00:00

Well, hey there, welcome to Intentional Living with Tanya Hale. This is episode number 265, "Greatest Hits - What Are You Sorry For?" 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.

00:23

Alright, well hello there, my friends. Welcome to the podcast today. So glad to have you. Alright, so today I am doing another Greatest Hits episode and this has just been one of my favorites ever since I put it out. I just love it so much and it always is brought back to my mind because I hear people all the time, especially women saying, "I'm sorry" when there's no nothing to be sorry about. This space of apologizing our lives away needs to go away. We need to recognize that we deserve to be in this space. We deserve to be humans breathing air and taking up space. And as I've re-listened to this podcast, there's not a ton that I would add to it, but I'll come on at the end anyway and we'll just have a quick little chat. This podcast comes from podcast number 195, so about a year and a half ago. "What Are You Sorry For" is the title of this and I think you're absolutely going to love it.

01:31

So some of you may have been following me a lot longer and heard this one already. Listen to it again. I think in second listening, I was like, "oh good stuff. Oh yeah, that's a good reminder." Right? There's always something great to do to learn when we listen to something a second time. You'll pick up on things that you didn't pick up on the first time, which is always a good stuff. Good thing. So go ahead and have a listen and I will talk to you at the end.

01:56

Well, hello there, my friends. Welcome to the podcast today. So glad to see you, to have you here. Alright. First of all, if you have not left me a review, will you please go to either Apple or Spotify and you can leave me a review there that helps other people find this content. And it's a really easy way for you to do something positive in the world. Share this positive message. See this information that can help us to live better lives. And it's a really great thing to do. It will take you just a couple of minutes. It won't take very long and it would make you feel so good. Right? You would feel so good for helping me and I would feel so good for you helping me. It's kind of a win-win.

02:36

All right. We are going to jump in today. We are talking about the question, "what are you sorry for?" So I'm going to start off with an experience. You've met my daughter Allison, right? She's been on the podcast a couple of times. So a few years ago, she and I were sitting in an auditorium in the auditorium style seating and we were near the edge and someone closer to the middle needed to get up and leave. And so as this person got up and walked past us, all of us needed to adjust our knees a little bit while she passed. And while she was passing the five or six people, she said, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry," to every single one of us. And after she had left the row, my daughter leaned over and whispered, "Why is she saying that? What is she sorry for?" And I loved the conversation that we ended up having because we identified that women often seem to be socially conditioned to always say, "I'm sorry" for things we don't need to be sorry about.

03:37

Okay, so let me give you some examples. If you need to pass someone in the grocery store aisle and it's a bit of a tight fit: "Oh, I'm sorry, can I get by you?" Someone else says, "excuse me, can I squeeze past you?" and we reply: "Oh, I'm sorry," and we move. You show up a few minutes late for lunch date with friends: "I'm sorry, I just can't get my life together." Dinner is a little bit overcooked: "I'm sorry, I should have paid closer attention," or "I'm sorry, I'm such a bad cook." Maybe friends drop by unexpected: "I'm sorry, my house is such a mess." Maybe again, friends drop by unexpected: "I'm sorry, I'm still in sweats and my hair is so such a mess. I haven't done it yet today." The bag of flour you got at the store has a hole in it and you don't discover it till you're at the checkout: "I'm sorry, I should have noticed." You're a few minutes late picking up your daughter from a friend's house: "I'm sorry, I'm such a bad mom." You're sick and you have to cancel an appointment: "I'm sorry, I'm sick."

