Finding Self-Love: Writing Letters to Yourself

In today’s society, self-love is a tough thing to learn, develop, and practice. If you’re struggling with finding self-love, try writing these three letters to yourself and watch your self-love and self-compassion grow. Free printables included!

In our society, self-love is becoming harder and harder to practice in a healthy way. Between the constant comparing, the never-ending onslaught of beautiful pictures, the pressure to keep up with the Joneses, the fast-paced lifestyle, and the guilt, shame, and selfishness we feel when we do look at ourselves positively, self-love is no longer the norm. And we’ve got to change that.

Today I’m talking about finding self-love through writing three letters to yourself: a letter to your past self, a letter to your present self, and a letter to your future self.

Letter to Your Past Self

If you could talk to the younger you, what would you tell her? For this exercise, you can choose a specific age to talk to, be really general, or go through various ages and stages within your letter.

• Think about the things you worried about then that you now realize were no big deal.
• Reflect on your past hurts or trials and how you view them now–how they’ve shaped you into the person you are today.
• Think about what you know now that you wish you would have known then.
• Compliment that younger you! Tell her just how amazing she is and how proud you are of her.

Letter to Your Present Self

Write this letter to yourself as you are TODAY. Focus on the things you want to believe, the things you really wish you knew. This one might be really hard, but do your best. Really think and reflect on this one:

• What do I wish I believed about myself?
• What do I wish I knew to be true?
• Who do I want to be right now?
• What trials am I going through?
• What do I want myself to believe about these trials?
• How do I want to feel about myself?
• What do I long for?

Hopefully this letter will turn out to be a set of affirmations for yourself. Write down everything you really WANT to know, even if you don’t believe it one bit. Hopefully, over time, you WILL believe every word of it!

When we write this letter, we want to make sure it’s coming from a place of love. But when we’re struggling with self-love, it can be hard to use kind and encouraging words to ourselves. So here’s a tip: Write this letter as if you were writing it to your daughter (or if you don’t have a daughter, your future daughter or some other girl you know and love like a niece or a friend’s child). This will help you be kind and use words of love and encouragement.

When you’re done, put your letter somewhere you can access it easily for a boost of encouragement. You can even read it every day as a daily affirmation practice!

Letter to Your Future Self

10 years from now, what do you want yourself to know? How do you hope you’ll feel about yourself? Where do you want to be emotionally? Write it all out!

This isn’t so much a physical goal type letter. Don’t say things like, in 10 years I want to have X job or have X number of kids or live in X. I want this to focus more on how you want to feel. Really narrow in on emotions for this exercise.

If you want, you can store your letter somewhere safe and set a reminder in your calendar to open it in 10 years!

• Where do I want to be emotionally?
• How do I want to wake up each day feeling?
• What do I want to be the focus of my life?
• At the end of each day, what will make me the happiest and the proudest?
• What emotion do I most hope to feel ten years from now?

The combo of focusing on the future and focusing on feelings will hopefully help us narrow in on what’s actually most important in our lives. Once we recognize that, we can put our focus there now, which will make us happier, which will make us feel more accomplished and proud of ourselves now, which will help us in turn love ourselves.

Printables

I created letter pages for you to write your notes on, if you would like. Depending on your preference, I have both lined and unlined versions of each. You can download them by clicking on the images below.

Perspective & Finding Self-Love

Writing these three letters will bring perspective. Each is important in its own way and will help guide your thoughts toward greater self-acceptance and self-love.

Which letter do you think is most important–past, present, or future?

Britney is a wife and mom with a passion for helping other women see the good inside of them. She loves podcasts, polka dots, and dancing around the kitchen with her family.