The act of forgiveness is one of the most difficult things life asks of us. Yet it is one of the most necessary—mentally, spiritually, even physically. As the director of the Stanford University Forgiveness Project, I’ve devoted over 15 years to helping people let go of the grievances, grudges and heartache in their lives.

I’ve worked with mothers whose sons were killed in sectarian violence in Northern Ireland, with families of 9/11 victims and with thousands of everyday people who have been let go from jobs, cheated in business, betrayed by their spouses or mistreated by their parents. My research shows that forgiveness is a skill you can develop and practice like any other. And I can say with scientific certainty that learning to forgive makes you healthier, happier and, most important, deepens your relationship with God.

It’s often people who are at their lowest point, who feel disconnected from God and their friends and family, who come to me for help. They know the Bible says they should forgive, but it doesn’t spell out how to do it. Most people, I’ve discovered, don’t really understand what forgiveness even is—and what it isn’t.

Forgiveness changes the present, not the past. Forgiveness is a personal choice. It’s not about changing the person who hurt you. It’s not about condoning their actions or even reconciling with them. It’s a choice you make to heal yourself. Letting go means deciding that you’re not going to allow anger and bitterness to poison your life. It’s about taking control of your thoughts and emotions and not playing the part of the victim in your life story.

Research shows that people’s reactions to the exact same event differ widely depending on their point of view. In one study, participants were given details of a car accident where the driver was grossly negligent. Some were told that they were injured victims. Others were given the part of rescuers and heroes. The “victims” felt angry and helpless. The “heroes” felt their self-confidence soar. By forgiving you’re able to take on a new role. Instead of remaining a victim of someone else’s bad behavior, suddenly you’re someone who persevered, who had courage, who learned from their mistakes.

I know the power of this transformation. I’ve lived it myself. My best friend growing up was a boy named Sam. He was the brother I never had. We were inseparable. Then in college he met a woman who didn’t want him spending time with me. Almost overnight he cut me out of his life. When they got married I didn’t even rate a phone call, much less an invitation.

The pain of his rejection ate at me long after I celebrated my own wedding and went to graduate school to study psychology. I didn’t realize how cynical and distrustful I’d become until one day my wife said, “Fred, I love you, but I don’t like the person you’ve become.”

I was devoting more energy to someone no longer in my life than I was to the people I cared most about. There’s an expression I’ve heard: Holding onto resentment is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die. That was me. I needed to let go.

I read everything I could about forgiveness, which at the time wasn’t much. The topic took hold of me. I thought long and hard about what Sam had done, why it bothered me. I began to understand how my holding a grudge was really my inability to handle rejection.

Something amazing happened. I got so interested in forgiveness I didn’t have time to fixate on the past. Had I discovered something that could benefit others? I was a scientist. I needed to know for sure.

I designed my first experiment and put an ad in the paper asking for volunteers who were having trouble forgiving. Nearly 200 people applied! I wasn’t the only one looking for answers.

By the end of the experiment I knew I’d found my life’s work. And I was no longer angry at Sam. It was funny, our dispute seemed more like a blessing. I wanted to share what I’d learned.

Put your hurt into words. When someone mistreats you, you have a very real reaction. Your blood pressure shoots up. Your muscles tense. Your body’s ready to do one of two things: fight or flee. It’s an instinctive response.

Fortunately it usually doesn’t take long for the higher brain to realize there’s no grave danger, and life returns to normal. But sometimes you can’t get past it. Your thoughts turn back to what the other person has done, and each time triggers the fight or flight reflex. Your stress level skyrockets.

The first step toward forgiveness is to confront those feelings. Chances are you’re experiencing a variety of emotions: fear, betrayal, confusion, anger, shame. Write them all down. Think about how each one makes you feel. Then tell just a few close and trusted friends.

Doing this fights the tendency to minimize or deny what you’re going through. It’s okay to admit you’re hurting. You can’t address a problem you won’t acknowledge.

Be specific about what happened. Just as important is knowing what caused your hurt and why it matters so much to you. This is different from describing your pain. You’re acknowledging that something specific did happen to you.

Again, write it down and share it with a few trusted friends. It’s not enough to say your ex-husband is a jerk or your sister is annoying. What did they do? Why did it upset you? You’re moving beyond raw emotions to understanding why you feel the way you do. Ask yourself if these feelings are a pattern in your life.

Remember, this isn’t about changing the person who hurt you. It’s about understanding yourself in a deeper, more healing way. The thing that hurt you is in the past. By remaining resentful, you are only re-inflicting that pain on yourself.