04:41

Okay, I've heard all of these. As women, we seem to always be apologizing almost for breathing sometimes. I exist, therefore I apologize, right? That seems to be a women thing. Let's be very clear: there are times an apology is absolutely necessary. When you say something unkind, insensitive, by all means apologize. When you accuse someone unjustly, go ahead and say "I'm sorry." When your lack of preparation creates undue stress on others, probably a good thing to acknowledge and to say "I'm sorry." Okay, one definition of sorry is feeling sorrow or regret. And there are definitely situations where we feel sorrow or regret. And let's step up to the plate and let's apologize. But should we feel sorrow or regret for having a cluttered home when somebody else comes by? I would say no. Maybe we don't really like having a cluttered home and I'm embarrassed, but it's nothing to apologize to people who don't live there. It has nothing to do with them. But "I'm sorry" is sorely overused by the female population in our society.

06:00

I think the biggest thing we want to look out here though is the reason behind saying we're sorry. So admittedly, it's become a trite phrase and we often say it without even recognizing that we're saying it. So here's a space where we can start increasing our awareness so that we can show up in this world a little bit more the way we want to. But here's another reason why we say it: it seems that often we as women are apologizing for taking up space in this world. When our space seems to bump up against someone else's space, we tend to try to make ourselves small and insignificant, acquiescing our space to them. But guess what? We get to take up space in this world. We were created to take up space in this world. God wants us to take up space and it's natural that our space will bump up against someone else's space sometimes. And there is nothing wrong with that. We don't need to apologize for this. What we want to apologize for are things for which we feel sorrow or regret for when we have hurt someone.

07:11

So let's go back to the auditorium with my daughter. When we were chatting about this later, we discussed how this woman saying "I'm sorry" wasn't needed. She was just taking up space and her space of needing to leave the auditorium wasn't hurting us. Right? We completely agreed that she was seeking to be polite and that was absolutely appreciated by us, but she wasn't hurting us either intentionally or unintentionally. She wasn't making our lives more difficult. She hadn't really even inconvenienced us in any way. She was just taking up space. She was doing something that humans do. We need to bump up against someone else's space once in a while and this didn't require her to say she was sorry. She had done nothing wrong to apologize for. However, it was not lost on us that she wanted to acknowledge that we were moving our knees to the side for her. Social niceties would have us say something...wouldn't they here in this situation?

08:15

So here's a brilliant solution to this conundrum. Instead, say "thank you." Now, this is an amazing option for a couple of different reasons. One, it fulfills her need to acknowledge the fact that we're moving our knees and she's aware of the slight gesture to accommodate her space. It's a good thing to recognize when we're bumping up against somebody else's space. That's always great. That's kind. That's appropriate. And two, it's a great way to express appreciation to the other person, acknowledging the fact that they are making room for your space. An expression of gratitude always helps the other person to feel good about how they are showing up. So instead of walking out the aisle saying, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry," apologizing for her needing to take up space as a human, had she walked out and instead said, "Oh, thank you. Thank you. Thank you for making space for me. Thank you for moving to the side." That just has such a different feeling, doesn't it? It feels so different.

09:21

Okay, so let's go back to these examples from the beginning of our discussion. So you need to pass someone in the grocery store aisle and it's a bit of a tight fit. And previously we were saying, "I'm sorry, can I get by you?" This becomes: "excuse me, I need to get by you. Thank you so much." Do you feel the difference? There's just this space of graciousness, like offering grace to the other person and offering grace to yourself. All right, another one, someone else says, "excuse me, can I squeeze by you?" And instead of saying, "Oh, I'm sorry," we say, "absolutely." And we step to the side with a smile. We just make space for us to bump into each other. Another example, you show up a few minutes late for a lunch date with friends. And sometimes we might say, "I'm so sorry, I'm sorry I can't get my life together," and we may apologize over and over, right? That would become, "Oh, thank you so much for waiting a few minutes for me. I'm so excited to be here with y'all." Okay, dinner's a bit overcooked: "I'm sorry, I should have paid closer attention," Becomes, well, maybe nothing. Okay, because why do we need to nitpick a bit of overcooking? If someone says something negative about it, we can choose to ignore it. Messing up dinner is not necessarily worthy of sorrow or regret. It's more of a slight inconvenience. It happens. We're human, right? We still went to the effort to provide something for our family and we don't need to feel sorrow or regret for our efforts not being stellar or perfect. We can step into the humanness of, "listen, I got distracted and I burnt the bread." That's kind of my my go-to. That's my thing, right? No need to apologize. Just like, "well there you go. We'll have it. We'll just scrape it off. It's all good." We don't need to apologize for that. Okay, friends drop by unexpected: "I'm sorry my house is such a mess," becomes: "Thank you for dropping by. I'm so glad to see you." Here we go my friends. No apologies for your house. No excuses for the state of what's going on. How we keep our own houses has nothing to do with anyone else. We don't need to feel sorrow or regret if they are uncomfortable with the state of our house. If they're uncomfortable that is not ours; that's theirs to figure out. They're uncomfortable because of their own thoughts and if they're gonna be all judge-y about how we keep our house, that has nothing to do with me either. They can be as judge-y as they want.

