Talking to alternate versions of myself is a skill I learned young - one of my first spirit teachers taught me it, along with astral travel.
The way I do it is by picturing the multiverse like a book open on the table. We're on, let's say, page 539. Closer ones - ones that are more like this reality - are easier. You could say I regularly check in with pages 535-547 or something. Going all the way over to page 12 would be a lot harder.
I connect to these places via the Library. Whether or not the Library is the place some people refer to as the Akashic Records when they're looking for past and future lives, I don't know. Getting to the Akashic Records is a pretty common destination for astral journey-type stuff, though. It's one of those archetypal destinations. You shouldn't need much help finding some branch of it, even if you're not drawn to the Library I see.
"Practice makes perfect" is very true for this skillset. Once you get comfortable with it, you may find yourself drawing certain pages closer to yourself. You can get to know the You you want to be, learn from your other selves, and bring the pages you like into your own story.
Once you're comfortable doing it, you might start getting flashes of other choices at relevant times - when the lesson learned was something that'd be useful to know at whatever you're doing now, or when you're thinking about doing something you already did somewhere else.
Another way to approach it if you're not into guided meditation is as a thought experiment. Pick some big decision in your life and ask yourself what happened if you went the other way. You can consciously direct it as a fantasy for a little while, if you want, and see what details start popping up that you wouldn't pick on your own, or you can relax and let it run like a cross between a daydream and automatic writing. (In fact, writing is a good way to focus on this, if you're having trouble.) And again, the more you do it, the easier it gets.
Using this technique, I've met versions of myself who I would consider both better and worse off than I am. Sometimes I'm the one encouraging another version of me, too - I'm not the One True Me, after all. But either way, it gives me a sense of perspective and guidance when I'm really not sure what would be the best thing for me.
Bookbinding is the art of drawing the pages together and making a well-connected whole. Once you start to understand the pages around you and the choices you didn't make as well as the ones you did, you gain a sense of the story of your life and how intentionally you write it vs letting it be written.