Episode 501: What would you say to future you?
We’re always chasing the next goal, aren’t we?
But how often do we stop to take a breath and reflect on how far we’ve come? In this episode, Fiona Killackey talks about the power of looking back and forward—using a simple tool called Future Me to help clarify where you’re heading, and to give yourself credit for where you’ve already been.
Fiona shares how she’s used Future Me to set clear goals, reflect on personal growth, and even plan for life milestones—both in her business and her personal life. It’s not just about goals and success; it’s about creating a vision for the future that matters to you.
In this episode, you’ll learn:
How writing a letter to your future self can give you a fresh perspective and remind you of what truly matters.
Why this tool isn't just about business, but also about reflecting on your health, relationships, and personal growth.
Fiona’s own experience with Future Me, and how it’s helped her create a vision for her family’s future.
How taking a moment to pause and reflect can reframe your mindset and keep you grounded, even during busy times.
Give this episode a listen and see how you can use Future Me to refocus and get clear on where you’re heading—without losing sight of what’s important.
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Fiona Killackey: Do you love your life as a small business owner?
Let's be real. Sometimes we just don't. It's my hope that this, the My Daily Business Podcast, helps you regain a little of that lost love through practical, actionable tips, tools and tactics, interviews with creative and curious small business owners, and in depth coaching episodes with me, your host, Fiona Killackey With more than 20 years experience in marketing, brand content and systems and having now helped thousands of small business owners, I know what it takes to build.
A business that you can be proud of and that actually aligns with your values, your beliefs, and your hopes for the future. So much of our daily life is spent working on and in the businesses and the brands that we are creating, and so it makes sense to actually love what you do.
So, let's get into this podcast and help you figure out how to love your business and your life on the Daily.
Hello and welcome to episode 501 of the My Daily Business podcast. All right. Let's get into today's quick tip episode.
As you may or may not know, we have now surpassed 500 episodes of this podcast, and something happened a while ago now when I was looking for a password to give to my virtual assistant when it came to this podcast. Now, this was, I don't know, maybe like six months ago now, and this podcast is very close to a million downloads.
What I had used as the password was way, way, way, way, way less than that. So, let's say I had put in, you know, 40,000 downloads as the podcast password, and I was like, "Oh my gosh." When I found it, I realised that for old me, that was such a huge momentous number to get to. It wasn't 40,000. It was a different number, but it was significantly less than what we have actually managed to achieve in terms of downloads.
And it just made me stop and think about how often we just rush to the next goal and rush to the next goal, and we move the goalpost and we don't stop and really reflect on what we've done or congratulate ourselves.
A tool that I think really helps you do this, but also really helps you get clarity on what you actually want for the future, whether that's in terms of downloads or whether it's in terms of something in your business or maybe something in your personal life, or in your health, or in your relationships.
And the tool is called Future Me. Now, this is not a new tool. It's been around forever. I think, well, not forever, but it's been around, gosh, at least since I started this business. I think because I remember utilising it multiple times when I started, and then I used it again in I think 2021.
And I've used it multiple times and I recently used it to send a letter to myself in the future again, around something that I'm really hoping comes to fruition, but also something that's really important to me in my personal life.
So, Future Me, and you can go to just futureme.org, is a platform that allows you to write a letter to yourself in the future. You can then dictate, you know, what email address it goes to, but also if it goes in a month from now, if it goes six years from now, you can determine the actual date.
So, it could be an anniversary of something, it could be on your milestone birthday. I sent one to myself for my 40th birthday, and it was so cool because I'd forgotten that I sent it. And it was sent two years before that date.
It was really interesting to read it and be like, "Wow." And also, we were going through the pandemic right when I turned 40, so, you know, nobody could have ever known what was happening. And so, it was really interesting. The way that I'd written it was like talking about getting out there and celebrating and all of this.
And I wasn't able to do that for my 40th, which I mean, in the grand scheme of all the things that happened, that is not that bad of a thing. But it was fascinating to read it and all of them have been really interesting to read.
So, I think sometimes just the act of sitting down and writing that and thinking, "What do I want to say? What is important to me? What do I hope that future me has achieved, you know, by a certain date?"
