Your Objective: To Fall Passionately in Love With the Person You Are Describing in Your Letter.
When creating learning resources that help people self-manage their WorkLife development and growth, I love connecting the arts to learning.
I love learning through and from the arts and artists – performing, visual and literary.
Over the years, I’ve collaborated with artists to create learning programmes.
I also love learning the power of storytelling through all art forms.
And I love sharing what I’ve learnt as I continue to focus on creating learning resources.
Today, I want to share an assignment I discovered in the book: The Art of Possibility: Transforming Professional and Personal Life by Rosamund Stone Zander and Benjamin Zander.
In the book, Benjamin Zander, a conductor, composer, music director, arranger and teacher of Musical Interpretation, tells the story about when teaching a course he decided to award an “A” to every student right from the beginning.
He did, however, have a specific requirement for the students. They had to write a letter to him from the future, explaining why they deserved the perfect grade.
In his words:
In writing their letters, I say to them, they are to place themselves in the future, looking back, and to report on all the insights they’ve acquired and milestones they attained during the year as if those accomplishments were already in the past. Everything must be written in the past tense. Phrases such as “I hope,” I intend,” or “I will” must not appear.
The students may, if they wish, mention specific goals reached or competitions won. “But,” I tell them, “I am especially interested in the person you will become by the time you send the letter.”
I am interested in the attitudes, feelings, and worldview of that person who will have done all she wished to do or become everything he wanted to be. I tell them I want them to fall passionately in love with the person they are describing in the letter.
…………………………………………………………………………………………….
And so, your assignment for today, the first day of a new year, should you choose to accept it, is to:
Write a Short Letter to Yourself From the Perspective of “Future You” Assignment
Remember your objective is to:
Fall Passionately in Love With the Person You Are Describing in Your Letter.
I’m going to write a short letter to myself focused on each of the areas of my WorkLife that are important to me – my work itself, and my life outside of work, to include: family and friends, health and happiness, travel and adventure.
You might like to do the same, or you may like to focus on one area for now.
Whatever you choose, I wish you Happy Writing, a Happy WorkLife and a Happy New Year. May all your dreams and aspirations come true.
……………………………………………………………………………………………..
If you found this post helpful, you may also like to take a look at The School Of WorkLife books, which are designed to help you fine-tune your learning, development and growth in the areas that are most important to you.
Carmel