I Gave Myself an “A”

A six-month future-self exercise for changing the way you live, work, spend, connect, and care for yourself

I Gave Myself an “A” — Joyce Strong

I have been thinking about an exercise from The Art of Possibility called “Giving Yourself an A.” The important part is that you give yourself the A before you do the work. You stop standing at the beginning wondering whether you will succeed, whether you are capable enough, disciplined enough, healthy enough, lucky enough, or deserving enough. For the purpose of the exercise, that question has already been answered.

You are an A student. The grade is settled.

That changes everything.

This is also very close to the kind of work I have done throughout my life as a nurse and coach. Lasting change is difficult when you are constantly defining yourself by the problem in front of you. Sometimes you need to see yourself differently before your behavior can begin catching up. Instead of asking, Can I really do this?, you begin asking, What does the person who does this actually do?

If I already know I earned the A six months from now, then I do not have to sit here today debating whether I can change my life. I can move past that argument and ask a much more useful question: What did I do to earn it?

What did the woman who got that A finally face? What did she stop doing? What did she begin doing? What did she ask for? What did she let go of? What did she build? What did she learn about herself?

So I am writing from March 25, 2027, six months from now. In this exercise, the outcome is already known.

I have already earned the A.

Now my future self is looking backward and telling me what I did to earn the grade I had already given myself.

I am sharing this because I think some of you might want to try it too. Give yourself the A first. Do not negotiate with it. Do not explain why you might not deserve it. Do not wait until you have evidence. Then write from the future and tell yourself what you did to become the person who earned the grade you already knew was yours.

I have spent much of this year trying to reinvent my life at 73. Maybe this is exactly what I need right now. Instead of asking whether I can do it, I am going to assume that I did — and listen to the woman six months from now tell me how.

What follows is her letter.

March 25, 2027

Dear Joyce,

I gave you an A.

Not because everything went perfectly. Not because some miracle arrived and rescued you. Not because you suddenly became younger, richer, less tired, or somebody other than the woman you already were. I gave you an A because you became the person you had already decided you were capable of becoming.

Six months ago, you were carrying too much in almost every sense of the word. Too much debt. Too much stuff. Too much responsibility. Too much worry. Too much work that you were giving away. Too many things you thought you had to solve alone. Underneath all of it was loneliness, and you knew something had to change.

So you started.

Today, you are debt-free except for the mortgage. You paid off the credit cards. You stopped sending hundreds of dollars every month to banks for the privilege of having once needed money you did not have. That money belongs to you now.

You have money in savings. Not imaginary money. Not available credit. Not money you hope will arrive next month. Your money. There is a cushion between you and catastrophe now, and that changes the way you breathe.

You still receive Social Security, but Social Security is no longer carrying your life by itself. You built steady income around the work you were already doing: writing, coaching, teaching, publishing, creating, researching, music, GoBoston, TotalWellCoach, and the other things that once looked like a bewildering collection of projects.

You figured out which things were businesses, which things were missions, which things were experiments, and which things were simply consuming your energy. You stopped assuming everything deserved equal attention. You learned where the money was. You learned where the meaning was. And when something provided neither, you became much better at letting it go.

You also stopped being embarrassed about asking to be paid. For years, you knew how to help people. You knew how to research, teach, coach, write, solve problems, connect dots and see patterns other people missed. What you had trouble doing was saying, This has value, and then allowing somebody to pay you for it.

You finally understood that asking for fair compensation was not greed. It was what made the work sustainable. You asked. You put prices on things. You followed up. You told people when you needed support. You stopped assuming people could somehow know.

And something surprising happened. Some people helped. Some people paid. Some people shared your work. Some people said no. And the world did not end.

You also learned that receiving is not the opposite of giving. Receiving is what allows giving to continue.

Your house changed too. There is space now. You can walk into rooms without immediately seeing everything that needs to be moved, sorted, repaired, sold, donated or thrown away. You did not organize clutter. You removed it. Bag by bag, box by box, drawer by drawer, room by room.

Some things were sold. Some were donated. Some went straight into the trash. Every time something left the house, some little piece of the weight left with it. You stopped saving objects for imaginary future versions of your life. You kept what serves the life you are living now.

Your home feels like a place to live again. There are clear surfaces. There is room to sit. There is room to think. There is room to invite someone in without apologizing first. That mattered more than you expected because these six months were not only about money. They were about making room.

You made room for people, work, rest, opportunity and yourself.

You also began treating loneliness as something that deserved action rather than shame. You reached outward. You accepted invitations sometimes. You made invitations sometimes. You called people. You told people when you missed them. You stopped pretending you did not need anyone.

