103. Apologies
In mindset-oriented coaching, there’s a teaching that thoughts cause feelings, feelings create actions, and actions cause results.
Part of this teaching is the idea that you can’t cause other people’s feelings.
Because their feelings are caused by their thoughts.
But not everyone studies mindset-oriented coaching.
And some people will tell you that you’ve hurt their feelings, and they’ll want you to apologize.
And even if no one else asks you to apologize, you may sometimes want to, especially when you do something that doesn’t align with your values.
Other times, you may be upset with someone else and want them to apologize.
On top of all that, we have received a bunch of socialization about apologies, when we should do them, what they mean about us, and more.
It’s a lot to unpack.
So let’s dig into it together.
Tune in this week to catch my breakdown of helpful ways to think about apologies. I’ll teach you how to decide whether or not you actually want to apologize, and of course, how to deal with those scenarios where you find yourself wanting someone else to apologize to you.
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WHAT YOU’LL LEARN FROM THIS EPISODE:
Why often, when we apologize, the person we’re impacting most is ourselves.
One question to ask yourself when deciding whether you want to apologize to someone.
The social conditioning that plays into how we think, feel, and act in specific situations and how that relates to apologizing.
Why you might want to be sorry for hurting someone’s feelings, even if you don’t actually believe you caused those hurt feelings.
The importance of accepting that people will be upset with you in some scenarios, whether you apologize or not.
How to handle it when you want someone else to apologize and dig into what you really want to create in this scenario.
4 steps you can follow when you feel like you deserve an apology from another person.
LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE:
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FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
This week we’re talking about apologies.
You are listening to Love Your Job Before You Leave It, the podcast for ambitious, high-achieving women who are ready to stop feeling stressed about work and kiss burnout goodbye forever. Whether you’re starting a business or staying in your day job, this show will give you the coaching and guidance you need to start loving your work today. Here’s your host, Career Coach, Kori Linn.
Hello y'all, and happy Wednesday. I'm so excited to get to spend some time with you today and to talk about apologies. But before we get into that, I want to tell you all about something else.
So if you listened a few weeks ago we had the episode about emotional calluses, where I told the story from my own life recently about how my brain reacted when I got the feedback that I asked for from my wonderful SAF clients, my Satisfied As Fuck clients. And I warned them that that podcast would come out and that they were going to kind of get to see behind the curtain of my own experience.
And when it did come out, one of them told me that while they loved the podcast as usual, they felt sad for me, right? They felt sad for me because I had some difficult feelings. And I wrote something back to that client and I wanted to share it with all of y'all because I think it's really impactful. And it felt impactful to me, and I wrote it, so here we go.
I wrote to that client, “Honestly, I’ve felt humiliated a lot in my life, as probably most humans have. And it is the pleasure and the delight of my life that now I can do something interesting and useful with that feeling of humiliation when it comes up for me. Back in the day, before I was a coach, when a big feeling would come up, it was just about me trying to find a way to live and keep going, right?”
And I'm going to ad-lib here for a little bit, like me trying to find a way to just get through that negative emotion. Trying to just figure out how to get on with my life, how to navigate the ups and downs of having an emotion. And that was a lot. That was hard. That was really hard for me back then. But now when a big feeling comes up, it's kind of an adventure, right?
I actually wrote in the original post to the client, “It's such an adventure.” And it is. And then I wrote, “That,” which like it being an adventure, “doesn't mean I always enjoy it.” Right? Having a big feeling, like having humiliation, not a super fun time. Not as fun as an ice cream cone. But it's an adventure in its own right, right?
Big feelings are a different experience for me now. And if people want to feel sad for me, when I share my experience of having a big feeling, I get that. A lot of us as humans, we do feel sad when other humans experience big feelings, especially when it's a human we care about. And also what I want my client to know and what I want y'all to know is, interestingly, I'm not sad for me. I'm not sad for me that I felt that humiliation.
