00:00 

Hey there, this is Intentional Living with Tanya Hale and this is episode number 203, "Cleaning Up Your Apology." Welcome to your place for finding greater happiness through intentional growth, because we don't just fall into the life of our dreams...we choose to create it. This is Tanya Hale and I'm your host for Intentional Living. 

00:20 

Alright, hello there, my sweet friends. Nice to have you here today. I just love life. Any of the rest of y'all just think that life is amazing? It can be so tough sometimes but the things that we can learn, and when we we work through these tough things, we come out the other side and it's just amazing to me how brilliant our lives can be when we just keep working on this stuff. 

And this is one reason why I am such a fan of coaching, because I feel like I just keep up-leveling my life, like it just keeps getting better and better all the time. And it's just as my awareness grows, I can see things so much more clearly and I just like how I'm showing up a lot better. Absolutely, I'm not showing up perfect. I just had an issue with one of my daughters this week that I needed to apologize for and clean up, but you know what? Understanding it and seeing it and knowing how to do that in a loving and kind way makes all the difference in how that works out so, just, life is good. 

01:28 

Guess what we're talking about today? We are talking about cleaning up our apology and so not necessarily related to the apology that I needed to extend to my daughter, and I actually hadn't made that connection until just now, but I will tell you as I look back on it, I did a good job. And we're going to talk about what that means today, to clean it up. So have you ever heard the phrase that the person who apologizes is taking the higher road or that the more the more Christlike person will be willing to apologize first? I remember hearing these and believing these, and at this point I don't necessarily agree with these ideas at all. 

02:09 

First, I absolutely believe that apologizing is a great thing to do and I believe it is very often the exact right thing to do. And I believe that someone needs to apologize first and it might as well be you if you have greater insight into what's happening and you have the tools. But I also believe that we can sometimes use an apology to try and manipulate and control the other person. So some of you may be wondering "what is she talking about? Like what does that mean?" Because isn't an apology the highest form of humility? I don't think so, at least not always. I think it can be a great form of humility and a great form of submission but I don't think it always is and I'm gonna tell you why...because I can think of so many instances in my previous marriage where I apologized as a way to one-up my husband. I thought that I would be the more Christlike person if I apologized first. I thought that I would be proving that I was better than him if I apologized and he didn't. So often it was a way for me to solidify my own self-righteous beliefs. So I have to say that I do not love that that was how I showed up. But I'm trying to really be honest here and I 100% believe that if this is where I went, that some of y'all go to this same place as well. 

03:41 

So here's some more examples. There were also times when I would apologize in an attempt to try and control his behavior. Maybe I could get him to not be angry. Maybe he would apologize to me. Maybe he would recognize all of his faults and become humble and submissive and change his ways. Maybe he would start doing or stop doing some of the behavior that was attached to the apology. Maybe he would feel shame for his behavior. Again, really, what was I thinking? I will tell you what I think I was thinking. I was thinking survival and trying to prove my worth to myself by being so "righteous." But what was really happening was that I was acting in a very un-Christlike way. I was being condescending. I was being manipulative. I was being passive aggressive by underhandedly trying to control his behavior. And this was not okay. But because I didn't have the skills to be self-reflective and honest with myself, and I couldn't see it, this is how I showed up. Because I didn't have the skills at the time to have an honest conversation, this is the space that I went into. 

04:54 

So this is what I want you to analyze in yourself this week. What are your reasons for apologizing? Now, here's the tough part: being honest with yourself. Like, really being honest with yourself. This is tough. Because sometimes we want to, maybe even in our minds while we're talking to ourselves, we want to put out a story that makes us sound better than we  are. It's like we think that we can fool ourselves or something or maybe we've just never really thought about it before. And I think that that's the space that I was in for a lot of years. I didn't put any thought into my behavior. All I could see was that I was being so much better than my husband because I was apologizing first. And it was a very checklist-y apology. I was checking the boxes, doing what I had been told to do without a lot, or any, heart and understanding behind what the point of it all really is. 

06:00 

But I want us to rethink this idea that it's all about the apology, because it's way more important than the apology, than saying "I'm sorry." I think much more important is our reason behind the apology. These days when I apologize, I want it to be because I genuinely feel sorry for my behavior. I want to realize and I want to recognize that how I showed up was not the person that I want to be. I want to acknowledge that my words or my behavior were insensitive to the people around me and I want the other person to know that I care about them and that I truly am sorry for being unkind. Honestly, I kind of want my apology to be focused on me, in the sense that I feel bad for hurting another person for being unkind for not being the person I really want to be. But here's another piece to consider in podcast number 92. I talk about a concept called "clean love" and this concept means that I love without any expectation of the other person responding in any particular way. For example, I don't say "I love you" with the expectation that they will respond by saying "I love you" back. I don't love someone expecting that they will then do what I want them to do. I just choose to love because it feels good and it's the kind of person I want to be. 

07:24 

So this is the same concept. I don't apologize with any expectation that the other person will apologize as well. I don't apologize because I think the other person will feel sorry or change their mind or their behavior. I don't apologize with the desire that the other person will feel shame or guilt. I apologize because it feels good to get my life back into alignment with the kind of person I really want to be. I apologize because I want to be the kind of person I want to be: a kind of person who accepts responsibility for her behaviors. I apologize because I want others to know that I respect them and I love them. 

