Sometimes it's hard for people to differentiate forgiveness with weakness. Forgiving someone has nothing to do with being weak or the other person being right, instead it has everything to do with your health and the weight that carrying around ill feelings or hatred does to you. Irregardless of the details as to the situation that occurred that requires forgiveness, when you forgive it all becomes irrelevant. And it is not about getting the last word in, or karma, or revenge, it is about focusing on how you can be a better person by putting positive energy into the world and if you can do that then you will rise up and fly beyond whatever it is that used to affect you.

Here are 3 tools to help you get to that place.

1. Retrain your brain- If you find yourself pondering on a negative thought, acknowledge it, change it and replace it with a positive one and move on. Over time your thought pattern will become less and less affected by negative thoughts of people or situations and you will become more optimistic.

2. Silence is Golden- How beautiful is it to stay silent and calm when someone expects you to be engaged and enraged? No matter the situation, never let your emotions overpower your intelligence. When you choose not to react and let people or situations upset you, they become powerless and that is where you become powerful.

3. Visualize- Now this is the hardest of the three tools but by far the most effective. Remember before I tell you what you need to do, energy is energy, what you put out, you get back. It has nothing to do with winning or being right or them wrong. Now....Imagine the person that hurt you, on a stage, receiving all the accolade and wishes they have ever desired. If just the thought of this makes you sick, then you NEED to do this more than ever. Each time you visualize this positive occurrence happening, you will begin to release the pain, begin to feel weightless, happy, start the process of true forgiveness and you yourself will be the one receiving all the wishes granted.

* Forgiveness is essential to optimal health, however forgiveness and consciousness go hand in hand. Just because you forgive someone does not mean you need to befriend them or hang out with them again. You can send them love and positive energy from a distance.