Again, was it super fun or easy to feel it when it came up? No, it felt fucking terrible. But I'm not sad for me that it happened. I'm happy for me that it happened. And I'm happy that I've built a mindset, and a skill set, and a life, and a career where I get to spend time with my own emotions and to make meaningful, beautiful things out of them that help other people navigate their human experience too
To me, that's so much the essence of the work that I get to do. And I love that added layer. I love the added meaning, I love the added depth. And I'm very pragmatic in some ways, so I just love the usefulness. I can see the beauty in just being willing to have my emotional experience, whatever it is, like I think that's an incredibly beautiful thing.
But the idea that I can take my emotional experiences and, first of all, get to know myself better, get to love myself more deeply through them. But also I can make meaningful shit to help other humans. Because in this world humans are having a lot of suffering, right? Like we have amazing spectacular things in this world also, and a lot of suffering. And even like when we have a lot going well for us, we have a lot of suffering.
Living a human life means engaging with the full spectrum of emotion. And that's true for me, even as a coach with all my coaching tools, and it's true for my clients, and it's true for everyone else. And so when I get to take my experience of that and make something meaningful, and a gift for the world, and something that's going to help other humans, like first of all get through their lives, I think about that person I used to be who was just trying to get through it. I'm going to help other people get through it.
And not only do I get to help people get through it, but I get to help people blow their own fucking minds with what's possible for them. I get to help them enjoy their existing life more than they ever thought they could. And I get to help them make big and small changes that create their satisfying as fuck life, right?
And what that might look like for one person is like leaving their job and starting a business. And what it might look like for another person is staying in their job and having a much better experience of it. Or for someone else it might look like falling back in love with their significant other. Or for someone else it might mean cultivating a different relationship with their parent, which may be something that they didn't even think was possible.
There are so many things we can do and so many ways we can change our lives when we do this work. And the fact that my own emotional experiences get to help with that, it just is really incredible. It is, to me, the privilege of a lifetime to get to do that. The fact that this gets to be my job still blows me away.
And when I think about helping other people cultivate a satisfying as fuck life and career, I have a human brain too, right? So sometimes my brain is like, “Who the fuck do you think you are to do that?” And then I look at my life and career and I'm like, “Holy shit, I have built a business where I get to do satisfying as fuck, to me, work. And I make a bunch of money doing it. And I get to use my money to vote my values in the world. And I get to have free time in my life because that's how my business is set up.”
And it's like all these ripples in my life and into the lives of others. And also, it is satisfying as fuck. And if that's possible for me, I believe it's possible for you. And it might surprise you how it looks for you, right? I think when I was younger I thought there were so many things that needed to change. And I changed a lot of them, right?
I quit my corporate job and launched this business, and I built it up. And some of them I didn't change, right? Some of the things I thought needed to change, didn't need to. And when I changed other things, they stopped being a problem, or when I changed my thoughts about them they stopped being a problem.
So that's just something I want you to know, is that like, yeah, being a human is a wild experience. Having the full spectrum of human emotion is a wild experience. Not all of it's enjoyable, and it can all be a beautiful part of your life. It's okay if you don't think it's all beautiful, but I also want you to know that you could get to a place where you do think it's all beautiful, if that's what you want to do. Or that it's all meaningful, maybe beautiful is the wrong word here.
And I just, I really want to impress upon you that you can have a satisfying as fuck life, and it doesn't mean things will be perfect, right? Again, I was just talking about like I have a satisfying as fuck life and I also felt massive humiliation very, very recently, as you're all deeply aware of.
So I'm not trying to sell you on the idea that a satisfying as fuck life means you always feel perfect and safe and happy. That's like not, that's not what it's going to be like. But it can be wildly delicious, and it can be beyond your wildest dreams.
And let me just say right now before we get into talking about apologies, if that has you salivating, if that sounds delicious as fuck to you to have that satisfying as fuck life, I really deeply invite you and encourage you to come get on a consult call for the Satisfied As Fuck January cohort, because that's the exact work we do in that program.