And not necessarily just achieved in terms of like accolades and, you know, prizes or whatever, but to have achieved in terms of accepting yourself or letting go of something. Maybe there's a really crappy relationship that you need to get out of.
Maybe it's, and you're congratulating yourself in the future that you have worked through that. Maybe it's that you are going to go and get help about something specific. Maybe it's dealing with some trauma from your past. Maybe it's a health challenge.
Maybe it's nothing that's serious. Maybe it's sort of just some humour that you're sending yourself to open one random Thursday in three years' time. But it's such a fun tool.
Now, I know it does have a paid version. I've always just used the free version. And so, really, you just come into it and you click on "Write a letter to the future," and you put it in and then you can literally make sure if it's private or public.
Some people also have their public letters, which is really cool. You can go in there and to go to futureme.org. And then I think there's some sort of button or something. It says "Read public letters."
And those are fascinating because some of them are just funny and light, and some of them are just beautiful and sad and heartbreaking. I just love that there are all these people, one, that have put that out publicly so we can all see just each other's humanity.
But I also love the idea that there's this community of people that are being intentional and thinking about what do they most want in the future.
As I said, I've used this tool so many times. I think it's a great one for business as well because maybe you are, I don't know, in a really tricky part of your business at the moment. Maybe something's happening. Maybe you're in a growth stage, or maybe you are wondering if your business is even going to be around in 12 months, and you want to maybe sit down and write this letter of encouragement to yourself.
Imagine the best possible scenario. And so, you are saying, "Congratulations, you made it through that last 12 months. It was really difficult and very hard, but here you are, and you're reading this, and the business is still going," you know?
Just putting that intention out into the universe, or obviously, in this way, through technology at futureme.org. It's just an incredible way to ground yourself and also give yourself hope for the future.
Recently, I wrote a letter to myself. I'm not going to go into exactly what I wrote, but when I sat down to start writing it, I didn't really know what I wanted to write. And then, when it just came out, it just flowed really, really quickly, and it made me realise just my hopes, I guess, for my sons in particular and what I hope that they will get out of life.
I actually have put that to, I think, send myself in like six years. So by that stage, my oldest will be almost finished high school. My youngest will be almost finished primary school. He's just started primary school.
I mean, so much will have changed in that six years. I also put in there that, you know, I hope I've travelled to particular countries that we would really like to travel to as a family, and also that I hope, you know, that our health is good and that I hope the health of all of us is really strong and that we haven't lost anyone.
And, you know, when you really narrow it down, you can have all this stuff happening in your life, but when you write a letter like this, it just sifts through all the BS and it gets to the stuff that is actually the most important stuff to you in your life. Or, you know, if you're writing it about business, in your business.
So that is the tool. I've used it many times. It's called Future Me. They are not sponsoring the show. Futureme.org. And we'll link to it in the show notes, which for this particular episode you'll find at mydailybusiness.com/podcast/501.
Now, if you want to go through any other tip episodes, you can always just go back all the way through the catalog and look for the TIP episodes. They come out every single Tuesday, and you'll find so many tips and insights in there.
Before we go, just a note from our sponsors that help all of this stuff happen, and all of these great tips get to you.
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So thank you to Poppy AI and also thank you to you for listening to this. I really hope that I hear from you on what sort of letters you're going to send yourself, or maybe you have already used Future Me and you know the power of it.
I'd love to hear, like, you don't have to tell me all the details, but I'd love to hear what it helped you feel, what it helped you do, how it helped you grow.
So that is it for today's podcast. As I said, you can find all the links on the show notes, which are at mydailybusiness.com/podcast/501.
Thank you so much for listening. I'll see you next time. Bye.
Thanks for listening to the My Daily Business Podcast for a range of tools to help you grow and start your business, including coaching programmes, courses and templates. Check out our shop at mydailybusiness.com and if you want to get in touch, you can do that by email at hello@mydailybusiness.com or you can hit us up on Instagram at mydailybusiness_. You can find us on TikTok at mydailybusiness or find me Fiona Killackey on LinkedIn. I look forward to connecting.
