Scripting · best possible self · letter

Best possible self writing raised well-being. A plain plan did not.

JM Thomas · 21 August 2026

The 369 notebook is already open on the desk. SATS is already the last thing you do in bed.

Then you write next year as a list and Monday still feels like Monday.

Best possible self is a letter you write from a life that already went well. Scripting is the buyer name for that letter.

You already trust those two practices. You still want the letter to count when a list of goals leaves the week sitting where it was.

Monday still felt like Monday

You already write I-am lines. You already run SATS before sleep.

A list of goals can sit in that same notebook all week and leave how you feel untouched. That is the itch that brought you here, and the letter is how people answer it when they script.

Look at life as if it already happened. Then put that life on the page.

Keep the notebook. Keep SATS.

Four days of twenty-minute letters

King printed this test in 2001 in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. The paper title is “The Health Benefits of Writing About Life Goals.”

People sat with a page for twenty minutes a day across four days.

One group wrote from a life that already went well. One group wrote a plain plan for their days, the kind of list that names the job, the rent, and the next errand.

Well-being rose.

It rose for the letter at three weeks. It stayed put for the plan.

You can hold both pages in a week you already have. The plan names Tuesday. The letter is written from a year that already went well, as if you were looking back from inside it.

Read the paper at doi.org/10.1177/0146167201277003 and at pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11461613.

Some people also wrote about a hard event, and some wrote both. Those notes sit with the papers at the bottom.

The picture on this page is one sitting: twenty minutes, a letter from a life that already went well, and a week that finally moved how you felt.

Keep SATS and the 369 notebook

369 is writing I-am lines on a 3, 6, 9 count. SATS is Neville's state akin to sleep, the sleepy state you already use before the day ends.

Keep both.

Write the letter next to them on a night you already set aside, the same night SATS would have been the last thing you did anyway.

If you want a page about I-am lines, open the affirmation page. If you want a page about SATS, open the SATS page. If you want a page about sending a line outward, open the loving-kindness page. More files sit in the Library.

If the letter brings up something you cannot hold, call a doctor you trust.

Sources