This article is an extract of chapter #5 in Karl Moore’s best-selling book, ‘The 18 Rules of Happiness.

“By letting it go, it all gets done. The world is won by those who let it go. But when you try and try, the world is beyond the winning.” – Lao Tzu

Emotions are the things that make us human.

When we cry, we’re experiencing emotion. When we’re fearful, we’re experiencing emotion. Whenever we’re angry, upset, passionate, greedy, scared – we’re experiencing emotion.

But sometimes emotions need reining in!

Please forgive me. I forgive you. Thank you. I love you.

These four simple statements are powerful tools for improving your relationships and your life. As a doctor caring for seriously ill patients for nearly 15 years of emergency medicine practice and more than 25 years in hospice and palliative care, I have taught hundreds of patients who  were facing life’s end, when suffering can be profound, to say the Four Things. But the Four Things apply at any time. Comprising just eleven words, these four short sentences carry the core wisdom of what people who are dying have taught me about what matters most in life.

Life is a never-ending story of highs and lows. But if you can honestly and absolutely forgive the people who offend and deeply wound you along the way, the unavoidable slings and arrows of life are decidedly less piercing.

Foremost, it’s imperative that you view forgiveness as a self-empowering tool – a liberating act done for your enduring benefit. Forgiving another human being allows you to unfetter an emotional ball and chain that you’ve been dragging around for all too long a time.

So, exactly where do you begin your forgiveness voyage? There are seven simple, but nonetheless profound, steps you can walk through to realize the rich benefits of genuine forgiveness. The journey starts with basic recognition:

Remember the Incredible Hulk TV show with Bill Bixby and Lou Ferrigno? It was an episodic TV series in the 1970s featuring a timid scientist and his monstrous alter ego. Whenever Bruce Banner (Bixby) got angry, he would turn into a rampaging green monster (Ferrigno in body paint), oblivious to reason and bent on destruction. The giant beast was so focused on his own rage that he lashed out at anyone and anything that had the misfortune to be near him.

Fortunately that is just fiction. In real life we don’t turn green when we let anger control us. The rest is fairly accurate, though. It may not manifest itself physically as it did with the Hulk, but anger does transform a person in some very unpleasant ways.