You already know who she is. The woman who runs a calm business, charges what she’s worth and closes her laptop by 4… you’ve probably pictured her a hundred times. Future self journaling is how you stop just picturing her and start talking to her every day, so her choices slowly become yours.
This post gives you future self journaling prompts written for women building a business, with sections for identity, business and visibility, and money and receiving. You’ll also get a simple 5-minute daily method, a weekly “letter exchange” that has some genuinely interesting research behind it, an example entry and a free printable with everything on one page.
What future self journaling is
Future self journaling is a short daily practice where you write about who you’re becoming and then choose one way to act like her today. Dr. Nicole LePera (The Holistic Psychologist) popularized it, and the core idea is lovely and simple: you identify a pattern you want to change, picture the version of you who has already changed it, and practice being her in small ways every day.
My spin on it is that the version of you you’re writing to is also running a business. So the prompts below cover the moments where your old patterns tend to show up most: pricing, visibility, saying no and receiving money.
Does future self journaling work?
Nobody has run a big trial on “future self journaling” by that name, and I’d rather be honest with you about that. There is research on feeling connected to your future self, and it’s encouraging.
In one set of studies, young adults who interacted with age-progressed images of themselves chose later money over immediate money more often and put more of a hypothetical paycheck toward retirement (Hershfield et al., 2011). Those were lab studies with hypothetical money, but they still suggest that when your future self feels real, you make choices that serve her.
The study I love most for journaling is this one. Students who wrote a letter to their future self and then wrote a reply as that future self felt more connected to their future self and did more career planning and academic thinking, while students who only wrote the letter didn’t get the same boost (Chishima & Wilson, 2020).
The study was done with high-school students and had a one-month follow-up, so it’s a long way from proof for your business, but the takeaway is still really useful: writing back as her seems to matter more than writing to her. That’s why the weekly letter exchange below is part of the method.
How to do future self journaling (5 minutes a day)
Here’s the simple structure I’d use:
- Daily (5 minutes): Answer one or two prompts, then write one action she’d take today that you can take too.
- Weekly (15 minutes): Write a short letter to your future self, then write her reply.
- Every evening (30 seconds): Write down one place you acted like her today.
Morning works best for the daily prompts because you can still act on them, and the evening line is how you collect proof. When you write as her, use the present tense and keep it ordinary, like a normal day in her life.
Future self journaling prompts: Become her (identity)
- What does a normal Tuesday look like for me a year from now?
- What does she believe about herself that I’m still working on believing?
- What does she say no to that I still say yes to?
- How does she talk to herself when something goes wrong?
- What would feel boring to her that feels scary to me?
- What does she wear, eat and do first thing in the morning?
- What is she no longer willing to tolerate?
- What does she want me to stop worrying about?
Future self journaling prompts: Build the channel (business and visibility)
- What does her work week look like, hour by hour?
- What does she sell, and how do people find her?
- What does she post without overthinking?
- How does she respond when someone says her price is too high?
- What has she stopped doing in her business that I’m still doing?
- What does she delegate, automate or simply let go of?
- What’s the one offer she’d focus on if she were me today?
- What does she do when a launch is slower than she hoped?
Future self journaling prompts: Let it flow (money and receiving)
- How does she feel when she sends an invoice?
- What does she do the moment money comes in?
- How does she respond to a compliment or a referral?
- What does she spend money on without guilt?
- What does rest look like for her, and when does she take it?
- What help does she accept that I usually turn down?
- What does “enough” look like for her this month?
- What’s one thing she’d do today that I can do too?
The weekly letter exchange
Once a week, write to her and then let her write back. This is the part the research suggests matters most, so don’t skip the reply.
Your letter (5 minutes): “Dear future me, here’s what happened this week, here’s what I’m proud of, and here’s where I got stuck…”
Her reply (10 minutes): Write back as her, a year from now, in the present tense. Answer these as she would:
- What does she want me to know about the thing I’m stuck on?
- What would she do this week if she were me?
- What is she proud of me for, even if I’m not proud yet?
- Where did I act like her this week?
Use ChatGPT to spot your patterns
Journaling by hand is wonderful, and after a week or two you’ll have a little pile of entries full of patterns you can’t see from the inside. That’s where ChatGPT is really useful.
Prompt: “Here are my future self journal entries from the last two weeks: [paste your entries]. What do I keep wanting? What fears or excuses show up more than once? Where do my daily actions match the woman I’m describing, and where do they contradict her? Give me one if-then plan for next week.”
You don’t have to share anything you’re not comfortable with, so feel free to summarize your entries instead of pasting them word for word. If you’d rather do the whole practice inside ChatGPT, I walk through that in How to Use ChatGPT for Future Self Journaling, and my full ChatGPT setup is in The Ultimate Guide to Manifesting with ChatGPT.
Example entry
Here’s an example so you can see how short and ordinary it can be. This one is made up, so swap in your own life.
Prompt: How does she feel when she sends an invoice?
Entry: “She feels nothing special, honestly. She sends it on the day the work is done, at her full rate, with a short ‘thank you, here’s your invoice’ and no apology. Then she goes for a walk. She knows the money is coming and doesn’t refresh her inbox.”
Today’s action: Send the invoice I’ve been sitting on, at the full amount, with no apology line.
Evening proof: Sent it at 9:40am. Felt weird for ten minutes, then fine.
Free future self journaling printable
I put the daily page, the evening proof line and the weekly letter exchange on one page so you can print it and keep it in your journal. There’s no email gate, so just download it and use it.
Get the free Manifest with ChatGPT workbook
If you love the idea of letting ChatGPT help you see your patterns, my free Manifest with ChatGPT workbook takes that further. It’s the exact system I use to get clear on who I’m becoming and close the gap faster.
Here’s what’s inside:
- A setup prompt that teaches ChatGPT who you are and what you’re building
- My 5-part prompt formula, so every answer is specific to you
- 6 prompt stacks: desire, belief, evidence, identity leaks, behavior and feedback (the evidence and behavior stacks pair perfectly with your evening proof line)
- A follow-up toolkit for when ChatGPT’s first answer is too generic
- Notes pages to keep track of what you learn
Pop your email in below and it’s yours.
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