Neuroscientist-Approved Habit to Boost Happiness

Many people write down their goals and either forget about them or take them off the list once they’ve been accomplished.

Renée Onque, a health and wellness reporter at CNBC Make It, has a different way of monitoring her achievements. Onque said she types a “heartfelt email” to herself and schedules it to be sent one year later. She’s been doing this since 2022. What she writes about and what she has achieved by the time her future becomes her present sometimes amazes her.

For example, in October 2023, Onque wrote: “You are deserving of the best of everything. If that means being in a new living space next year, I know that will pan out.” Onque said she was “beaming with joy” as she read this one year later in her first apartment.

And that’s not all.

In the same 2023 letter, Onque wrote that she was listening to music icon Stevie Wonder. A few days before her one-year-old email arrived in her inbox, she had seen him perform live.

But it’s not just about the goals that Onque accomplished or the meaningful coincidences that stood out to her in her letters. It was what she told herself.

“In each letter, I always encouraged myself to be more compassionate, to rest when I need to, and to remember that ‘simply existing is enough. Anything else is surplus.’”

According to Erin Clabough, a neuroscientist, author, and professor of psychology at the University of Virginia, Onque was, without realizing it, developing a healthy routine that could have significant benefits for her mental health.

“One thing that we don’t do as much as we should as a culture is we don’t stop and think about the direction that things are going,” Clabough told CNBC Make It. “A letter to your future self can really help with that.”
Clabough recommends writing a letter to yourself and points out things to consider when writing it.

Be the Captain of Your Ship

Clabough says to think of your life as a ship, and your letter as the compass guiding you toward your desired direction.

“You’re more likely, when captaining the ship, to go towards that direction,” as a result, Clabough notes. “You can look at the idea of a placebo, and you can see that our belief in what we’re doing and what’s happening to us actually makes a huge difference.”

Writing letters to our future selves can help us see whether we’re in alignment with “the life that we want to be living and the values that we say we have,” Clabough says.

In addition, reading the letters a day, a month, or a year later can be a valuable reflection tool because it allows you to see how you’ve grown and changed over time, Clabough noted.

“The idea that in the future, you’re going to come back and read that letter, I think that’s equally as important as writing it down,” Clabough said.

Whether this practice will have a positive or negative effect on your mental health depends on the type of message you write to your future self, Clabough added.

“I’m actually not a huge fan of specific goal-setting,” she said. “What I think is more useful is to set your intentions and to leave it really open-ended. You’re supposed to be really compassionate to yourself and kind to yourself in this letter.”

When writing to your future self, Clabough suggests asking yourself these questions:

• What’s not working? What doesn’t feel in alignment with how I want my life to be?
• How am I spending my time, energy, and resources?

• What are my priorities and values?

How Often Should You Write A Letter?

Clabough recommends writing a letter to yourself at least once a year, but also suggests having “little points along the way where we more intentionally check in with ourselves.”

Sometimes, Clabough finds it helpful to write to herself when she’s “going through a hard thing.”

“I have in the past flipped ahead 40 pages [in my journal], and I’ve written my letter to my future self at that point, so that when I’m writing in my journal, at some point, I’m going to hit it,” Clabough said.

In this entry, she tells her future self that she’s doing her best and how she hopes to feel by the time she reaches the letter in her journal.

“Setting intentions makes a difference,” Clabough said. “I think this is something that should be utilized by all sorts of people, no matter their walks of life.”

Source Links:

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/11/09/this-neuroscientist-approved-habit-boosts-my-happiness.html