Two Things Every Real Apology Needs

Let's talk about apologies. How does one actually apologize?

The things we know don't work: I'm sorry. Just for me, I'm sorry period doesn't really do that much. It feels like a script. I'm sorry, but that negates it. I'm sorry that you feel that way. These are like the 3 definitely don'ts. I think the alternative is to recognize both what happened and also the impact on the other person. And so this avoids vague, I'm sorry that you're hurt. These big statements that for me don't actually land with anything. It's like, well, what are you sorry for?

They're more attempts to try and end the fight or end the tension rather than take actual accountability.

For example, it could be like, I'm really sorry that I canceled last minute, and I imagine that it made you feel like you weren't a priority, and I really want to own that that is how it could have impacted you. And so it's not just like, I'm sorry for what I did. It's like, okay, well, what did you do? What did you do? And have you taken the time to empathetically imagine how did that make me feel?

I 100% agree that the apology should be specific. Where it goes sideways which is you have to actually know what you did, and you actually have to know what the implications were, because I've had somebody guess and they guessed wrong.

I agree, and I think it depends on how you guess. I think guessing is really important as long as you leave space to be corrected. I guess about how the impact that it had on someone, and then I kind of ended on a question mark to be like, is that right? If I take my ego out of it and it's not like, oh, I need to know exactly what I'm guessing and like what the other person feeling. I'm like on a curiosity mission so I can understand where the person is coming from. So if I make a guess and it's wrong, great, now I have the information that I actually need.