There is an exercise in The Art of Possibility called “Giving an A” that I have been thinking about differently lately.
The important part is not earning the A.
The important part is getting the A before you begin.
That sounds almost backward. Most of us have spent our entire lives being taught that the grade comes after the performance. Do the work. Take the test. Prove yourself. Then somebody decides whether you were good enough.
Giving yourself the A turns that around.
You begin by deciding that the result is settled.
I am an A student. I have already earned the A.
Now there is nothing left to prove.
What remains is a much more interesting question: What did the person who earned that A actually do?
That question has been following me around because I am reinventing a surprising amount of my life at once. I am building businesses and publications. I am writing and making music. I am looking seriously at my finances. I am clearing a house that has accumulated decades of things. I am thinking about loneliness, connection, purpose, work, money, aging and what I want my life to look like by my birthday next June.
The old way of thinking would have me ask whether I can pull all of that off.
The A removes the question.
I already did.
So now I get to look backward from six months in the future and figure out how.
That is a very different mental position.
When you are trying to prove yourself, every setback becomes evidence. You miss a day and think maybe you are not disciplined. Something does not sell and maybe the business idea was foolish. You spend more than you intended and suddenly you are “bad with money.” You look at a cluttered room and decide you will never get through it.
You are constantly collecting evidence for the prosecution.
But if the A is already yours, a bad day is simply a bad day.
It does not get to redefine you.
You ask a different question: What would the A student do next?
She might make the phone call.
She might open the bill instead of avoiding it.
She might raise the price.
She might throw away the thing she has moved from one room to another for fifteen years.
She might ask somebody for help.
She might stop giving hours of work away because asking to be paid makes her uncomfortable.
She might admit that she is lonely and call somebody.
She might rest because exhaustion is not evidence of commitment.
She might stop pouring energy into something that is neither meaningful nor productive simply because she has already invested time in it.
This is why I think identity matters so much in performance.
We tend to think behavior creates identity. Sometimes it does. But identity can also organize behavior.
If I tell myself, “I am trying to become financially secure,” there is still uncertainty built into the sentence.
If I write from six months in the future and say, “I became financially secure enough to breathe again,” I have created a different problem for my brain to solve.
How did I do it?
Now I can work backward.
I stopped adding debt. I knew exactly what I owed. I paid aggressively. I increased income. I asked to be paid fairly. I stopped scattering my attention across work that produced neither income nor meaning. I built savings. I prepared instead of panicked.
The same thing works with the house.
Instead of, “I need to get rid of all this clutter,” the future version of me says, “My house has space again.”
How?
She stopped trying to organize everything she owned. She got rid of things. She sold some. Donated some. Threw some away. She stopped keeping objects for imaginary versions of her future life.
That is actionable.
Even loneliness looks different from the future.
“My life feels more connected.”
How?
She reached out. She accepted some invitations. She made some. She told people she missed them. She became more selective about the difference between having people around and actually feeling connected to them.
The A does not eliminate the work.
It eliminates the argument about whether you are capable of doing the work.
That may be its real power.
I have also realized that the A does not require perfection. That would defeat the purpose. The future version of me undoubtedly made mistakes during those six months. She wasted time. She bought something she should not have bought. She procrastinated. She had days when she accomplished almost nothing. She probably started things she later abandoned.
None of those things revoked the A.
She adjusted.
That is another difference between confidence and perfectionism. Perfectionism says one mistake calls the whole enterprise into question. Confidence says the destination has not changed, so figure out the next move.
I find that especially interesting at my age.
We talk endlessly about reinvention when people are young. Reinvention at 25 is practically expected. Reinvention at 40 gets called a second act.
As we get older, people can start behaving as though the story has already been written.
I do not accept that.
I am not pretending age is irrelevant. It is not. Time is more valuable because there is less of it. Energy has to be managed more carefully. Some opportunities are gone.
But other things are available to me now that were not available decades ago.
Experience.
Pattern recognition.
Perspective.
A much better understanding of what matters.
And a rapidly diminishing interest in spending precious time trying to impress people who have no meaningful role in my life.
Those are assets.
So I wrote myself the letter.
I dated it March 25, 2027.
In that letter, I am debt-free except for my mortgage. I have savings. I have steady income above Social Security. My house has space again. My work supports me instead of draining me. I am more connected to people. I am still writing, creating, coaching and participating in the world around me.
I already know the ending.
Now I have six months to discover exactly how I got there.
And that may be the point.
The A was never waiting for me at the finish line.
I had it when I started.
Try It Yourself
Pick a date six months from now. Give yourself the A. Do not qualify it. Do not write down all the reasons you might fail. Do not make yourself earn permission to imagine something better.
Then become your future self for a few pages.
Tell yourself what happened.
What did you stop doing? What did you begin? What did you finally face? What did you learn? What did you ask for? What did you walk away from? What did you build? What did you discover you were capable of?
Do not write the plan from where you are now.
Write the story from the place where it already worked.
Then come back to today and begin.
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Strong Dynamics is about what happens between deciding something is possible and actually doing it. I write here about mindset, identity, confidence, resilience, focus, performance and the stories we tell ourselves before we ever take the first step.
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