Humor can be a very powerful medicine. It is one that we don’t use enough in the spiritual/ self-help/personal growth world. So today, I’m going to share an exercise with you that makes use of the medicine of humor. I’m also going to explain to you the benefits of this exercise called: The Comic Letter to the Younger Self.
Humor can be used as an avoidance strategy and as a coping mechanism. It can also do incredible things for us. Humor causes multiple physiological reactions that reduce stress, anxiety, tension and resistance. It boosts your immunity. It causes you to shift your perspective, seeing even dire situations in a less threatening light. It interrupts negative fixation and negative thought loops. It reduces tension during conflicts. It deepens connection with others and the list goes on.
When it comes to the story of our lives, so many of us have a narrative that is very, very serious. We take life very seriously. The more traumatic things we have experienced, the worse this gets. Our narrative of the experiences we have had in our lives and the things we have done can cause us to feel very bad about our lives and about ourselves. We get stuck in worry loops and rumination. We feel like doing the wrong thing will have serious consequences, so we get into analysis paralysis. We overthink both the past (mining it for regrets) and we overthink the future (searching it for threats). All of this actually disables us from seeing things objectively and prioritizing what really matters because we feel like everything is of extremely dire importance and we can afford no mistakes. When we introduce levity to our perspective about our life experience, all this changes. This has a positive effect on us physically, mentally and emotionally. This is medicine that many people need.
To do this exercise, you are going to write a letter to your childhood self, telling them about the life that is to come between wherever they are at their age (pick an age), and where you are now (at this age). But you are going to do so in a comic and humorous way. It is ok if some of the humor is over a child’s head, the goal is to be funny enough that any adult listening would laugh out loud. When you are writing this letter, remember that the goal is to put a funny slant, a hilarious re-frame and a positive light on everything and anything. Consider things like this:
Do you have anything funny to say to them about what happens with their dream career or what they thought that they would do when they grow up?
Do you have anything to explain to them about modern tech and what life will be like with it vs. what is going on with it at their time?
What could you say about diet and exercise?
Can you narrate a time you failed miserably as if it were part of a stand up comedy routine?
Can you tell them about bad things or challenges that are to come, in a way that makes them comedic?
Can you humorously highlight the positive outcomes, however small, of the flaws, bad choices, mistakes and wrong turns you took? All those silver linings?
Do you have any funny advice to give them regarding the pains or challenges they will face?
Do you have any advice to give them that might have seemed like bad advice at the time, but proved over time to be good advice?
Can you describe to them things you’ve learned over the course of your life with a comic slant?
Are there any fashion choices or haircuts or styles that they will have forced on them or that they will try themselves that won’t go well or will go out of style?
Have your successes led to anything unexpectedly bad that you can make light of?
Do you have a funny way of framing the direction you chose to take in life and why?
Do you have any funny information for them about the way you dealt with either successes or failures you experienced?
Do you have anything funny or positively re-framed about the people they will meet, significant relationships?
Can you describe your grown-up body and what is going on with it to them in a way that would make them happy or in a way that is super funny?
Can you describe your grown up habits to them in a way that is funny?
Are there any stories to tell them about the people they know that would cause a laugh or cause them to feel better about what is happening at the time where they are?
Is there anything funny or weird that your younger self was afraid of, that you either grow out of or don’t grow out of?
Do you have any fears now that your childhood self would find funny or weird?
Do you have any funny warnings to give them?
Do you have anything to tell them about what changes from childhood to adulthood in a funny way?
Is there anything you hated at that age or considered a form of punishment that you love today and consider a luxury?
Is there anything funny to tell them about the reality of what you do with your money now that you can “buy whatever you want?”
Is there anything about you or your life now that would make them laugh out loud?
Do you have any funny nuggets of wisdom for your childhood self?
Keep in mind that if you notice yourself writing humorous things in a way where there is a painful undertone to it, this means you want your pain to be seen. Essentially, a part of you is in resistance to this exercise because it feels like pain that you need addressed is being whitewashed or bypassed. So, it may be a beneficial thing if this happens, to sit down in meditation and reflect on what pain you want to have be seen. Another way to identify this is to think about what pain you think isn’t being seen or wouldn’t be seen if you really made this a funny life narrative letter.
So that you can understand this exercise, here is an example letter:
Dear Younger Self,
Wow. It’s been a bit of a rollercoaster. One you would not even imagine. So let me paint you a picture.