And you became more careful about the difference between people who filled your life and people who merely occupied space in it. That was another form of decluttering.

You also began to understand how connected all of this was. Financial stress affects the body. Clutter affects the way a home feels and the amount of work your brain has to process. Loneliness affects health. Worry consumes energy. Work without boundaries drains you. Constantly giving without allowing yourself to receive eventually leaves very little left to give.

Taking care of yourself was never going to be one supplement, one exercise program, one diet, or one perfect morning routine. It meant looking at the whole life.

Something else happened during these six months. You did not abandon the work in the world that mattered to you in order to take care of yourself. You realized that taking better care of your own life made you more able to contribute. Financial stability, emotional steadiness, better boundaries and a home that did not constantly overwhelm you gave you more energy for the writing, teaching, civic engagement and creative work you believed mattered.

You kept writing. You kept asking questions. You kept making music. You kept paying attention. You kept using your voice.

You learned that purpose matters to health too.

You became more grateful, but not in the performative way that tells people to be thankful while their lives are falling apart. You practiced real gratitude. You noticed the person who subscribed. The person who shared an article. The person who sent ten dollars. The child who called. The grandchild who made you laugh. The stranger who wrote, “This helped me.”

You noticed the groceries in the refrigerator, the heat coming on, the roof still over your head, and the fact that you were still here, still thinking, still building, still creating.

You became very good at noticing enough while still working toward more.

Somewhere along the way, something else changed. You stopped thinking of this as the humiliating chapter when you were broke. You began understanding it as the chapter when you rebuilt your life at 73.

That is an entirely different story.

You are still 73 as you write this. Seventy-four is coming in June, but you are no longer looking toward that birthday wondering whether your life is narrowing. You are looking toward it knowing you have built a wider one.

Now you are not trying desperately to save yourself. You are standing on ground you built. And now you can help other people from that place.

You can tell somebody who is frightened by debt what actually worked. You can tell someone overwhelmed by possessions how you began clearing them. You can tell someone starting again late in life that late is not the same thing as over. You can tell someone ashamed to ask for help that asking changed your life. You can tell someone who thinks they have nothing left to offer that experience itself can become an asset when you learn how to use it.

And you can give when you choose to. You can help your children, your grandchildren, someone in trouble, or a cause you believe in without endangering yourself to do it.

You finally understood that you did not have to impoverish yourself to prove you loved people.

You had already given plenty.

This next chapter required you to build something for yourself. That was not selfish. It was overdue.

Six months ago, the future frightened you. You looked at the economy, the cost of heating the house, the bills, the debt and all the uncertainty ahead and thought, I have to prepare.

You were right.

But preparation turned out not to mean becoming afraid of everything that might happen. It meant becoming harder to knock down.

You could not control the economy, markets, prices, world events or other people. But you could reduce your own vulnerability. You could owe less money. You could save more. You could build income. You could clear your house. You could strengthen relationships. You could learn where your own energy belonged. You could take better care of your body. You could ask for help. You could stop spending yourself on things that gave nothing back.

Less debt. More savings. More income. Less clutter. More useful work. Better boundaries. More connection. More willingness to ask. More willingness to receive. More willingness to say no. More respect for your own energy. And a much clearer understanding of what your own work is worth.

That is what you built.

So yes, Joyce. You get the A.

Not because you completed some perfect six-month transformation. You get the A because when your life demanded reinvention at 73, you answered. You stopped waiting for rescue, stopped pretending the things weighing you down would somehow resolve themselves, and began building the life you wanted to be living when you turned 74 in June.

And somewhere along the way, you realized something else.

The A was never waiting for you at the finish line.

You had it when you started.

The work was learning how to live like the woman who already knew she had earned it.

You did not retreat from the world to save yourself. You made yourself stronger so you could remain in it.

And then you kept going.

Love,

Joyce
(Your future self, six months from now)

Keep Going With Me

If this exercise speaks to you, try it. Give yourself the A first. Then write from six months in the future and tell yourself what you did to earn the grade you already knew was yours. What changed when you stopped asking whether you were capable and started asking what the capable version of you actually did?

This is part of the work I am exploring here at TotalWellCoach: health not as one isolated intervention, but as the interaction between the body, stress, relationships, environment, purpose, money, behavior and the stories we tell ourselves about what is possible.

I am also exploring the mindset side of this more deeply in my new Substack publication, Strong Dynamics. That is where I am writing about leadership, identity, confidence, performance, resilience, self-talk, focus and what happens when we begin behaving like the person we have already decided we can become.

If that is the part of this essay that grabbed you, come join me at StrongDynamics.com. I think there is a lot more to explore here.