The morning after I posted my last blog, I woke up at around 4 am stirred. In the past, I've always been annoyed by waking up too early when I know my body needs more sleep. But I've come to appreciate when my subconscious wakes me up during this delicate space between, just before the city wakes up. There's something so peaceful about this time of day that usually gifts me with the best ideas for my blog.

That morning, the idea for my next blog was one word...forgiveness.

Let me tell you, I resisted this at first because I thought I had forgiven but in fact there was more work to be done. In my mind, I started to rattle off all the people I had not yet fully forgiven. To my surprise, there were many. So I decided for the next 21 days, I would start a forgiveness practice.

Every day, I wrote down who I had forgiven that day.

No grand gesture.

Just an acknowledgement of the comfort of victimhood I was letting go of for the day.

Here's what I discovered:

1) Forgiveness is the big kahuna of self-love because you stop making it matter that you've been hurt in some way. What I mean by that is, you settle into a place within you where the pain of disappointment loses its grip on you.

But here's the caveat...the doorway to forgiveness means feeling the full depth of the hurt and disappointment first and that is where we get blocked. Because to feel that hurt can be unbearable and it will literally feel like your heart is going to break in two. Of course, it doesn’t but the heat of anger, the gut punch of resentment and the despair of tears will come and that’s when we go a little bit nuts.

The thing is you'll discover that you're in no position to forgive until you’ve let the complete current of hurt, resentment, anger, disappointment, betrayal and sadness to run its course through your body. There is a beginning, middle and an end to this current. And the middle is the toughest part because that’s when it’s most intense and you have no idea how long it will last.

But when you persevere and feel the entire wave within a quiet practice, breath by breath, moment by moment, it makes way for your capacity to forgive...

...and you soften.

“The best way out is always through.”

— Robert Frost

2) Forgiveness starts with me. The person I had to forgive the most was myself. I was on my list a lot. I realized that when someone has hurt me it's often a reflection in that moment of how I might have been hurting myself in the same way. Have I been de-valued because I don't value myself? Have I been disrespected because I have spent days, weeks, months, years disrespecting myself?

The hurt then becomes a gift of awareness and less a curse of being a victim.

3) Forgiveness allows you to experience the depth of your capacity to love...yourself and others, which, by the way, is bottomless. Just when you think you’ve loved enough, you notice yourself soften and your heart opens just a little bit more. You let go of long-held toxic and addictive ill-feelings. Then it shifts to seeing others through the same eyes because you realize that only hurt people hurt others.

When we choose to forgive, we stop the vicious cycle of hurt.

4) When we cultivate our natural ability of forgiveness, we build a foundation of tolerance, compassion, empathy and unconditional love. Collectively, we create a culture where there’s full permission to fail, make mistakes and fall...over and over again.

When we fail, we learn and grow the most but if it's not safe to do that, we are limited to a life we know, missing out on the life that could be...one we have yet to see.

The beautiful result of forgiveness is freedom because I'm letting go, every day.

It's a daily detox.

I feel lighter and less burdened by things that really don't matter in the bigger picture.

Yes, we all f#%k up, we all make mistakes, we all fall short of expectations.

So what.

When we refocus our attention to love and let go of resentment, a world of possibilities opens up.

And that is where the magic lives.