You know how Mom and Dad basically made education the center of your entire life? All the summers you spent inside studying and the FOMO you experienced. All the time, money, pressure, and expectations poured into your education. The late nights finishing calculus homework. The advanced classes you took just to ace the SATs and ACTs test to get into the best college. Well… forget all of that. Because one day, in the middle of a random architecture class in college, you decide to drop out of school entirely. Mom’s worst nightmare. But the good thing is— you making that decision broke her free in other ways. She starts taking life less seriously, starts taking dance classes, she starts dreaming about what she could potentially experience in life. And so do you.
That’s when we actually start to find our way. Slowly. Messily. But we do. We find more and more of who we actually are. We experience real purpose and meaning—the kind you couldn’t have even dreamed up. It involves a lot less calculus than you and everyone else thought. Instead, it involves navigating people… which turns out to be far more complex than calculus ever was. Thankfully, our childhood prepared us perfectly for that kind of complexity.
Along the way, we make a lot of mistakes, even though we’re always hoping we’ll finally get things right and be done with the mess. But here’s the best advice I could give you - forget perfect. Life is messy and it never really “cleans up,” no matter how much you think you’re about to get there.
Also, remember the time you were terrified you were of speaking in front of the class? How your voice trembled and your hands were shaking holding your note cards? How much speaking scared you so much so you rarely spoke to people when you were even younger? Well… now part of your job involves speaking in front of dozens, sometimes hundreds, of people. And weirdly, that’s one of the least scary things about our life now. You know what is still kind of scary thought? The dark. And you know what I still find even more terrifying? Horror movies - you still could not pay me to electively sit through one.
You know what else is funny? Remember how Mom and Dad were obsessed with getting you to eat vegetables, because you basically only ate meat? Well… we’re vegan now. Vegetables are your favorite food. And they couldn’t get us to eat meat even if they tried. We even became an animal rights activist.
You’re probably wondering what is so great about being an adult huh? Well, we can technically eat whatever food we want. So if you had to guess what we’d be eating, what would you say? Tons of candy? Ice cream? Bread? Mac and cheese? Hate to break it to you, but… we don’t eat those things anymore. Because now they make us feel sick. Our taste buds still love them, but lots has changed since that one time we ate all our Halloween candy in a single day.
Oh, and remember how some kids at school would fall off the swings when you walked past and said it was because you paralyzed them with “the paralyzing stare” you had? Well it turns out part of this stare of ours is down to our sharp perceptiveness. A quality we were able to turn into something that can be used actually help people - to see their pains and patterns so clearly that you help them navigate their way through it.
Life is weird. You’d think that 27 years into life I’d feel grown up by now. But what I’ve learned is that no one ever feels like they really do grow up. We all feel like we’re fumbling around like fetuses for a lot of it. And in the moments we don’t feel that way, life usually finds a way to put us back into the fetal position anyways.
You wouldn’t believe the things we worry about now. We still worry about what people think of us—so much so that we sometimes dream about relationships we had when we were 12. But now those worries are coupled with some adult upgrades like taxes, visas, legal paperwork, and emails.
Oh—and you know how obsessed you were with Ariel from The Little Mermaid? Well… you kind of ended up like her and gave up our voice long long ago. So the most important advice I can give you… don’t do what they do in the movies! It’s called a fairy tale for a reason!
The magic doesn’t end there, though. What if I told you love at first sight actually happened to us? You met the love of your life. But… like I said—don’t listen to the movies. Relationships don’t go the way they seem like in the films. Life, relationships, and people are far more complicated than that. Love doesn’t mean things turn out perfectly, and it definitely doesn’t mean it’s easy. But I would still say that loving has still been worth the tosses and turns.
Being an adult is weird. We can stay up as long as we want now, but most of us can’t wait for bedtime. We can eat whatever we want but now choose to eat healthy because the wrong food with make our stomachs hurt. There’s no official moment you really become an adult. And no manual for it either. One day you’re just end up doing very adult things. But one thing remains true throughout it all which is we are human. And to be human is a whole ball of wax that we keep trying to figure out - we’ll see if we ever do.
Love,
Tristen (You)
Making light of your life experience helps you to put things into perspective and view problems through a new lens, highlighting the absurdities of negative thought patterns rather than being overwhelmed by them. Reinterpreting your life in this way can drastically improve your life satisfaction. It allows you to step back from your problems, making things feel less difficult and less personal and less overwhelming. This playful acknowledgement of your own mistakes and flaws, disarms perfectionism, lowers anxiety and makes self-acceptance easier. Finding humor in hard things builds resilience in a healthy way. The internal lightening and laughter this exercise can cause, creates a cathartic release on a physical and emotional level, which helps your nervous system come out of fight or flight mode. Sharing these humorous personal anecdotes creates relatability with other people and this fosters connection. So try out this cognitive reframing exercise for yourself and if you really want to have a laugh and connect, do it together with a group.
