Dear friends—

Lots of people make new year’s resolutions.

I do something a little different.

I write myself a letter, dated a year or more in the future.

That is, I write in retrospect.

I look back from the date I chose and tell myself everything I’ve done and learned.

***

In my experience, these notes from the future are eerily accurate.

I first completed one 20 years ago.

My letter told me I’d be a yoga devotee, I’d publish three books, my wife and I would have children, and our family would spend a year abroad together.

At the time, I’d never touched a yoga mat, I was years from first landing a literary agent, reproducing terrified me, and my travel budget excluded even owning a car.

Nevertheless—except we had one kid, not multiple—every single one of these things happened.

I’ve done the exercise several times since with equal results.

Most recently, this summer, I wrote a letter based on sentence stems supplied by one of my coaches, Carolyn Freyer-Jones.

It was dated next June 18.

Now, coming into the new year, most of what I reported back has already occurred.

The rest—including multiple events I’d never consciously imagined before writing them—are well on track.

Just half a year later, they now seem obvious and inevitable.

And I have almost six months to go.

***

You can write your own retrospective letter.

Pick a future date and write it atop the page.

Now look back from this perspective.

Let intuition speak.

• What’s happened?

• How does it feel?

• What have you learned?

• How have you grown?

See what you say, without expectations or inhibitions.

And be open to being surprised.

***

Tell me if you try this exercise—and share your letter if you like.

Or let me know if you’d like the specific sentence stems Carolyn gave me.

Either way, know that leadership is communicating and acting from vision.

And the retrospective letter is a powerful way to lead—and follow—yourself.

The future is ours to write.

Forth and back—

Jeremy