And having done that work with the current group for a few months now, I can just say like doing that work in a group is just exceedingly powerful. And the realizations and breakthroughs and insights that are happening in that group, they're always sort of like ricocheting and piggybacking off of each other. And the collective growth in there is absolutely breathtaking.
And if you want to do that work in a community while getting to know other people and supporting them and being supported by them, and having your mind blown not only by the coaching you receive, but by the coaching they receive, that's the place to do it. If you are looking for more of a personalized, private coaching space, I do still have a few slots for one-on-one coaching. And I welcome you to sign up for a consult for that if that sounds more your speed.
All right y'all, let's talk about apologies. This actually came up because we were talking about it in SAF. And they invited me to do a podcast on apologies and I was like, “Fuck yeah, I'm going to do that.”
And so basically I think the original question was like, how do you know when to apologize? But I also want to talk about what about when you want someone else to apologize, or someone else does apologize, or you think they should, but they don't, et cetera, et cetera.
So first of all, when should you apologize? Okay, so the first thing I'm going to say about that is I don't think there's a should. I don't think there's a right or a wrong. I don't think it's like these are the times when we apologize, and these are the times when we don't. That's not what we do here. We're always returning your attention to your own authority and your own agency.
You get to decide when you want to apologize. And you get to decide when you don't want to. That being said, I'm still going to break it down for you. So the reason that the person asked this is because in coaching that is thought work oriented, which my coaching is mindset oriented, there is this idea that thoughts cause feelings.
We talk about this sometimes on the podcast, but I'm going to sort of like play it from the beginning, or explain it from the beginning in case anyone's new to this episode. And because I think a review of these concepts will be useful.
Okay, so in mindset oriented coaching there is the idea that thoughts cause feelings, feelings cause actions, actions cause results. And there's this idea that circumstances, that is like whatever neutral facts are happening, those are not responsible for our feelings. Because in between the circumstance and our feelings there’s always the layer of our thoughts and the way we're interpreting things.
So through this framework there's the idea that if I do something, I am the circumstance in someone else's situation. So they're going to use their thoughts to determine their feelings to determine what actions they take to determine what results they create for themselves.
And so the person was asking like, if I can't create someone else's feelings, and only they can create their feelings with their own thoughts, then how do I know if I should apologize or not? How do I know when that makes sense or if it's appropriate, et cetera, et cetera?
Okay, so that's the basic idea is that thoughts cause feelings. So we can't cause each other's feelings. But sometimes other people are mad at us, and they think we should apologize. And sometimes we're mad at other people and we think they should apologize. So how do we explain all that?
Okay, so here's how I think about it. And you get to decide how you think about it, but this is how it breaks down for me. To me, the first thing for me to consider is, am I pleased with how I acted? So even if no one's mad at me, even if no one's angry or upset about my behavior, how do I feel about it? Am I good with it? Does it align with my values? Do I like it?
Now, me being a human and you being a human, a lot of times we do shit that we're not cool with. Like we do things that don't make sense to our own set of values. And there's a lot of reasons for this, right? Like one reason is that we have a lot of internalized social conditioning that plays out in how we think, feel and act about stuff.
And part of it's also because we're imperfect human beings and no matter how worthwhile our thoughts may be, no matter how worthwhile our values may be, no matter how like whatever our ideals might be, sometimes we choose to do other stuff. Or like sometimes we're like in a fight, flight, freeze, fawn, fit in stress response and we're acting that stress response out instead of thinking on purpose like, how do I want to handle this? Who do I want to be in this situation?
So again, the very first thing I think about is like, do I like who I was? Am I cool? Like does current me want to cosign what past me did? Do they feel super fucking good about it or are they like, “Oh,” or are they like, “Oh no.” There have been so many things in my life, y'all, that I have done that afterwards I'm like, “Oh no.”
