Writing Your Best Possible Self: A Hopeful Exercise With Research Behind It
Writing about a future where things have gone well may lift your mood and your hope. Here is what the best possible self studies found, and how to try it.
Amara keeps a notebook in her apron pocket. Between shifts at the restaurant, she sits on an upturned crate out back, adjusts her bright orange and blue headwrap, and writes. Not about her day, but about a day that has not happened yet. In this day, she unlocks the door of her own bakery at six in the morning. The windows are fogged from the ovens. There is puff-puff on the counter, and her grandmother’s recipe for chin chin in a frame on the wall. A neighbor comes in for bread and stays to chat. Amara writes it all down, in detail, and when she closes the notebook she feels lighter, and a little braver.
Amara is doing something researchers call the best possible self exercise.
What is the best possible self exercise?
The idea is simple. You imagine yourself at some point in the future, after everything has gone as well as it reasonably could. You have worked hard, and you have reached the goals that matter to you. Then you write about what that life looks like.
It is not about wishing or pretending. It is about picturing a future you care about clearly enough that you can see it.
The study that started it
In 2001, psychologist Laura King published a study in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. She asked college students to write for 20 minutes a day, four days in a row. Some wrote about their best possible future selves. Others wrote about a hard or upsetting experience, which was a well-studied type of writing at the time. Some wrote about both, and a control group wrote about their plans for the day.
Writing about the best possible self was linked to an increase in well-being right after the writing. And in the months that followed, students who wrote about their best possible selves made fewer visits to the campus health center for illness, compared with the control group. Interestingly, the best possible self writing was also less upsetting than writing about a hard experience, which suggests people can get some benefit without having to dig into painful memories.
Later studies
In 2006, Kennon Sheldon and Sonja Lyubomirsky compared the best possible self exercise with a gratitude exercise and a control exercise. Students did their exercise in class and were asked to keep doing it at home for a few weeks.
The best possible self group showed a bigger immediate rise in positive feelings than the other groups. The researchers also found that people who felt more motivated by the exercise, and kept doing it, tended to keep getting more out of it. In other words, it seemed to work best for those who genuinely connected with it.
In 2010, Madelon Peters and colleagues looked at whether this exercise could change how hopeful people feel about the future. After a short session of imagining their best possible selves, people expected more good things to happen to them in the future, compared with a control group. This suggests the exercise may give optimism a small, short-term nudge.
Why might this work?
When life is busy or hard, it is easy to stop thinking about what we actually want. Writing about a hopeful future can help you name your goals and remind you why they matter.
Seeing that future in detail may also make it feel more possible. When a goal feels possible, people often feel more hopeful, and hope can make it easier to take the next small step.
What this can and cannot do
The effects in these studies were real but modest, and many of them were short term. Most were also done with college students, so we know less about how this works for everyone.
Writing about your best possible self will not make your goals happen on its own. It is not a promise, and it is not a replacement for planning and effort. For some people, picturing an ideal future can also bring up sadness about how far away it feels. If that happens, it is okay to set the exercise aside. And if you are dealing with ongoing low mood, please reach out to a doctor, counselor, or someone you trust. This exercise is not a substitute for professional care.
Try it
- Set a timer. Give yourself 15 to 20 minutes, like in the original study.
- Pick a time frame. Imagine yourself a few years from now, after things have gone well.
- Think about different parts of life. Your work or school, your friends and family, your health, and the things you love to do.
- Be specific. What does a normal day look like? What do you see, smell, and hear? Details make the picture feel real.
- Keep it realistic but hopeful. Write about a future that could happen if you work hard, not a fantasy.
- Come back to it. If you enjoy it, try it again over the next few days. The studies that saw benefits asked people to repeat the exercise.
Back on the crate
Amara does not have a bakery yet. She is still saving money and testing recipes on her coworkers. But each time she writes about that fogged-up window and the smell of fresh bread, she feels a little more sure it is worth working toward. If you want a gentle place to picture your own future, NOTETYPE lets you write a thought and press “Make it real” to see doodles bloom around your words, all kept private on your device.
Sources
- King, L. A. (2001). The health benefits of writing about life goals. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 27(7), 798–807.
- Peters, M. L., Flink, I. K., Boersma, K., & Linton, S. J. (2010). Manipulating optimism: Can imagining a best possible self be used to increase positive future expectancies? The Journal of Positive Psychology, 5(3), 204–211.
- Sheldon, K. M., & Lyubomirsky, S. (2006). How to increase and sustain positive emotion: The effects of expressing gratitude and visualizing best possible selves. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 1(2), 73–82.
