In 1998, the American counsellor, educator and teacher Mavis Karn wrote a now legendary letter called “The Secret” to a group of juvenile inmates she’d been working with for two years.

The letter was a sort of goodbye gift and a way to remind her students that they weren’t their past or their mistakes. 

The letter was so impactful that the inmates used it to create posters for their cells. It then went on to be shared across the entire American prison system.

If you haven’t seen the letter, it’s well worth a Google.

But the TL;DR version goes as follows:

*** You are not incomplete, flawed, broken, imperfect, unfinished or damaged goods 

*** Right here, right now you have access to wisdom, creativity, common sense and humour (just like everyone else) 

*** The only thing that gets in the way of that wisdom, creativity, common sense and humour is your thinking 

*** Feelings are the feedback mechanism which let you know the quality of your thinking in real-time

That last point is worth sitting with.

Sure, it’s not what the self-help aisle at Waterstones will tell you (probably why Mavis called her letter “The Secret”).

But what if our worry, doubt and anxiety really aren’t a reflection of whatever is going on in our lives, but simply reflect the fact we’re buying into our own unhelpful thoughts?

And what if rather than being something we need to fix or suppress, our feelings are a sign that our psychological system is working 100% perfectly, just as intended?

This way our feelings wouldn’t be something to fear. 

They’d be something to welcome. 

It would also mean no-one needs to sally forth into the world to try to change their circumstances in order to feel better about things. So there’d be no need to quit your job just because it’s stressful or move to Bali just to find relief. And equally there’d be no need to journal, practise endless breathing exercises or reframe your thoughts just to manage how you’re feeling.

Our thoughts can change in an instant if we let them.

Well, what if our feelings can change in an instant too?

This is a radically different way of seeing thoughts and feelings.

As Mavis says at the end of her letter:

“This is the best, most liberating secret I ever learned, and I want you to know it too”.

I can’t think of a better way to round things off than that.

To fulfilment,

Tom