This morning I was preparing some tweets to share on Twitter when I noticed this quote from Paul Ferrini’s book Love Without Conditions: “Let go of the past, and you will have no grievances. It is simple, is it not?”

I thought to myself, “That is the simplest Secret to Peace I have ever heard.”

Nearly all the stress in our lives comes from one of two situations: either we are carrying pain from the past or we are afraid about what is to come in our future.

Of course the past is dead and gone and the future exists only in our imagination, but it can be hard to remember these truths in the midst of a full-blown emotional hi-jacking.

Ferrini’s advice is a really simple way to tackle one of these situations. Simply let go of anything that has happened in the past which you perceived as having caused you harm.

Whenever I mention this, I always receive a lot of resistance because people hear me saying something I am not. It is important that we extract whatever life has to teach us from every situation we are given. In no way am I saying that we should forget any of life’s lessons. What I am suggesting is that we release our pain; that we free ourselves of the emotional baggage that we carry with us.

Forgetting is the most complete form of forgiveness. Letting go of life’s hurts must include some degree of forgetting, but that does not mean abandoning any wisdom which serves us. I would never suggest that it is wise to allow another to use or abuse you under any circumstance.

Letting go is never about excusing someone’s actions. It is about freeing yourself from the unnecessary pain your memory creates in your life.

That idea really is quite simple, isn’t it?