08:09 

So if I apologize and the other person yells at me, a clean apology wouldn't be rescinded. If I apologize and the other person refuses to accept it, that's okay, because it's me showing up as the loving person that I am choosing to be. If I apologize and the other person starts to berate me for my behavior and tells me all the things I'm doing wrong, if I'm showing up with a genuine desire to be a better person, I will at this point seek to move into curiosity rather than defensiveness. And this can be tough because our primitive brain really, really wants to protect us from things that feel unsafe. And another person telling us about all the things we're doing wrong feels like an attack. And our brain wants to protect us by putting up walls and getting defensive. But let me remind you of the little hack that we talked about a few weeks ago, when you feel the defensiveness coming on, choose to ask yourself, "what is the truth in what they are saying?" If we are offering a clean apology, really wanting to move more into the kind of person we want to be, it may still be difficult to look for the truth, but I promise you it will be easier because a clean apology is done with the intent to acknowledge where we were wrong and with the desire to make adjustments that will have us being more of the person we really want to be. So when this is really our intent, then moving into curiosity will be easier. We will want to know and understand the other person's point of view. We will want to see things that we have thus far been unable to see. We will set our defensiveness aside, and we will move into curiosity. 

09:58 

For example, we might say, "tell me what I said that was so harmful. Will you help me understand why that was so hurtful to you? How could I have been more understanding? What wasn't I seeing? What would have been a better way for me to act? What didn't I understand about your situation?" Once we've asked a lot of curiosity questions and we understand their point of view better, we see why this was a hurtful situation, then we can move into acknowledging the truth of what they're saying: "I can see that this was much more hurtful than I originally anticipated. I'm so sorry. I can see how insensitive I was to your situation. I'm sorry I didn't really listen to you, but instead jumped to conclusions. You're right. I was only thinking of myself." So, this process takes some vulnerability, to be sure, but if what we really want is greater connection, stronger relationships, this is exactly what it requires. 

11:06 

Learning how to own our own in situations where we have not been the person we want to be can take some humility, but the payoff is pretty amazing. When we really see ourselves for who we are and we step up to the plate and we acknowledge  how we are being unkind or hurtful or insensitive or unaware, then we are taking responsibility for our own behaviors and taking responsibility is a huge part of growing up. Learning to see our shortcomings, learning to see how these may be hurting others, taking responsibility for them, acknowledging them to the persons we may have crossed the boundary with. These are the things that help us mature emotionally. These are the things that help us create safe spaces for others to show up in vulnerability as well. And though we can't control whether others choose to step into these safe spaces we create, we can control whether we create them or not. Cleaning up our apologies is an incredible way to start creating these safe spaces. It's a way of expressing love for others and for ourselves because in this space of clean apologies, we come to know ourselves better and we show up better. 

12:23 

And this is a huge part of our journey here in life, to know ourselves to see where that self really wants to go and then to take that self down the path. This requires a lot of self-reflection and awareness and honesty. But I promise you the journey is so worth it. Moving into greater self-awareness and choosing to intentionally create what we want from that space is the experience of a lifetime. This is what it means to be growing up into middle-age. Seeing things we never saw before and stepping more into alignment with the person that we really want to be, because in middle-age we also have a much more clear idea of who we really want to be. 

13:15 

So it's an amazing journey and I can help you. That is what I am trained to do. I'm trained to help you see your thoughts and your feelings and your behaviors more clearly so that you can start cleaning up your relationships with yourself with other people so that you can start living the kind of life that feels at peace. Okay, I love love this growing up journey. I'm so glad you're joining me in this space. So if you would love some personal help for me and would like to chat with me, you can go to my website, tanyahale.com. There's a place there where you can book a free 30 minute consult session to get you started, and we will sit down and talk about your situation and I can help you know how you can start working with me so that we can get going. I would love to be your coach in a one-on one situation. There are things that can happen one-on-one that will accelerate your progress and accelerate what you're doing and how you're doing it and it is brilliant. I love coaching so much. In fact, I've mentioned here before that I work with my own coach on a regular basis and sometimes more than one coach a week because sometimes I need it. Probably all the time I need it, but it's a great process. 

14:41 

So my friends, if you love this podcast and it's helping you, I would love to have you, most of you are probably already subscribed, but leave me a review. If you don't know how to do that, I know how to on Apple. Just go open up my podcast and then scroll all the way down to the bottom and there's a place where you can give me stars and then a place where you can submit a review. And it will take you two, three, four minutes max, but it would make a huge difference because the more reviews I get, the more this bumps up the list so that more people find this podcast. And the more people that find this podcast, the more loving, amazing people we're going to have in the world. And too, when you share these concepts with other people in your life, then you can talk about them and you can discover for yourself aspects of this that I haven't talked about. You can discover how this applies more in your life. Having people to discuss these concepts with is huge. So your friends who also love personal growth, introduce them to this and have some discussions. Okay, I guess that's going to do it for me today. Wish you all the best, my friends, and I will talk to you next week. Bye. 

15:57 

Thank you so much for joining me today. If you would love to receive some weekend motivation, be sure to sign up for my free "weekend win" Friday email: a short and quick message to help you have a better weekend and position yourself for a more productive week. Go to tanyahale.com to sign up and learn more about life coaching and how it can help you get to your best self ever. See ya.