That Time I Wrote a Letter to Myself

If you didn’t know, my birthday is on Valentine’s Day. Most of the time I get pretty disappointed for my birthday because it happens to fall on one of the most commercially-recognised days of the year. But this year I turned 28, and after a series of life changes in the previous four months, I was actually ready to embrace being another year closer to 30. So imagine my surprise (there wasn’t) when I saw this email in my inbox:

In case you can’t see the picture, it reads:

Dear future Rezzie, 

I love you. I love the way you can laugh at yourself instead of worrying about something embarrassing that just happened. I love the way you play the piano. Your emotion flows through your fingers and onto the notes. I love the way you like to look good. You do make an effort, even if you don’t go the full route by wearing makeup. I love the way you enjoy eating food. I love the way that you love to have a good time. I love the way you sing. I love the way you dance. I love the way you talk, and the way you smile. I love the way you love people. The way you put others first, even if you need to work more on putting yourself first. That’s okay, you’ll get there 🙂 I love the way that even if others hurt you, you still get over it. You move on. You charge onward. You will be sad some days, but always know that you’ll be happy again. Always.

It’s your 28th birthday today. No matter what, enjoy it with your loved ones, or enjoy it by yourself. Just be happy. You deserve to be.

Once again, I love love love you, and wish you all the best in your future endeavours. 

Besos, 

Me 🙂

My secret admirer was none other than myself! But how did I do this, and why? Let me explain.

How I wrote the letter

I got the idea for this ’email from the past’ from a guy named Keith Evans at Intelligent Change. I had subscribed to their newsletter weeks before, and one day I received an email about how to be your own life coach. I loved the idea of sending my future self an email, even though I’ve done it before using an actual website that sends the email for you at an appointed time. But this time, I was happy to know that I could do it from the comfort of my own inbox. All I needed to do was use an extension for Gmail called Boomerang.

It’s very simple to do. Once you install the app, you compose an email. Then instead of hitting the blue ‘Send’ button, hit the red ‘Send later’ button below instead! Then all you do is select one of the preset times or set your own custom date and time. Click confirm and you’re done!

 

Why I did this

As I said in a previous post, I never realised how dependent I was on others for validation until recently. I was never good at giving myself credit, and my self-esteem was rather low. But since the year began, I’ve gotten very good at loving myself more. I’ve been exercising more, dressing better, and being more comfortable with looking at myself in the mirror. I like the person who I see now: a more confident, calm and collected Rezzie, compared to the Rezzie of yesteryear.

Anyway, I wanted to take this act of self-love further and affirm my value, my self-worth. I wanted to remind myself of why I deserve to be loved. I wanted me to know that there’s nothing wrong with me, and that I’m amazing just the way I am. This was always something that I wanted a significant other to say to me, but then I realised what’s stopping me from telling myself these things first?

When I saw this email on my birthday, of course I was touched. I did not cry. But it did put a smile to my face.

Will I do it again?

So, Evan suggested using the technique to send words of gratitude, as well as for reminding one’s self of one’s goals. I have to say, it was only since writing this post that I remembered the latter purpose. So today, I very hurriedly sent myself another future email to remind myself of the main goal that I have right now: to study a masters programme abroad. It looked a little something like this:

 

I’ll be getting it on April 15th at 10 AM 🙂 Hope I prove my past self wrong!