Forgiveness means that we have decided that we will leave the hatred and the suffering behind, so as to give ourselves the chance to become friends with our past and move towards a more fulfilling future. But how can you forgive the person who treated you in such an awful, selfish, and destructive way? How can you overcome the shock, the terror, and ultimately this strong desire for revenge? Going through grief and anger are prerequisites to the decision to forgive.

Let's learn five ways that help you to be more forgiving:

• Do not push yourself to forgive others immediately: Use the time at your disposal to process the loss to experience sorrow, to live with your wound. And this has nothing to do with revenge. It is simply the acceptance you need, not the oppression, a truly emotional and painful process.

• Stop wearing the mask its OK for me as long as you are OK: ;By acting like this, you skip the healthy process of recovery from your trauma. You pass all stages of your emotional reactions that you are allowed to have and you never express your anger. You prefer to lock it somewhere deep inside you. And one day, without further notice it will come to disturb your sleep.
• Move on with your life: What we do to ourselves by not moving on with our lives may have even worse consequences than the wrong-doings that we suffered. The decision to forgive has nothing to do with the other, but with ourselves. Yet, it is normal to be angry, to hate, to be disappointed by someone, and allow yourself to express all these feelings in a healthy way.
• Separate the person from the behavior: We all react in different ways according to the situation. For instance, if someone threatens one of your loved ones you are able to beat them. Even if you are a peaceful person. We are not our behaviors, so don't confuse the person with the behavior that hurt you.
• Protect yourself and your dignity: Forgive doesn't mean forget. If we allow someone to come to our house and rob us, we will forgive him. But we will not forget. If we forget, then probably we will be robbed again!

There is no time limit within which one must pass through all the stages of grief, anger and result in forgiveness. Friends, relatives, or even a counselor can support us throughout this process. If someone is rushed to "close the case" by going directly to forgiveness, then that person is suppressing their feelings or even denying them and their importance. The fact that these feelings are skipped doesn't mean that they disappear. They are there, they live and breathe and they wait for the next opportunity to come up to the surface. And then, either they take the form of some psychosomatic symptoms, or they appear as anxiety, depression or panic attacks, or as aggressive behavior. Compassion, tolerance, forgiveness and a sense of self-discipline are qualities that help us lead our daily lives with a calm mind.

After learning how to build emotional resilience to stress based in the emotional intelligence competencies and skills, I could not end this book for IT professionals that work in highly stressful conditions without a special word in how to prevent burnout using the new emotional skills learnt and also by knowing a little better the differences between stress and emotional burnout so you can prevent or identify them in the early beginning and ask for the proper help. Let's learn about burnout.