Time for a Time Capsule ⌛

Welcome to the OPPO FLOW Storybook. 

Each week I fly an entertaining and motivating story that provides actionable items to inspire growth towards your success and happiness.

The weekly flights bring you one of the following:

A MINDSET SHIFT to prepare for opportunity and build better habits towards success. 🤯

Or…

AN OPPORTUNITY STORY sharing inspirational pivotal moments from someone’s life that changed their trajectory in a positive way. 🚀

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Have you ever done this? Write to yourself?

You don’t have to be a great writer to write to yourself.

After all, you’re the only one who will read it, so who cares about grammar, punctuation, or run-on sentences. 😉

Often times, I’ll do this to get my thoughts and tasks for the following day or week out of my head and reference back to later.

Sometimes, though, I’ll write a letter with the intention to look back it a year from now, or even longer.

This is where the magic happens.

I’ll never forget my 8th grade History teacher, Mrs. Perry.

She was a TOUGH COOKIE 🍪, but I learned the most from her. 🤓

She didn’t mess around, but was also very thoughtful.

She made an IMPACT on me and she’ll probably never know it.

The month before school got out that year, she gave us a homework assignment. 📝

This assignment was to write a letter to our future self with the intention of opening it just before our high school graduation. 🎓

To ensure we wouldn’t open the letter, we had to give it back to her in a sealed envelope, with our home address on it.

She would mail out the letters in 4 years time.

These letters were deeply personal and were not meant to be read by anyone else.

So you could be as VULNERABLE and OPEN as you wanted. 😊

I remember writing down my goals, fears, and aspirations.

Thoughts about all that I would accomplish in high school, sports accolades, friends I would meet, and… well… of course GIRLS. 😉

Sure enough, FOUR YEARS LATER, a letter from my 14 year old self came in the mail just before my high school graduation in 2004. 👨‍🎓

It was INCREDIBLE to reflect back on my mindset and read through the thoughts I had as a young teenager trying to figure it all out.

I was SUPER GRATEFUL for that letter. 🙌

It was inspiring to see all the growth I had experienced and the fears I thought were a big deal at the time, weren’t even a worry as I read it back.

Fast forward to 2010…

That assignment made such a huge impact on me, that when my wife and I got married, we decided to do something similar. 😊

Before our wedding day, we wrote a letter to each other that we wouldn’t touch until our FIRST anniversary.

It was sealed in an envelope and put in a box.

These letters included our goals, dreams, and what we wanted to do in the future together.

It documented our thoughts and provided a snapshot of life at the time.

We shared our love for each other in those letters and they were deeply personal for our relationship.

One year later, we opened them up and it gave us some AMAZING reflection on everything we had accomplished in just 12 months time. 🤩

WE CRIED. 🥹

WE LAUGHED. 😂

WE LOVED THE MEMORIES… 😊

…AND WROTE ANOTHER LETTER. ✍️

This time, it was written with the intention to open at our 5 year anniversary and we agreed to do this every FIVE YEARS until the rest of time. ⏳

I just recently found an email that I wrote to myself (and totally forgot about!) from October 2014.

NINE YEARS AGO! 😱

Here is a snippet from that email…

The CRAZY thing is…

I was trying to define my purpose back then and recognized what needed to be done, but wasn’t mentally strong enough to remain disciplined with those changes that I needed to make.

There were many wake up calls and inconsistencies over those 9 years before I was able to get it dialed in.

I can now say that I have turned those “I WANT” statements into “I AM” statements..

I AM LIVING SMARTER

I AM PERFORMING BETTER

I AM HAPPY

It was a long TIME CAPSULE ⌛ email that I found this week that has added more FUEL to my drive and remain even more disciplined with my life now, in order to fulfill my own perception of SUCCESS and HAPPINESS. 🤩

Until you experience it, it is difficult to really understand the impact writing a letter to yourself, without any intention of opening it for a period of time, will do to you upon reading it.

When you’re making positive change in your life or striving for it, there’s nothing more motivating than seeing progress in your work, no matter how long it takes.

When you’re making incremental changes, which are often difficult to see on a day to day basis, this TIME CAPSULE idea makes it possible to reflect with gratitude and realize all that you’ve accomplished since the day you wrote and sealed it. ✉️

Write your letter with the intention of putting in the work and doing what you write down.

When you put pen to paper it becomes REAL. 👊

You put it out there into the UNIVERSE. 🌎

You’re planting it into your SUBCONSCIOUS. 🧠

Your prior YOU is your best TEACHER. 👩‍🏫👨‍🏫

When you have the opportunity to reflect back on how you were thinking in years past, it provides an incredible amount of strength and motivation going into the FUTURE. 🚀

It’s a time stamp that documents where you were at that point in your life and helps you continue to learn, grow, and reflect.

Write the letter, seal it, and forget about it. 📨

Put it in a safe place, and write it with the intention to leave it sealed for at least one year.

TRY IT.

Suggest it with your team, your significant other, or your kids as well.

I promise you (and they) will enjoy what’s read, have a wide range of emotions, and it will bring inspiration to keep going.

This is the MINDSET SHIFT. 🤯

GOOD LUCK!

Until our next FLIGHT, enjoy your YOUTUBE Music Video of the Week! 👇

Remember, Opportunity is Everywhere!!

Cheers! Steven

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