Daylight

Practice · Best Possible Self

Five minutes with a future that went well

Most journaling looks back at the day. This practice asks you to look forward: to imagine a life in which things have come together, and to describe one part of it at a time.

Path Integral · 26 September 2026 · 5 min read

  • CadenceFourteen days, gaps allowed
  • SessionAbout 5 minutes
  • Based onKing (2001); Meevissen, Peters & Alberts (2011)

The practice

Imagine yourself some years from now. You've worked hard, and things have gone about as well as they realistically could. Choose one part of that life, such as your work, the people around you, where you live or how you spend a Sunday, and describe it in detail for about five minutes.

This isn't a goal list or a plan. It's closer to a daydream you write down with care. The detail matters. A vague wish like "I'd be happier" does less work than a specific scene you can picture.

What Daylight puts on the page

Imagine a future in which everything has gone as well as it could — you have worked at it, and it has come together. Pick one part of that life and describe it in detail, for about five minutes.

One part of it:

Where it comes from

Laura King published the original study in 2001. She set it up as a comparison with Pennebaker's expressive writing. Students wrote for twenty minutes on four consecutive days, either about a traumatic experience, about their best possible future self, about both, or about a neutral topic.

Writing about the best possible self lifted mood right after the sessions, whereas writing about trauma tended to lower it. Over the following months, the students who wrote about their best possible self also made fewer visits to the health centre than the control group. King's conclusion was that writing about hopes and goals, not only about difficulty, could be worthwhile in its own right.

The two-week version

In 2011, Yvo Meevissen, Madelon Peters and Hugo Alberts tested a lighter version. After one longer introductory session, participants spent about five minutes a day for two weeks imagining their best possible self. A comparison group spent the same time imagining an ordinary day. The Best Possible Self group showed a rise in measured optimism over the two weeks that the comparison group did not.

Daylight uses this shape: five minutes a day for fourteen days. Gaps are allowed, and the run is complete once fourteen sessions are written.

Doing it well

  • One part at a time. Different days can visit different parts of the same future. There's no need to cover everything at once.
  • Specific over grand. Where are you? Who's there? What does an ordinary Tuesday look like?
  • Realistic, not perfect. The instructions in the studies described a future where things went well because of effort. They didn't describe winning the lottery.
  • If it stings, notice that. Picturing a future that feels far away can bring up a gap between where you are and where you'd like to be. You don't need to push through that. The practice will wait.

What this is and isn't. Both studies were small and mostly involved students. They measured mood, optimism and health-centre visits over weeks or months, which is useful to know but far from the last word. Daylight includes the practice because it was tested with a clear method and cadence, and it tells you where it came from. It can't promise you a particular result.

Sources

  • King, L. A. (2001). The health benefits of writing about life goals. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 27(7), 798–807.
  • Meevissen, Y. M. C., Peters, M. L., & Alberts, H. J. E. M. (2011). Become more optimistic by imagining a best possible self: Effects of a two week intervention. Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry, 42(3), 371–378.