Two years into coaching, and I was still doubting myself. I was still unable to reach out to people about my work, and I was still carrying the same quiet critic inside me.
Saloni noticed.
She didn’t push, and she didn’t lecture. She simply said, write a forgiveness journal. Forgive yourself, for everything, and come out the other side as a clean slate.
So I started opening up my thoughts about forgiving myself. Procrastination. Being so hard on myself. Always seeing myself as the problem. Always leading with the negative.
One by one, I wrote it all down. Every harsh thing I had ever said to myself, and every time I had judged myself before anyone else could. And I forgave myself for all of it, word by word, page by page.
And slowly, I noticed it showing up in the small moments. Before the journal, whenever I made a mistake at work, I would replay that moment in my mind again and again, judging myself and telling myself to be more careful next time. But now, something had changed. When I slipped up, I would actually smile and understand myself instead. I would say, it is fine to make mistakes, because I have just learned a new way of not doing this, and I have learned a new skill along the way. And I stopped saying sorry for things that were never even my fault.
During the same time I also read three books, and they helped me immensely. You Are Not What You Think by Joseph Nguyen. The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle. The Untethered Soul by Michael Singer.
Each one gave me something different. One gave me clarity, one gave me presence, and one gave me space. And together they quieted the critic, not forever and not perfectly, but enough for me to breathe and to start seeing myself differently.
I felt relieved in a way I hadn’t felt in years, like something I had been carrying for a very long time had finally been put down.
And then, shortly after this exercise, in February 2025, I received my diagnosis of breast cancer.
I have thought about the timing many times since.
The forgiveness came first, the clarity came next, and then the hardest thing arrived. And I don’t think that was a coincidence. I believe the journal and those three books had quietly prepared me.
Not for cancer specifically, but for something bigger than that, something I had been looking for all my life, which was how to stop overthinking and stay in the present moment.
Life has its own way of teaching us, and this was my turn. I learned to surrender, to stay in stillness, and to find the ability to face something enormous without completely falling apart.
Because you cannot surrender what you haven’t forgiven, and you cannot heal what you refuse to feel.
And the journaling didn’t stop after that. It became my anchor. Four lines every night. Gratitude, faith, love, and surrender.
Little did I know at the time that this was God’s way of preparing me, teaching me to surrender and to stay in the present moment, so that I could become a better version of myself. And I can see now that all of these practices helped me in so many ways. Three of them I actually use with my clients today.
The first is presence, which is simply being in the moment. The second is acceptance, which is accepting what is happening. And the third is gratitude, because gratitude and journaling are the anchors that helped me move through the most difficult time of my life.
That is what coaching taught me. Not strategies, not frameworks, but a way back to myself. And it all began with a single forgiveness journal, and the courage to write down the things I had been holding against myself for years.
How to start your own forgiveness journal
If this resonates with you, here is the simple way I began, and the same way I now guide my clients through it.
Start by writing down the things you have been holding against yourself. Not what others did to you, but what you have refused to forgive in yourself. Maybe it is a mistake at work, maybe it is a decision you still regret, or maybe it is simply that you have been too hard on yourself for too long.
Then take each one, and write a single line of forgiveness for it. Word by word, page by page, the way I did. You are not excusing anything, you are simply putting it down so that you no longer have to carry it.
And once the forgiveness is on the page, close each night with four lines. Gratitude, faith, love, and surrender. These four became my anchor, and they can become yours too.
So if there is one practice I would give you from everything I have been through, it would be this. Pick up a pen tonight, and write down the things you have been carrying. You may be surprised by how much lighter you feel afterwards.
So let me ask you gently. Is there something you need to forgive yourself for today? Not tomorrow. Today.
And if you would like a gentle place to begin, I took everything that journal taught me and put it into something I could hand to you. I call it The Leadership Journal. If you have been leading everyone else while quietly losing yourself, this is where you start finding your way back to who you are, what matters to you, and how to lead from that place. It is yours, free, on the Resources page of my website.
Download The Leadership Journal here: https://ushanagrani.com/resources/
With love,
Usha Nagrani, Executive and Leadership Coach
Usha Nagrani, an HR Leader turned ICF Executive Coach, empowers senior management professionals and business leaders to achieve breakthroughs as expats, build cross-cultural teams, and navigate the exciting journey of career acceleration.