And especially the older I get and the more I study things like anti-racism, and the more I study things like patriarchy, and the more I learn about socialization and culture, the more I look back at my past and feel that like, oh no feeling of like, oh, I've done so much shit in my life in the past, that doesn't align with my current ideals, my current values, and who I currently want to be as a person.
So I also think that's an interesting thing to add, is like sometimes you're going to discover something, like suddenly your brain will come on and be like, “Oh, 20 years ago you did this thing.” You haven't thought about the thing maybe in 20 years, but it’s like you have changed, now your brain will bring this up. It's like this is a discrepancy between who you want to be and who you've been.
So I just am going to go ahead and say for just a minute, I think that's really interesting to notice. And you can still do apologies for 20 years ago. And also you can choose not to. That would be like a separate little breakdown of when it makes sense to and when it makes sense not to. But ultimately I would say do whatever you want for whatever reason you want.
Like if you want to apologize even though it's been 20 years, then you can. And if you don't, I don't think you ever have to. I think that's a very personal choice about if you want to or not.
Okay, so to go back though, it's like does the thing you did, or didn't do, or said, or didn't say or whatever. Does it align with who you want to be? If it doesn't, is there someone who was impacted by the thing you did or didn't do or said or didn't say that you would like to apologize for that impact?
So, again, to circle back to the mindset thought work angle of this, it's just because you did or said something and someone else experienced an impact, doesn't mean you created their feelings. But you may be able to see like, well I did or said this, and their feelings were hurt. And I would like to apologize because their feelings were hurt and because this thing doesn't actually align to who I want to be as a person.
And maybe it doesn't matter who created their feelings, if their feelings are hurt and you don't like how you acted, you can just apologize for that. We can just apologize. And apology is also not a responsibility, right? When we apologize we're not necessarily saying, “Well, since I'm choosing to apologize, I'm acknowledging that I created all of your feelings.” That's not generally how we apologize. I mean, I don't know what you're doing, but that's not how I apologize.
When I apologize, it tends to sound like, hey, I've thought about it and I don't like how I acted there, or that's not who I want to be as a person, or I noticed that this is the impact that you're experiencing and I'm sorry, right? So a lot of my apologies would be oriented towards what I did that didn't make sense to me.
Now, here's the thing, sometimes you're going to do something and you're going to review it and you're going to be like, “Yeah, no, I feel good about that.” And someone else is going to be upset with you. And then you get to choose like how do you want to handle that? Do you want to apologize? And if you do want to apologize, how do you want to word that?
And you can do whatever you want here, right? Just because, if you're a coach-y person like me, just because we have these ideas in coaching like you can't cause anyone else's feelings doesn't mean you can't say to somebody, “I'm sorry, I hurt your feelings.” You're still allowed to do that.
I think sometimes when people learn about like coaching stuff they're like, “Oh, the coaching police will come to my house if I take credit for someone else's feelings or give them credit for mine.” The coaching police are not coming to your house.
And also, I think when people learn about stuff like coaching, it's like a very different way of thinking. It's a different perspective, and as we talk about all the time here, it's an incredibly useful perspective. But a lot of people don't share it, and don't understand it, and don't want to learn it from you, right? And they don't have to have the understanding of coaching in order for you to interact with them. I mean, if you only want to interact with other people who do coaching, there are a lot of us, and you can totally choose that.
A lot of people think that's going to be easier and make their life way better. But it doesn't necessarily because people who know about coaching are also still just humans with brains living a 50/50 life, having good days, having bad days, and having a lot of emotions, right? Just like we talked about earlier, I've done a fuckload of coaching and I had an extremely intense experience of humiliation. So it's all just humans, y’all.
Okay, so thing number one to consider is like, do I like the way I acted, spoke, whatever? If I don't, do I want to say something about that out loud to another human person? If I do want to say something out loud or in writing about that to another human person, how do I want to do that? Like what is the wording that feels good to me? What is the wording that makes sense with my experience of both what I did and who I want to be? Or what I didn't do, right, et cetera, et cetera.
