Forgiving those who have caused pain in your life can only do good things for your health. Forgiveness does not necessarily mean forgetting but it definitely means you will feel lighter. It will be like a burden has been taken off your shoulders and will free you up to move on.

Forgiveness can impact your health as well as your joy. By practising forgiveness it helps you as much as others. But how can we do that?

• Talk through any issues or feelings you may be having

• Acknowledge and accept

• Have empathy for others

• Look at situations from a different perspective

• Forgiveness is not asking you to forget but instead not holding onto any ill feelings

• Breath and let the anger and hurt go

• Pray

• Do the work to become more resilient

Try to put these quotes into practice;

• It’s one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself, to forgive. Forgive everybody – Maya Angelou

• When a deep injury is done to us, we never recover until we forgive - Alan Paton

• When you forgive, you in no way change the past, but you sure do change the future – Bernard Meltzer

• Acceptance and tolerance and forgiveness, those are life-altering lessons – Jessica Lange

• Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much – Oscar Wilde

• As we know, the forgiveness of one’s self is the hardest of all the forgiveness’s – Joan Baez

• One thing you will probably remember well is any time you forgive and forget – Franklin P. Jones

• To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover the prisoner was you – Lewis Smedes

• Forgiveness is a painful and difficult process. It’s not something that happens overnight. It’s an evolution of the heart – Sue Monk Kidd

• The weak can never forgive. That’s an attribute for the strong – Mahatma Gandhi

• True forgiveness is when you can say ‘thank you for that experience’- Oprah Winfrey

• Darkness can not drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that – Martin Luther King Jr

• I think the first step is to understand that forgiveness does not exonerate the perpetrator. Forgiveness liberates the victim. It’s a gift you give yourself - T.D. Jakes

What are your thoughts on forgiveness? We would love it if you joined the conversation and left a comment below.