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The constant tugs on our attention pull us away from our core values.

Writing about stressful events using insightful language can bring long-term health gains.

The "best possible selves" protocol boosts well-being across our personal and work life.

Writing down down specific goals builds empowerment and helps us get the life we desire.

The world tugs on our attention, rerouting our focus throughout the day, leaving an ever-growing mountain of unfinished tasks and lingering feelings of malcontent.

This zig-zag way of life, if we are not mindful, separates us from our core values and purpose (Schipers & Ziegler, 2019). Such a schism increases our vulnerability to ailments like anxiety and depression, causing rumination over small stings and large disappointments (Ostafin & Prouix, 2023; Sutin et al., 2026).

Writing, however, offers one solution for getting us back on track and into the life we desire.

Writing to Uncover, Reflect, and Release

Pennebaker (1993, 1997) and colleagues conducted groundbreaking work exploring the power of writing to release painful emotions and untangle hurts that curtail joy, slow productivity, and cause illness. His initial research was carried out on college students. Over the course of four consecutive days, half of the students were asked to write about their deepest thoughts and emotions surrounding a stressful or traumatic event, and the other half were asked to write about benign subjects, such as what they did over the last 24 hours.

Though students who recorded painful memories sometimes experienced increased blood pressure and negative feelings immediately following the writing session, the group as a whole experienced long-term positive health outcomes, as measured by trips to the student health clinic over a six-month period, compared to their peers who wrote about innocuous topics (Pennebaker & Beall, 1986). Such findings have been replicated across diverse populations, including war veterans, health care workers, and those who were incarcerated (Baddeley & Pennebaker, 2011; Kartikaningsih et al., 2025; Pennebaker, 2000; Pennebaker & Smyth, 2016; Procaccia et al., 2021).

Originally, Pennebaker thought the disclosure itself provided the relief, hypothesizing that secret-keeping intensified the pain and hobbled people’s ability to move on. His and others’ subsequent research, however, pointed to a different conclusion. Perhaps it was not the sharing of information that lessened the emotional load, but the act of writing itself that granted the relief, for participants who used an increasing number of causal words, exploring reasons behind the events, and insight words, examining new understandings gained per the experience, showed greater health gains than those whose stories showed no evolution. Writing also increased participants’ social interactions within the larger community, freeing up mental energy for connection (Pennebaker, 1997; Pennebaker & Smyth, 2016).

Writing to Discover Our Best Possible Selves

Writing provides us with the tools to take a confluence of unwieldy, stressful events and develop a structure for digesting the impact and integrating it into future planning (Ostafin & Proulx, 2023).

But what if instead of writing about challenging circumstances, we used writing to craft our best possible self?

That is what King (2001) did in her landmark study exploring the best possible selves or BPS intervention. Though this protocol has been presented in a variety of forms, both in person and online, participants generally are invited to visualize what their life would look like if everything worked out just as desired and then write in detail about what they see, being mindful to describe what success looks like across three domains: personal (hobbies, health, well-being),........

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