And again, you may up-level into a new way of thinking or a new way of understanding the world and realize you did something 20 years ago that you want to address. That may happen, and then you also get to choose like, how far back do I want to go?
Listen, to be very frank, the more I learn there are so many things that I did that don't align with my values, like so many. Like probably hundreds, tens, dozens, hundreds of things. And I'm probably not going to go back and apologize to people for all of them, especially because some of those people I don't even like, I'm like, who even are they? Like how would I even find them? Could I stalk them on Facebook? Probably, but I'm probably not going to.
And so when it comes to stuff like that, if there's a lot, I may actually do an internal experience where I do an apology that no one else actually hears. I could like write an apology and I could light it on fire. I could kind of say an apology to the universe. I don't talk about the universe a lot on this podcast, but I do think about there being like a consciousness out there that I kind of think about and talk to.
And so if I think I can't get a hold of the people or I'm going to choose not to because it might be weird if after 20 years I suddenly started talking to them to apologize about something that they maybe remember or maybe don't, like I may kind of do what I would consider sending that apology through the universe and just like put it out there. Because I can't actually impact them anyways, necessarily, right?
As we talked about, their thoughts do create their feelings. But I can still impact myself. And I think sometimes when we choose to apologize the person we're actually impacting the most as ourselves, right? We think we're doing it for the other person, we think we're doing it, so they forgive us, we think we're doing it to explain to them.
But I think sometimes the person who's most impacted by when you choose to apologize is you because it's you holding yourself accountable to saying like, I'm not perfect and that's okay. And I can do something about it, and I can have a conversation with a person. And I would even go further, and I don't think most people do this in their apologies. But I would go further to say, and I can love myself. I can love myself even though I made a decision that I don't want to think is good.
There may be things you've done that you want to think are bad. There may be things you've done that you want to think are wrong. And I think that's okay. And I think sometimes we're not willing to let ourselves see those things because we think then I have to think that I'm bad, then I have to think that I'm wrong.
And so I guess the episode within the episode here is like, you're allowed to see things you've done that don't live up to your ideals, and you're also still allowed to love yourself. And I think for a lot of people that's a really hard idea because a lot of people have deeply entrenched black and white thinking where everything is either or. Either I'm a good person who does good things or I'm a bad person who does bad things. Either everything I do is right and great, or everything I do is wrong and terrible.
And I don't think that's true and, two, I don't think it's realistic. Like humans live incredibly long lives and we're incredibly complex. And we have like these wild brains, and then we have all this socialization. I just don't think it makes sense to have that all or nothing thinking about ourselves and our lives or anything really, or not most things anyways.
So to circle that back to where that came from, a little mini inside step during your apology can also be like this is a way that you reckon with yourself about your lovable imperfection.
So to circle back to another thing we touched on already, what if someone else really wants an apology from you? Listen, sometimes they might, they might really want an apology from you. And sometimes they might really want an apology, and you might agree and want to give one. And sometimes they might really want an apology and you might not agree, and you might not want to give one, and you don't fucking have to.
Especially as we like unlearn our socialization, and like living in a white supremacist, patriarchal, ableist, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, culture, as we unlearn those toxic isms there is going to be stuff that we're going to do that other people are not going to like. And they're going to find it upsetting and offensive because it does not go along with the cultural messaging and the social conditioning that so many of us have been taught. And people are not going to like it when we don't follow that.
And that's an example where I'm like, yeah, they might not like it and that doesn't mean I'm going to apologize for it. So there are times when people will be upset with me. But I will look back at my own what I said, what I didn't say, what I did, what I didn't do, and I might decide I'm good with all of that.
