“No sé por qué funciona, pero debe haber una conexión entre el cerebro y la mano que te ayuda a reflexionar”, explica Victor Küppers en una entrevista que concede a Uri Sabat. “Poner las cosas por escrito hace que te las tomes más en serio”, añade.
The phenomenon Küppers describes is not a quirky theory. Writing exercises, of which he is a devoted enthusiast, have a solid scientific basis. When you write by hand, fine motor skills, visual perception, language and memory are coordinated.
This broad network of activation is much smaller when you only type or when you merely think. Studies conducted with the latest neuroscience technology actually show a greater connectivity between sensorimotor, parietal and memory areas during handwriting, which is associated with better encoding and recall.
Therefore, yes, what you write takes on a special meaning in your mind. And this neuroscience trick can be used to improve your study habits, to avoid forgetting something important or to be happier. Because Víctor Küppers’s favourite writing exercise, one he does and recommends whenever he can, is the map you need to give meaning to your existence.
A Transformative Exercise
Writing is a habit in Küppers’s life. The expert makes use of long train or plane journeys to write letters to his children. He also recommends, whenever he can, a simple writing exercise that changed his life.
“For me, it’s the exercise that has helped me most in life,” the expert explains, “and it consists of writing on a piece of paper how you would like your children, your wife or your friends to define you.”
Start with your children, if you have any. How would you like them to describe you if someone asked them about you? Repeat the process with your wife, with your friends, with your family. How would you like others to describe you?
“In the end you’ll notice things that recur a great deal,” Küppers goes on. “What you are writing is the person you would like to become. You are writing your ideal of a person.”
The Personal Ideal
In a world dominated by superficiality, talking about ideals can feel odd. Yet this word, and no other, is what Küppers brings into the conversation. Ideal. A model to strive for. Not something you possess, but something you realise.
Having an ideal, for Küppers, is like holding a photograph of a puzzle. The expert is very fond of puzzles and uses it as a metaphor to explain the deeper meaning of the exercise. “If you don’t have the photo, it’s very hard to place the pieces. Without the photo you keep fitting pieces as best you can, and what remains is a mess. The same happens in life,” he asserts.
With this exercise, Küppers invites us to design our own photo. What do we want to be? What do we expect from ourselves? And beware, because unlike other similar exercises, such as the vision board, Victor does not ask us to think about what we want to own, but about what we want to be. “True happiness doesn’t come from the things you can have, but from how you want to be,” he asserts.
The aim, then, is to identify the values or qualities that form part of your personal ideal. Do you want to be described as kind, generous, thoughtful, intelligent? These are the traits that form your ideal and they are the ones that should guide your decisions.
The Purpose
This ideal, as Küppers calls it, is perhaps the most genuine expression of what American authors (and some Spanish writers, such as Álex Rovira or Francesc Miralles) refer to as “purpose.”
“I’ve always found it difficult to pinpoint my purpose,” Küppers explains. Eventually, he concluded that the purpose of life is, precisely, to strive every day to become the best you can be. To attempt to become your personal ideal. “But for that,” he clarifies, “you need to pause and write how you would like to be. And there is no better way to answer that question than indirectly. What do you want people to say about you?”
From this path of continual improvement, pursuing a personal ideal, we have been told by classical philosophers as well, such as Aristotle, Kant or Spinoza. Happiness, as Küppers explains, lies in the sense that you have done a little better each day. Thus, pursuing that ideal is not a matter of vanity, but a vital need to give meaning and direction to our daily actions. That is the essence of making the ordinary extraordinary, a principle the expert advocates with such fervour.