11:48

Okay, here we go again. Friends drop by unexpected and we say, "I'm sorry I'm still in sweats and such a mess," becomes, "I'm so glad to see you. Thanks for coming. Tell me all the things." There is absolutely never a reason to apologize for how we look. Ever. We're amazing humans. How we look has nothing to do with that. We don't have to apologize when we're sick and how we look. We don't have to apologize when we're up all night and how we look. We don't have to apologize for the fact that we have had a great day and we don't feel like we look our best. No need to apologize. Just say "thank you for coming. So glad to see you." Alright, the bag of flour you got at the store has a hole in it discovered at check out: "Oh, I'm sorry I should have noticed," becomes, oh thank you so much for switching that out for me." You're a few minutes late picking up your daughter from her friend's house: "I'm sorry I'm such a bad mother," becomes, "thank you for waiting so patiently for me." You're sick, you have to cancel an appointment: "I'm sorry I'm sick," becomes, "thank you for understanding." Do you just feel the difference in those? Ah, I love, I love just the difference of the feeling.

13:10

A huge part of moving into gratitude instead of apologizing for taking up space is acknowledging our humaneness. We will make mistakes. We will be in someone's way. We will be late. Basic human foibles. That's part of life. We don't need to apologize for breathing, for taking up space. We just can move into a place of thanking people for their contribution to our lives. This makes people feel so good to be acknowledged and it feels better to us not to be apologizing for our existence.

13:47

So I get that saying "apologizing for our existence" is a bit of a hyperbole. But as women, we spend a lot of time apologizing for things that don't need apologizing for, for being a human who takes up space. It is great to acknowledge that our spaces are bumping up against each other. Absolutely. Yes, it is. But do we need to apologize for it? No, we don't. We can honor ourselves. We can have respect for ourselves. We can acknowledge that we get to own our space in this world as much as the next person. We can embrace our mistakes as humans. And when we hurt someone, we can apologize. Absolutely. But when you're just being a breathing human, girlfriend, let's stop apologizing. Let's stop apologizing for taking up space. Let's move into gratitude instead because that honors us and it honors them. It respects us and it respects them. And this feels so much better for sure.

15:01

Okay, that's going to do it. I really want you to think about that this week though. Try and pay attention to how often you are apologizing and see when you do. Am I apologizing for taking up space? Or have I really done something that requires an apology? If you're just taking up space, let's just pay attention. Let's increase our awareness and then over time, let's start seeking to shift that out for a "thank you" instead of an apology. I think you'll see some amazing changes when you do that. It just moves you into a space where your brain just says, "oh, I'm an important person. I get to take up space in this world." It's an amazing thing.