Change the channel to positive. Imagine your life is a 500-channel TV lineup. On Channel 51 there are nature shows. Channel 14 features love stories. Channel 28 has inspirational programming.

But of course there are channels that are frightening, that cause worry, that make you angry. Those are what you flip to when you feel betrayed. The problem comes when that’s all you watch for weeks, months or even years. You miss the amazing, life-affirming things happening all around you.

Forgiveness comes through deliberately changing the channel to the positive. Do things that focus your attention away from yourself and your past hurt. Call a friend you haven’t talked to in a while. Get involved at church. Play with your children. Go on a hike and breathe in the beauty around you.

Keep at it day after day, until positivity blots out negativity. Use the beauty of the world to conquer your hurt. Your stress and anger will ease. You will find, as I did, that you have become a forgiving person.

Pray for comfort. For some people just knowing forgiveness is an option can be immediately freeing. But for most of us, forgiving takes time and effort.

One of the best ways to get into a forgiving frame of mind is through prayer. When you feel your anger resurfacing, your body tensing, pray. Take a deep breath, pushing your stomach out then relaxing it as you exhale. Do this with each prayer you say. Prayer is calming. It forces your mind to slow down and redirect your thoughts away from yourself.

Practice, practice, practice. Forgiveness is a life skill you can learn and get better at. Look for small ways every day to forgive—the driver who cuts you off in traffic, the sales clerk who’s rude, the coworker who didn’t give you credit for your idea. Then when something more difficult happens you’ll be far more able to handle it. It doesn’t mean that you won’t feel deep hurt or disappointment. Forgiveness doesn’t make you immune to emotions. But you’ll take it less personally. You won’t lose sight of the wondrous things happening all around you.

It’s good for body and soul. How do I know that this is true? Because I’ve seen the amazing results in study after study. The same process works whether you are a college student bickering with a roommate or a mother grieving the loss of a child.

The women I worked with in Northern Ireland initially rated their pain at 8.5 on a 1 to 10 scale. Their stories were truly heartbreaking. At the end of one week of practicing forgiveness the hurt they felt had fallen to an average a bit over 3.5. Six months later it remained below 4.

Forgiveness is a transformative act, a path to spiritual contentment. Studies from a variety of disciplines demonstrate that spirituality is tied to healthier lives. Why? Because you can’t be consumed by anger and feel a close, personal connection with God. It’s most often when people focus on others, when they’re able to see the wonder in their lives, that they feel God’s infinite love.

When you forgive it releases the stress you’ve built up from focusing inward on your pain. Prolonged stress has a negative effect on your body. In one study I divided participants into two groups and asked them to rate the number of times they felt physical symptoms such as a racing heart, upset stomach and dizziness. The group who completed forgiveness training reported significant decreases in their symptoms initially, and still four months later. The group that didn’t go through training experienced no change.

I’ve seen the power of forgiveness. Thousands of times. Lives unchained from the traumas of the past. Do you need to forgive? Then take the first step into a brighter and blessed future.

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Like most kids, I loved getting lost. Not really lost, but lost in a more intentional way. I had one favorite place to do it too: Montrose Park just above Georgetown in Washington, D.C. Montrose featured—and still features—a boxwood maze: a winding labyrinth made up of strategically planted and carefully trimmed shrubs.

Today I don’t find the Montrose maze all that intimidating. But at age four or five, it felt huge. And hugely attractive. Moving deeper and deeper into its twisting green interior, I felt the rest of the world fade away. Something, I knew, was waiting for me at the heart of that maze. And the closer I got to it—my hands now and then brushing against the tiny green leaves of the walls on either side of me for reassurance—the more excited I became.

There was something a little scary about being in that maze. That was part of its allure. Just beyond its walls my mother was waiting, and a single shout would bring her to my rescue. Because of that, I was able to savor the sense of disorientation that entering its borders created. After finding that mysterious center and emerging back into the world, I would always feel just a little larger—a little more grown-up—than I had when I had first entered.

Those childhood visits to the Montrose boxwood maze came back to me recently when I paid a visit to St. Thomas Episcopal Church in Mamaroneck, New York. Several years ago St. Thomas installed a permanent labyrinth on its grounds. Unlike the Montrose hedge maze that drew me into its depths as a kid, the St. Thomas labyrinth is flat. Because there are no walls to block your view, you don’t lose sight of the outside world. You just follow along the path laid out at your feet.

