2022 was a fantastic year because...
Let me count the ways.
Good news - if you are reading this piece - you are incredibly lucky.
For you, the year 2022 was an unbelievably good year - one of the very best you have ever had. You achieved everything that you set your heart on (and more), learnt a great deal about yourself and others, and feel calmer and more self-assured that you can ever remember.
That's right - right now, this is you. You are a huge success and full of achievement and progress.
Now... write a physical, pen-and-paper letter to yourself. Date the letter 7 December 2022; and start the letter with the line '2022 was a fantastic year because...'
Yes, you are writing a letter to yourself, the you that is still sitting back in the year 2021.
Your future-self is writing a letter to your present-self, recounting in detail what you have achieved in the year and why it was such a success.
Once you have written the letter, read it aloud back to yourself and experience what the feeling of achievement feels like to you.
How do you now see yourself?
How do you now talk and think about yourself?
The reason that this little visioning exercise is so useful is that it helps us reframe our default perspective and repositions the idea that success already exists inside of us.
It lets us psychologically see that great personal achievement is not an uncertain, arduous journey into a murky future that we still need to go on to achieve, but as an existing reality that just needs to be revealed.
The future doesn't as yet physically exist, but it does exist for us in our minds. It is therefore a projection of mind, the quality of which depends on the quality of the thinking we use to construct it.
Better futures depend on better, more compassionate, optimistic thinking about the future.
Give it a go.
Christian Jarrett