There’s a part of me that sees my past…That sees my past choices…That sees my past commitments…It recognizes how many of them have gone wrong…It isn’t all of them…Or even most of them…But they are the ones that I remember…I can see the consequences of all these choices…I can see how they impacted me…And how they impacted others…I recognize that these choices are being re-lived right now…Because I’m not allowing myself to let go of them…I am afraid if I did let go of them, I will forget their lessons…I’m afraid that if I let go of them, I will repeat them…I’m afraid that if I let go of them, I won’t take responsibility for the consequences…I’m afraid that if I let go of them, I’m not taking responsibility for how I hurt others…It is possible for me to take responsibility for my choices and at the same time acknowledge that I don’t want to repeat them…I am willing to take responsibility…I’m willing to learn the lessons…Stating that I don’t want to repeat them again…Allowing myself to let go of the emotional pain…I keep re-living these moments…So I don’t forget…And to punish myself…For the poor choices that I’ve made…Many of the poor choices I only see as poor choices in hindsight with the benefit of new information…New information I could not have known when I made that poor choice…Because if I had known that information, I could have made a better choice than I did…So when I punish myself for those less informed choices…I’m not being gracious…I’m not being charitable…And I’m not being fair with myself…I am deserve to be fair with myself…I was made to be fair with myself…It is OK to hold myself to a high standard…But it is not fair to punish myself for something that I couldn’t have done better…If I had had more information in many of these circumstances, I would have made a radically different choice…I didn’t have that information…I didn’t know then what I know now…Punishing myself for making the best choice I could have made is not helpful…It is not compassionate…It is actually a penalty that hurts others around me because it gives me an unjust burden to carry around…That makes me less than who I am in this moment…For myself…And others…Not releasing this burden is a much greater are I’m penalizing myself for…I don’t deserve it now and those around me don’t deserve the penalty of me not letting this go. When I let it go I’m not saying I forget…When I let it go I’m not saying I shouldn’t take responsibility…I need to let it go…I am worthy of releasing it…Those around me deserve that I let it go…I don’t have to relive the pain…I don’t have to punish myself…To keep the lesson from this moment…To make better choices…For myself…As I continue to move forward…I give myself permission to forgive myself the poor choices that I have made…That I only see is for because of the new information that I have…Punishing myself and penalizing myself for what I didn’t and couldn’t have known would be poor choices is not helpful…For me, for others, for any part of the universe…Penalizing myself for that is penalizing myself and others…It’s punishing myself and others…In an unjust way…I give myself permission to forgive myself…I forgive myself…For doing the best that I could…Without all the information I needed…I give myself permission to forgive myself for unjustly punishing myself for these misinformed choices…They were nothing more than misinformed choices and I allow myself to move past them without guilt or shame.