The past can block your present if you let it, lining your sight from any kick-ass opportunities in your future. If you’ve lived more than a year of your life, it’s highly likely that you’ve experienced pain, disappointment, hurt, embarrassment, shame, or guilt with regards to another person or in some cases, even yourself. Now, what if I told you that it was critically important to forgive yourself and others before you can get down and dirty creating everything you’ve desired in your life. I can hear the mumbles now.

Let me explain.

Refusing to forgive can keep you from getting what you really want because whatever negative thoughts you’re harboring can consume you, leaving no energy for creating. Every time you refuse to forgive, someone, even if it’s a negative part of yourself, holds that piece of you energetically hostage.

Quite simply, forgiveness will help you to release all the parts of yourself seriously bolstering your projecting power. Why relive past events when new adventures and realities are awaiting you?

So here’s a little exercise I created for you. I encourage you to forgive others and consequently yourself for actions in the past.

First, I want you to take out your project book and capture your thoughts and answers inside.

I want you to create the forgiveness list. Who is it that you feel wronged you? Identify all the people that you need to forgive. Rank the list from most important to least important. Keep in mind that you might be numero uno. Just saying. Next to each name, write the reason you need to forgive that person. Be very, very specific here. No matter how hurtful it is. The point is to release all that deeply held negative emotion within yourself.

Remember, each person you refuse to forgive will hold a specific part of you back. Isn’t there like some villain or X-Men or something like that that does that to you? Well, it’s the exact same way. Until you learn to forgive everyone in your life, those parts of you will continue to be lost.

Make a duplicate list of that exact list that you just create and the emotions that are attached to them. I want you to write that whole list over. If that’s a page, do a page over. If that’s two pages, do two pages over. If it’s half a page, do half the page over. Just make the duplicate.

Take that paper and separate each person’s name with a scissor or rip the paper, separating each person’s name and the emotion tied to it individually. Now one at a time, rip up each person’s name and the emotion attached to it. Feel the emotions that come out as you tear up that piece of paper, and feel your heart expanding and opening as you rid your mind and your body of those negative thoughts.

With the remainder of the list, if you feel you’re up for it, write them a letter or an e-mail saying that you have forgiven them or that you’re asking for their forgiveness.

This is a very, very, very powerful exercise. The idea of just taking the names and the emotions then ripping them up and feeling that causes your brain to create a new neural networks. These neural networks in your brain start firing in a different way.

As you start doing this more and more, you will realize, as soon as you have these thoughts of negativity, your mind will go in another direction ultimately creating your new reality. That’s how powerful this is. When it comes to forgiving and forgiving other people, you can go through this exercise, and you can also say and chant something as you do it. I want you to picture the person who wronged you in the past, and I want you to pray for their liberation and for their soul to be released and for the knowledge to be released within themselves, so that they can become better people and reach happiness and their highest good. When you can set your intention with other people so they can reach liberation and peace, you’re taking the focus off of yourself and giving it to them. This is so powerful.

I want you to say as you go through this exercise, “I forgive you, you forgive me, let’s forgive each other.” As you pray for that person to become a better person, I want you to feel them become a better person. Ultimately, when you take the focus away from yourself, giving that power back to others, you’re getting rid of it from within yourself and you’re giving it back to that person. So both of you can become better people.

This brings me to my next point: forgiving yourself. Whether you want to accept it or not, we are all intricately tied together. Forgiving others is a form of self-forgiveness. But you still need to make an actual effort to forgive yourself and take the necessary actions to do that. It’s crucial that you spiritually, emotionally, verbally, and physically forgive yourself for actions in the past.

Your perception of what is going on outside of you is exactly what’s going on inside of you and within yourself. The more you concentrate on and pray for others’ liberation is when you will be able actually to forgive and liberate yourself. As Napoleon Hill urged us to remember, when we close the door on the past, we close out a great deal which otherwise might hamper us. I want you to remember when you were a little kid. I want you to remember how free and open and trusting you were, and loving.

Along the way, we’ve dealt with some kind of guilt or shame that carry us forward. Some of these are just from unique experiences that we’ve had in our life. We need to seek freedom from that. There’s always one or two or three or multiple things that we all have guilt and shame towards. I want you to forgive yourself for all of that stuff right now.

What I want you to do is go back to that first exercise. Write your name down for every single person instead of the other people. I want you to write down the emotion or the guilt or the shame that you have to yourself. I want you to rip that piece up, and I want you to look at yourself as if you’re in your sanctuary and say, “I forgive you, you forgive me, let’s forgive each other.” Because when you can look at yourself and you can look at your avatar and you can look at your higher self, the person that’s holding onto you to become a better person is when you can let go of everything and be free from negative thoughts. When you’re free from negative thoughts, that’s when your mental attitude shifts, and you become positive.

I guess you’ve probably already heard someone say, “Think positive.” As cliche as it sounds, there really is a base power of having a positive mental attitude. Did you know that researchers have found that it takes four positive thoughts to balance just one negative thought? More importantly, why should you care? Well, think about it. When you have positive thoughts, what do you anticipate will come your way? Happiness? Good health? Success? Love? Yeah.

The raw truth its, if you adapt this mental attitude, you teach your mind to expect it creating the right fertile ground to achieve success emotionally and physically and everything around you. You will realize that anything negative that happens to you is for a reason.

You will realize that no matter how bad life gets around you, you still have that inner peace. Just to be clear, I’m not telling you that positive thinking alone can bring you millions of dollars or the love of your life or help you lose weight or superhuman strength and powers. This is not the secret. Positivity is only one of the key ingredients. This is about being happy in your brain, and tapping into a positive mindset.

Simply put, having a right mindset can lead to clarity, happiness, and complements the creation of a perfect life tailor-made to you.