Hannah Warren@Radiantbeasting
Last New Year’s, I sat down to engage in my annual ritual of writing a letter from the vantage point of my future self; a letter describing, in detail, what my life now looked like in early 2026. I tucked it away and have not looked at it since. I will read it on New Year’s Eve this year. I have written about this practice in the past, and I plan to continue it with devotion. I have heard from others in our community who now also embrace it, finding it both fun and motivating. The concept is simple: the more vividly you can connect with the exhilarating future you want to inhabit, the more likely you are to consciously orient your present self toward the steps required to make it real.
My favorite part of the process is forgetting what I wrote. When I return to the letter on New Year’s Eve, it moves from time capsule to tool; a moment to reflect on what has come to be, including surprises and serendipitous outcomes, as well as areas that still require work. I am always equally excited to channel my next future self to compose another letter. Over time, this practice has evolved. It is no longer only about what my future self says, but how she says it. What is the cadence of her voice? How do the words move melodically from her mouth? How does she hold herself in space? Is she wearing all black, or dark emerald with splashes of magenta? Do her statement earrings, dangling glass jewels, refract the light against my face as she leans in to whisper how my life has changed, and how I carried myself there?
My New Handwriting
Something was different about my letter this year. For the first time, my future self wrote it by hand. At the beginning of 2024, I decided to intentionally craft and practice a new form of handwriting. I had always been a little self-conscious about my handwriting. It felt sloppy and uncultivated, lacking style; as though my handwritten words were out of control, squiggling onto the page by themselves, not arranged by my conscious volition or a force that felt my own.
In the early days of 2024, I decided to take the steps needed to change it. I had considered this many times before, but I had never committed to putting it on a vision board—or, as neuroscientist Dr. Tara Swart calls it, an “action board”—a practice grounded in motivating behavior rather than materializing magic. This year felt different. I sensed that the act itself mattered, that it was about far more than handwriting. It felt symbolic: a marker of how I had evolved, how I had transmuted past trauma after bringing my bipolar I disorder into remission through metabolic therapies, and how I was finding a path toward mindful refinement and a renewed enjoyment of life.
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