The Ineffable Joy of Receiving Emails from My Past Self
It helps me build a better relationship with myself and manifest my dream life, and it can help you too.
I’ve been writing emails to my future self since July 2006 and I got the first email from my past self in July 2007.
If you don’t know, there’s a website that allows you to send emails to yourself and, instead of getting the email instantly, you can set a date in the future when you will receive it. (Disclosure: This is not an ad.)
My first email to my future self was titled “Can I ask about my future?” because I was 12 and had no idea how the internet (or time) worked — wait, why was I on the internet at 12?
Anyway, the second email didn’t come until 2011 when I was 17 and moving from Vietnam to London, starting a brand new chapter of life.
Since then, I’ve been writing and receiving emails from myself every year without fail — mostly around New Year and on my birthday. It has been 9 years and 57 emails received in total.
Writing emails to my future self is not much different from writing a journal, except that I have to wait for months or even years to re-read those “diary entries” when I have long moved on from the detailed experiences.