15:44

And I'm back. Okay, such good stuff, right? Like, why do we live in this space that we think we need to apologize for being, for existing, for bumping up into people, for having wants and needs? We just don't. I think societally, especially as women, we have been conditioned to believe that we need to make space for everybody else and that we don't need to have space ourselves. Like our wants and needs come last. And that is just so dysfunctional in so many ways. Our needs matter. Our necessity to be a human who takes up space in this world is so vital. And I think the more that we move into this space of really acknowledging that our wants and needs matter, acknowledging that we're a human who matters, that we don't come in below anybody else. We're all equals. We don't one-up and one-down all the time. I think as we move into this space, we just find a contentment that we're not going to find any other way. And I think as we team up with God and with Christ in understanding this concept that we are equals, we are people worthy of everything that everybody else is worthy of. When we move into that space and step into our divine capacity of being who we are, I think our life just up-levels in a way that it doesn't otherwise.

17:30

So pay attention to your I'm sorry's. Notice how often they come up. I've I notice it a lot and I don't know just notice it with women. I notice it a lot with men as well saying "I'm sorry" when one more appropriate would be to say, well, "thank you." "Thanks for making space." "Thanks for doing this for me." "I appreciate your attention to this matter." Right? Like, we get to have wants and needs. Okay, my friends. That is going to do it. I just really appreciate being here with you.

18:05

Coaching is, gosh, just something that I love so much. And I really appreciate the opportunity to be part of your life on this podcast. Thank you for inviting me in. Thank you for allowing me to share things that have changed the trajectory of my life in such a significant way. When I look at my previous marriage of 24 years and notice all the dysfunction and become aware of all the ways that I behaved that were hurtful and unkind and dishonest when I thought that I wasn't being any of those things, just increasing my awareness and cleaning those up in my own life and being able to show up in my marriage now with those things cleaned up, is just such a significant thing for me. What I'm creating here in this marriage is so completely opposite. And it is so fulfilling and so beautiful. And I had no idea that marriage could be so delightful and so easy. And it's not that it doesn't take work to clean those things up and to not have back burner issues and to own my own and all that stuff. That absolutely takes work and effort. But it makes the relationship so easy and so beautiful. And this is what I just want to share with you. These tools work. They really, really work. And if you're struggling applying them, if you're struggling figuring out where your blind spots are. This is where coaching is such a valuable, valuable tool. I can see your blind spots way better than you can. And I promise as I share your blind spots with you when we coach together, I'm kind and I'm loving and I'm compassionate. But I'm also honest because until we see it, we can't clean it up. And if you want to increase the speed of your growth, coaching can help you do that. I can help you get somewhere in three or six months that it may take you several years to get to.

20:23

And this is the thing, life is short. Why spend the next 30 years struggling in a relationship and hurting and in pain when you can clean it up and create something very different? When you could clean it up and have a relationship that's more loving and fulfilling and kind where you can, whether that relationship be with a spouse or with your adult children or with siblings or just learning how to show up better in friendships, just makes all the difference. You can clean this stuff up. We don't have to live in pain and anguish and frustration. We just don't. Not that there aren't going to be hurtful things that happen in our lives, that's just part of life, but we don't need to live there. We just visit there occasionally when life demands it, because it does sometimes, but we don't have to suffer. We can hurt sometimes, but we don't have to suffer. And this is what coaching has to offer you. And you can sign up for a free consult where we can talk all about the coaching thing. When you sign up at tanyahale.com, you're gonna go to the "free consultation" tab at the top. There's a calendar there. You can find a time that works for you. Sign up. Let's get on Zoom. Let's chat. Let's talk about all the things.

21:40

Okay. Alright, my friends, have a really terrific week. Go back and listen to previous podcast. There is so much good stuff here. This is number 265. I have 265 podcasts that I'm super, super proud of that I re-listen to them and I go, "oh, that's good content. That's good stuff," and I promise you you can go back and listen to any podcast and you will glean something amazing. Go back and listen. Go back and just check something out once in a while. Maybe even just spend a two or three, four hour time period binge listening when you're in a car ride or something. This content will shift things for you a little piece at a time. We just need to nudge ourselves in a healthier direction, a direction that's gonna feel a lot better for us. Okay. Have an amazing week and I will see you next time. Bye.

22:36

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.