self-compassion · three minutes · the locker room
Leah Shapira and Myriam Mongrain gave a thousand people, online, one of three short nightly exercises for a week. One was the self-compassion letter: write about something that went badly today the way a warm, understanding friend would write to you about it. Three months on, the letter-writers were less depressed than the control; at six months they were happier. Nobody is a harsher critic of you than you; the letter borrows a kinder voice for a few minutes.
Most people talk to themselves in a register they would never use on a friend. Writing in the friend’s voice interrupts that, and does it on the specific thing that stung today, which is harder to argue with than a general pep talk. Reading it back a week later is the part that shows you the voice was yours.
Big enrollment, heavy dropout: the six-month numbers come from the fifth who stuck around. The optimism exercise in the same trial matched or beat it. And a letter about a rough day is the one thing in this meadow that can land badly on a very bad day — if it does, close it and do the frog instead.
Write it on a torn page, slide it into the slot, spin the dial a full turn. It opens itself in seven nights, to the minute, on this phone only.
Try it in the city →from Attuned Work Design
Anything you type in the city stays on your phone. There is no account and no server that sees it. · About · Leave a light on for someone