There’s another critical difference: The labyrinth at St. Thomas’s has no wrong turns to it. To use the technical language employed by maze scholars, it is unicursal rather than multicursal. As much as it twists and turns, there is only one path, so you can’t really lose your way even if you wanted to. All that’s necessary to reach the center is faith in the path you’re on, and a little patience.

In spite of those differences, once I entered the labyrinth at St. Thomas, a strangely familiar feeling came over me: the same feeling I’d gotten as a kid. Once again I was moving, turn by turn, toward a mysterious center: a center that I could see as it got closer, then farther away, then closer again as I followed the labyrinth’s curves and reversals. A center that now, just as then, felt like it held some essential and enormous secret. By losing myself in the curves of the St. Thomas maze, I was finding a part of myself as well.

The labyrinth at St. Thomas Church is just one of thousands that have sprung up in recent years, ever since 1991 when Lauren Artress, the canon of Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, laid down a large canvas labyrinth in the nave of the church and began teaching people the art of walking it. This canvas labyrinth became so popular that in 1994 an indoor floor tapestry was laid down in its place, followed by a permanent limestone labyrinth last year. In 1995 a stone version was also opened in the church’s meditation garden. What lies behind the allure of the labyrinth? As Canon Artress puts it, the answer has everything to do with its mysterious center. “The labyrinth,” says Artress, “teaches us that if we keep putting one foot in front of the other, we can quiet the mind and find our center.” The journey may be difficult, even confusing. But “the lesson is to trust the path.”

Both the labyrinths at Grace Cathedral and St. Thomas Church are patterned after the largest church labyrinth in the world: one that, in the early 13th century, was laid down in limestone and marble on the floor of the western nave of Chartres Cathedral in France. Both the Grace Cathedral and St. Thomas Church labyrinths are a little smaller than the one at Chartres and, of course, they’re not as finely wrought. But they also differ in another way. While the center of the labyrinths at Grace Cathedral and St. Thomas’s are empty (to suggest the mystery of the divine presence that walkers will hopefully encounter there) the one at Chartres has an indentation where a large brass medallion used to sit (it was removed during the Napoleonic wars and melted down to make cannons).

Though no paintings or drawings of the Chartres medallion have been found, scholars have good evidence for what was pictured on it: a battle between a hero from Greek mythology named Theseus and a monstrous creature with the body of a man and the head of a bull called a Minotaur. This Minotaur, legend tells us, lived in a labyrinth built by King Minos on the island of Crete. Each year Minos offered sacrificial victims to the Minotaur, until the day when Theseus braved the maze, did battle with the monster and finally slew it.

Wait a minute, you might say. What is a picture of a ferocious battle between two characters from Greek mythology doing at the heart of a medieval Christian cathedral? The answer has something to do with that slight sense of trepidation that I always felt when entering the Montrose maze as a kid. The fact is, mazes are both calming and scary—and no one knew this better than the early Christians. They saw in the story of Theseus’s journey to the heart of the labyrinth and his victorious battle with the Minotaur a parallel with another, more recent story.

In the original Christian view of the labyrinth, its twists and turns are those of earthly life (in some versions, even of hell itself), and at the heart of the labyrinth we encounter not peace and tranquility but a struggle to the death between Christ and Satan. As maze scholar Craig Wright has pointed out, “The myth of the maze expresses the hope of salvation—that eternal life will be won for all by the actions of the one savior.”

It was this reading of the story of the hero Theseus and the Minotaur that the creators of the Chartres labyrinth had in mind when they placed that seemingly incongruous image at the center of their labyrinth. In medieval Christian symbolism, the West is associated with death and the underworld. By placing the labyrinth at the westernmost part of the great cathedral, where everyone entered, the architects of Chartres were suggesting that every Christian must journey in spirit with Christ through the struggles of this earthly life—and even through hell itself—before emerging into the light of heaven (which is symbolized in the cathedral by the rose window stationed high above the famous labyrinth).

The journey into and out of the labyrinth that many contemporary maze walkers take today is, then, quite different from the one that those first creators of church labyrinths imagined. Of these two very different visions for labyrinth walkers, which one is actually correct? They both are.

As I suspected even as a child in Montrose Park, being lost in the twists and turns of life can be an adventure—but it can also be a battle. All of us get lost in life to some degree. But the promise of the labyrinth is that ultimately we do so to our own benefit. By putting our faith in the path, we reemerge from the labyrinth of life as different, larger beings than we were when we first entered it. We will lose ourselves only to find ourselves. Or as the poet T. S. Eliot famously put it:

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

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