BETTER ADVICE
If You Want To Get Out of Your Head, Start Writing Love Letters To Yourself
Loving yourself is the best form of healing
Have you ever heard of the term Love Letter Manifestation technique? I recently discovered it and it is now a part of my daily routine. The love letter manifestation is a method where you write love letters to yourself, from the point of view of the person that you would like to attract into your life. The idea is for that person to think differently when it comes to you. The letters are written from their perspective, addressed to you.
There are many types of love in the world, such as parental love, friendship love, and self-love. We can expand these expressions of love to self-love. We are living in one of the toughest times in history. Our mental health is being attacked daily from all sides with teenagers suffering the most. In Taiwan, high school students are given up to three days off every semester to be taken as mental health days.
If you have ever found yourself in need of hope and being deep in your head with self-doubt, wondering how you will ever get up in the morning, then this would be the best time to write yourself a love letter.
We often seek external validation from others when we are in a dark place. We would ask friends, “Please tell me everything will be ok” or “I’m feeling so hopeless, I don’t see the point of continuing”. We expect others to constantly be our cheerleader, to tell us that everything will be ok, that life is full of joy and happiness and that all we have to do is look at the silver lining in every situation. In the world we are living today, we can no longer rely on others to give us validation and comfort that we need. We must turn into ourselves and be our own knight in shining armor.
“To love yourself right now, just as you are, is to give yourself heaven. Don’t wait until you die. If you wait, you die now. If you love, you live now.”
— Alan Cohen
If we can’t see the good and the beauty in us, how could we expect others to? Writing a love letter to ourselves is the best gift we can give ourselves. Nobody knows us and our fears better than we do. Only we know what we need to hear to lift ourselves out of the darkness.
We may not have the strength to talk ourselves into seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, but we can pick up a pen and paper and start writing. We can put into words what we need to hear to make it through and bring us the peace that we need.
How to write love letters to ourselves
As we are often our own harshest critics, we may not always be our biggest supporter in times of need. In such situations, it can be helpful to write love letters to ourselves from the perspective of someone who cares for us. Did your fifth-grade teacher believe in you when no one else did? Did your first boyfriend or girlfriend make you feel worthy of love? Try writing from their point of view.
At some point, these people were part of our lives. We may have lost touch with them or they are no longer with us. However, this doesn’t mean their words and faith in us have to disappear with them. We can use their words to infuse positivity and love into our soul.
I believe that one of the major reasons behind the current mental health crisis that the world is facing is the absence of content that uplifts the human spirit. There was a time when television shows like Highway to Heaven, Touched by an Angel, and even I Dream of Jeannie brought positivity and hope to people’s lives. However, today, most of the content we consume is filled with reality shows and advertisements. This is slowly crushing the human soul.
We may live in this world, but we don’t have to live in its reality nor do we need to follow its trends every day. We have the choice to create our own world, even for just a moment, where we can be kind to ourselves and surround ourselves with positivity.
Write to yourself using the words that you want to live in.
“To be beautiful means to be yourself. You don’t need to be accepted by others. You need to accept yourself.”
— Thich Nhat Hanh
If you’ve had unsuccessful relationships in the past, try writing to yourself from the perspective of your potential future partner. Imagine the kindness, love, and generosity that your future partner has to offer and embrace those feelings. Shift your mindset from the negative beliefs and experiences of past relationships to the positive relationship that you truly deserve.
If you ever feel like you’re not good enough, try writing a love letter to yourself as if it’s written by a distant best friend who believes in you and knows that you’re worth more than you think. Include as many details as possible about your friend to make the conversation more lively. Your friend can be a ski instructor in Gstaad, a tango teacher in Argentina, or a wine grower in Australia. We have the ability to create our own world and give ourselves the love that we seek.
Let kind words melt the hardness and self-doubt in your heart. Be kind and gentle with yourself and see the love that you will soon attract into your life. We can be the love that we want to be and receive.
Writing love letters to ourselves Vs Journaling
The main difference between writing love letters to ourselves and journaling is in journaling, we are writing our thoughts, feelings experiences by ourselves. It’s a one-way conversation, similar to keeping a diary.
We are confined to being alone in journaling. No human connections, conversations or reciprocations. However, by writing love letters to ourselves, we engage in a conversation with a supportive and loving individual who believes in us. As humans we are a social being, we need someone to hype us up and be our best friend.
Our brain can’t tell the difference between reality and illusion. It can’t tell the difference when we are reading the love letters we wrote to ourselves or we received from others.
Realistically we can’t expect our close friends to be our hype man/woman every single waking minute. This is why writing love letters to ourselves makes a difference.
I’ve tried journaling, but every time I go back and read what I have written, it causes me to relive my emotions, which inevitably brings me down. However, when I read the love letters I wrote to myself, it fills me with a sense of hope, joy, and love. My mind is convinced that I am reading a letter from someone who truly cares for me, believes in me, and cherishes me.
Bruce Lee once said, “Don’t speak negatively about yourself, even as a joke. Your body doesn’t know the difference. Words are energy and they cast spells, that’s why it’s called spelling. Change the way you speak about yourself, and you can change your life.” Try reading your love letters out loud and let the positivity of the words flow through you. These words will energize you and wash over you, giving you hope and light for a new day.
A new dawn.
