I wish I had known to write a Dear Younger Self Letter earlier than when I did. That would’ve saved me years from cycling in my 20s and 30s with the same limited mindset I started in (vs. the abundance mindset available).
I would’ve stopped making decisions based on what satisfied triggered insecure feelings.
With just a few minutes of quiet time, I realized I could change how I processed situations and triggers coming at me and make better daily decisions. And you can too with the techniques I learned that I share below…
Firstly, it’s important to know many issues stem from past experiences showing up subconsciously in thoughts today — some situations you had control over.
…And most others you didn’t.
…Like in childhood you didn’t have free reign to make choices. And your circumstances were the luck of the draw. You didn’t decide where you grew up or who raised you.
Some of that may have caused post-trauma that you never processed fully. You forgot and moved on. But your brain never did, holding onto those ideas to “protect” you from getting hurt again.
Most of us adults have childhood wounds that could’ve come from outside sources or an injury we still feel today. And to add insult to injury, it’s a jumbled mess in the mind as an accumulation of behaviors we endured under the roof we lived under… plus all the stuff we deal with today.
Our busy lives crowd out awareness and we can get further away from growth discovery as the years go by.
For me, I didn’t heal my wounds until I was a full grown adult and that delayed my progress.
But when I had the chance and was in the right place at the right time, I participated in a transforming exercise. There, I could picture this little girl’s life (the younger me) with forced smiles and pouts in rare photo opps. And instead of leaving her where she was, in the present moment I could picture myself hugging her in compassion.
And by being a “big sister’ to my younger child self at that moment, I felt I took on her burdens and hurts. I could remove the unhappiness she felt. And take away any anxiety she had but couldn’t express in words at the time.
There were only happy and sad memories to describe and those matched the emoji-less world she lived in.
At that moment I took away the sad memories by telling her (the little girl inside me), “you’re okay now.”
When I came out of the exercise, I could shed and feel the tears that were never processed before. They were pent-up fresh tears.
That was my start to working on becoming whole.
Weeks later, I could reproduce the exercise in my mind, and calm my old brain down with I’m fine now thoughts. Separating the mind vs. brain was essential for discovery and healing. Keeping thoughts black and white helps when it’s a gray mess.
The exercise also reinforced the healing process. When I found that I had no more tears to shed from similar thoughts, I put those ideas away.
…And, then I wrote the Dear Younger Me letter to myself.
This is something you can do for your better life today without delay.
You can start with the exercise like I did, and then the letter.
Or just skip the exercise if you’ve been through therapy or have processed your feelings aloud before. But don’t skip the letter to not miss getting to your deepest feelings that you don’t have to share with anyone.
The details are where you can learn more about your insecurities and how they are related to your knee-jerk reactions in your life.
On paper, you can also pour out all your emotions to purge and get to the bottom of some things holding you back.
You can find deeper feelings and sources of frustrations you couldn’t pour out at a time when you weren’t prepared. Maybe you hadn’t processed how you felt, such as if you were blindsided in a situation.
You can get to the core of why you’re still protective of those areas when they’re nowhere in today’s sight. That way you’re understanding and aware the next time those thoughts you recognize come up, so you could exercise a better way or reaction next time.
…Because there’s always a next time as you carry your mind on travel with baggage and through life. I learned this through various situations.
So — a letter can be helpful for personal growth in several ways.
The longer you spend on your purposeful letter and processing what happened for healing (and not to re-live hurt), the more you will discover what’s needed to become whole.
When you run out of thought-feelings, you may want to put the letter down and come back another time to continue writing.
There doesn’t need to be closure or a deadline. You can keep writing until you have nothing left to say or process. This could take one session, weeks, or longer.
The best time to start the letter is today. But if today isn’t a calm day, then find one this week where you can get a calm moment to yourself in a quiet closet (my personal favorite place!) if that’s what works.
Busyness and noise distraction will defeat the purpose of the authentic letter: to rip out all those undercurrent trauma thoughts and feelings that are trapped in the mind-body connection.
Before I was aware, I had no clue in my young adult mind that I was still holding onto childhood memory baggage. I was still operating from a less-than lens that became my life then.
Because those memories and the thoughts I wrapped around the memories weren’t daily visible.
They were subconscious and showed up invisibly in my life unbeknownst to me.
There were clues I missed. I would have an insecure reaction to a daily trigger. I would get heart palpitations walking into eggshell work situations.
The biggest clue I missed was I had a panic attack midday at work one day where my body and I froze sitting in my office chair. And I couldn’t pinpoint why after weeks of trying to grasp a reason.
Those were all signs the mind-body in the mind-body connection was trying to show me. But unaware at the time, the pasts wounds were trapped and stayed unhealed.
Writing a Dear Younger Self Letter sooner could’ve brought out the hurt and wounds so that the scars could form sooner as part of the healing process. And instead of plateauing at an okay level, I could get to the higher self and growth so I could manifest better attitudes, perspectives, and ways.
And it could do that for you.
So my advice for anyone to consider is that even if you don’t think you have any past trauma that needs healing, write the letter anyway. You can always crumple it up and then you will have started the unraveling process anyway.
And you can finally get to the bottom of your insecure life that your ego hopes you never find. You can find out what the roots are and best of all, nip them in the bud.
A Dear Younger Letter Self can do all this and connect the dots. Isn’t that worth your time?
…
I invite you to signup to be on my Substack list and I’ll let you know when my FREE manifest dreams book is available that shares insightful tips, ways, and wisdom you can bring to life.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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From The Good Men Project on Medium
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