This Therapist Recommends Asking Yourself These 3 Questions Every Single Morning

By spending just a few minutes thinking about the answers to those questions, we can “pave the path to making it much easier to work on self-forgiveness,” Boykin said.

It might seem simple, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s easy — especially because many of us spend very little time considering ourselves or our lives in this way.

“I had a really bad morning and I was walking to the subway with Benji, my boyfriend, and our dog, and [Benji] was asking me about my day,” Michelson said. “And the more we talked, the more I was just like, ‘I’m in a horrible mood.’ And I had to start thinking about, ‘How do I feel?’ And then, ‘Why do I feel this way?’ And I started to unpack it, and I was like, ‘Oh, there’s this thing I’m thinking about and I’m worried about this,’ and I started to triangulate my life and understand my mood.”

“It is three simple questions, but they’re actually pretty radical,” Michelson noted. “I don’t think a lot of people actually really think, ‘How do I feel right now? How am I feeling this morning?’ … Starting there is such a radical place to start.”

Once we’ve identified how we feel and what we need, we can start figuring out how to be kinder to ourselves.

“There’s obviously, like, forgiveness in the traditional sense, but also forgiveness for ourselves,” Michelson said. “Maybe it’s just kind of saying, ‘I understand why I feel this way, and I’m not going be quite so hard on myself about it.’”