two years later and twenty kilos lighter, the COVID love letter she send to her future self in the form of exercise is really paying off. She looks and feels wonderful and enjoys running almost every day. She moves more quickly, has more energy and looks great in clothes she never dreamed of fitting into.

That vision of your future self doesn't have to be separate from the sense of self we have now. And in fact if we bring our future selves into our present lives and actively nurture them it's amazing what we can achieve.

I'd love to hear about your love letter to your future self. Please feel free to drop me a line and tell me about your journey.