Journey 9 · Vision
Writing About Your Best Possible Self Lifts Optimism
In a review of 29 studies, writing about your 'best possible self' improved well-being, optimism and positive mood; one study found it raised positive expectations too.
A 2019 review by Carrillo and colleagues gathered 29 studies of 'best possible self' writing, the well-studied exercise closest to future-self journaling. In those studies, mostly of university students, it improved well-being, optimism and positive mood compared with control tasks. In one study by Peters and colleagues, a single session also raised people's positive expectations for the future right afterward, not just their mood.
That last part matters: in that study, what people expected shifted, not only how they felt. Two honest limits: these studies measured mood and optimism, not whether goals were reached, and mostly soon after the exercise, so how long the lift lasts is less clear. Writing about your future doesn't make it happen.
The studies used longer writing sessions. Journey 9, Vision, guided by Drish, offers a shorter daily version, a two-minute future-self sentence, in its sixth session. What would yours say today?
The research
Strong evidence Replicated findings and meta-analyses.
- Carrillo, A., Rubio-Aparicio, M., Molinari, G., Enrique, Á., Sánchez-Meca, J., & Baños, R. M. (2019). Effects of the Best Possible Self intervention: A systematic review and meta-analysis. PLoS ONE, 14(9), e0222386.
- 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.
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