Have you ever written a letter, imagining who you will be, and where you will be in six months or seven years?
Have you ever written a letter as if you were that future person, looking back to yourself, right now?
Last year I was introduced to writing as if I was my future self, and imagining as if my future already existed. Through the practice of writing a letter as my future self, every couple months I went from writing letters that listed details of accomplishments to letters that focused on who I wanted to be.
For the past 10 years I’ve been rewriting and reprogramming my innate perfectionism and perception that worth was attributed to the number of accomplishments, and certifications I had.
I’ve talked about how I went from working to hard, to just wandering wherever joy took me, and recently I had someone ask me these two questions:
What do you want?
Why do you want it?
I was stumped for a moment. Eventually I said, “I want freedom, I just want to be happy. I want it because joy is my compass. I love learning. I’m passionate about so many things.
I want life to be a river, not a mountain. I’m done with making life harder than it needs to be.”
I invite you to sit with those questions, and if you’re like me and your first instinct is to think of details and physical things; then dig deeper and explore the emotions, and the mindset you are really seeking. Don’t be afraid of not knowing the answer.
Just ask yourself: “If I did know the answer, what would it be?”
Make Mistakes and Get Messy
At the end of January I am graduating from one of my biggest left-turn choices, and yet, it has felt just as natural as doing an English degree, an Education degree, training as a lifeguard and studying piano.
It felt natural because I did it from a place of joy, curiousity and a desire to try something new, and to push the comfort zone that I’d fallen into.
I wanted to do it, but didn’t need to. My coach, fellow students and instructors commented throughout the months that I’ve got a lot of skills, and that I’m more than ready to do the things I want to do. I’ve just been stalled out with indecision, doubt, and waiting until I was polished, professional and perfect enough. It was the first step in learning how to follow “I want” versus, “I should” or “I have to.”
It also allowed me to accept that I’m not going be my amorphous idea of polished, and I don’t want to be.
In fact, as you’ll see in blurb written by my coach this year, I’ve realized I’m someone who helps people by leading by example. As I do here, and in my lives at The Inn of Stormy Nights, I’m always upfront about my imperfections, mistakes and missteps.
Like in December when I cracked my tailbone on an icy path while in the middle of a negative head-space.
In retrospect, I should have taken a couple breaths, calmed down and sat with what triggered me to stomp over icy ground without any care.
But, I wouldn’t have stories to share if I didn’t make mistakes and get messy in life. It’s always been my belief that to be a human is to have stories because stories are what connects us across time and space.
Speaking of stories, and teaching through stories, I’d like to share with all of you my most recent six month letter to my future self, written from the perspective of a client.
I hope this inspires you to have a go at this practice. Have fun, explore where it takes you, and have even more fun reading it in six months time!
Six Month Letter to My Future Self
Dear ARR,
You have taught me the beauty of imperfection. The shine in the mistakes we shove under beds, like broken vases.
Who knew a broken vase could be remade into a beautiful set of stained glass tiles?
You have taught me to not skip the cracks in the sidewalk, like we were taught as children, but to skip to the cracks and stand on every single one.
One step at a time.
You have taught me that roads have abrasions in their skin and that’s what makes them roads. They are paths for walking.
These roads have been walked many times before. By me, and by you and so many others, across so many lifetimes.
They are our story and I would not change a single abrasion, for I would not be able to help the people that I help today, without having learned to celebrate those scars.
You taught me that belonging is not a person, or a place. Belonging can happen in the rain, while you’re lost on the muddy, mist-covered moor in the Scottish highlands.
It can happen at an empty bus stop or a busy one.
It can happen in a dentist office waiting room or at the top of a mountain.
It can happen when I’m on stage, and when I’m at home in bed.
Belonging begins and ends with me, and the more I have belonged to myself, the clearer my visions become. The clearer I see myself and all that I still have to offer to the world.
You showed me how to show up to myself through your vulnerability and honesty.
You showed me that doing the work isn’t about meeting deadlines and goals, but about going with the flow and allowing kindness to stand alongside daily habits and goal setting.
You showed me that the best thing any of us can do is our best in the moment. To forgive our mistakes, to strive to do better and to see our lives like a series of hero’s journeys rather than a single, linear line with a beginning, middle, and end.
My work brings people together to create new thoughts, new products, new ideas, and new stories to raise the next generations on.
My work is my life and my life is my work. There is no more need to separate pieces of myself because of you.
I am all the roads I have ever walked; including the ones which were blocked.
I am the roads with cul de sacs, and the roads with gates in the middle. I am the roads with weeds growing out of the cracks and the roads with bike lanes bursting with cyclists.
Now my home is inside me and it has allowed me to build the physical home of my dreams and form a family not by chasing after anyone, but by walking toward what my intuition said “yes!” to and standing still when it said “no, just wait. Be patient.”
You taught me how to leap off a cliff and fly by falling.
Thanks for all the faeries. I have a soundtrack permanently shaping the mood of my lifelong movie because of you, and this life has no Hollywood ending, because I know now that each day is another beginning.
Each day is another chance to try something new, to smile at one more person and to say:
“Hey, I see you. You matter.”
(At least until you multiply yourself by the speed of light squared. And then you energy).
You told me I would be amazing one day and I did not believe you at first.
Until I walked with myself, and I spied inside my heart, a whisper of desire, that I let just be and amazing became defined as: me.
Thank you for teaching me about adventure.
Your wanderluster client and patron of the Inn of Stormy Nights
Following Your Heart
Have you ever sat with a choice you’ve made and noticed how your body feels? Is it tingling, warm, cold, tense, tight, twitching? Does it feel like you’ve got a rock in your gut or butterflies in your throat?
Writing a letter from my future self, to myself right now, was the first step in learning to actually listen to my heart.
People talk about it all the time, but I never understood how to do it, until my experience these past seven months with coaching. Listening to your heart doesn’t mean you use your ears or your mind. It means you notice what your body physically feels when you sit with different choices.
It’s what led me to upending a life that on paper everyone saw as absolutely perfect. I said: “no, it doesn’t feel perfect, it feels like I’m settling. It feels like I’m saying everything is perfect, but I’m not feeling it, and I’m not acting on anything I want to do.”
I published a poetry book, but otherwise I hadn’t moved forward with my goals to teach mediumship, creativity or anything in between.
There’s a wonderful meta musicial on Netflix that explores these themes of expectations and of dreams. It’s about Jonathan Larson who wrote the musicial Rent.
So many of the songs resonate with our societal concepts of accomplishing certain things by certain ages, living certain lives and just settling versus taking action toward what we do desire.
We’ve just got to start with something, and let ourselves make mistakes and get messy.
(Here’s the main theme from the show: Louder than Words).
I invite all of you to sit with the following questions (all of them, or just whichever you are drawn to) and feel into what keeps you aligned to your path.
Have fun with these exercises this week!
I’ve just released the official, updated information for the next round of Foundations of Mediumship and Channeling Spirit, which you can read about and register for here.
May the wind be always at your back!
ARR