Now, I can still have a conversation with the person, I can still be kind and empathic and connected if I want to, if that's what I want to choose with that person. And that might look like saying something like, hey, I can see that you're having big feelings about what happened. And I've reviewed what I said, did, et cetera, and it actually does align with my values. And I'm still interested in connecting with you. Is there a way we could still connect?
And we could maybe even talk about this and maybe if I explain to you where I'm coming from and hear more about where you're coming from, maybe we can find a deeper layer where we can agree, et cetera, et cetera. I don't know exactly what that's going to look like. And there may also be people in your life where you're just like, “No, I'm not going to apologize and I'm not going to have a conversation with you about it.” That's a totally viable option as well.
Now, me personally, I tend to have, like a chosen orientation towards connection and towards curiosity. And especially as someone who works as a coach, oftentimes I want to understand other people. I also think I want to be understood by other people.
Now, the reality is, sometimes that's not going to happen for me. And I can try to force them to understand me through either trying to explain what I did, or try to force them to love and accept me through apologizing. But what I've come to see is that you really can't force people to, like, love or understand you.
So you just get to decide who you want to be and how you want to show up. And whether that includes trying to connect with them for yourself, for your own reasons, not for them. Because again, you cannot control their feelings. And they might say, “I need you to apologize.” And you might apologize, and they might still be mad. They might say, “I need you to apologize,” and you might not apologize, and they might actually feel fine and come around. We can't control other people.
I do think we're accountable for our actions and our inactions. We're accountable for what we say and don't say. And some percentage of what we do, don't do, say, don't say will probably horrify and disappoint us based on our own values because, again, we're imperfect humans. Lovable, but imperfect humans.
But ultimately, no matter how we choose to show up, we cannot control what other people think about us, we cannot control how they feel towards us. We can decide to do what they're asking us to do, you're always allowed to do that. Like if someone wants an apology and you don't really feel like you did anything wrong, but you want to apologize and just move on with it, like you're allowed to. That's always your choice.
Again, you have the ultimate authority. You have the ultimate agency. But even that, even when we do exactly what people ask us to do, it still doesn't control their feelings. Because sometimes we do exactly what people ask us to do and then they're fucking mad or disappointed for some other reason.
And listen, I just know I've tried enough in my life to control other people through my behavior, what I said, didn't say, did, didn't do, and it just doesn't work. And it usually results in me feeling like a contorted pretzel and then being super resentful of like everyone.
That doesn't align with my values. That's just not what I want to do, it's not who I want to be. It's not the gift I want to give the world. It's not the version of myself I want to give the world, to spend all my time trying to like control other people. So instead, I think it makes a lot more sense for me to think about who I want to be, and then be that person with as much courage, love, and connection as I can. And to be checking in with myself about if shit aligns with my values or not because, for sure, some of its not going to.
And then from there, what do I want to do about that? Do I want to apologize to the person? Do I want to send an apology like through the universe? Do I want to do something else that I haven't mentioned here? There's all kinds of things you could do. Don't be limited by the limited amount of things I can come up with, you could do all kinds of different stuff.
Okay, so that's like the basic rundown on apologizing. Now let's talk about being apologized to or not being apologized to, as will sometimes happen. So remember, again, we talked about mindset, we talked about coaching. Other people can't create your feelings, you can't create their feelings.
So if something happens, and you want someone else to apologize to you, you can invite them to. You can request that they do. You can express to them that you would like an apology and why, but you can't force them to. I mean, in some situations you sort of can demand that they do.
And I see this happen a lot with like children, like we force them to apologize. We can't really like force them, they still have the choice to like open their face or not and make the noises. But we sort of like extort them to by threatening punishments, right?
We can like demand and extort apologies from other people. We can like threaten consequences if we don't get apologies. I don't think that's a great plan, it's just something you literally can do. But if you really want someone to apologize to you, I think the first thing I would just ask yourself is like why? What do you think you're going to get? What is it about their apology that is desirable to you?
Is it that you want to believe that they're sorry? Is it that you want to be able to believe that they know that their behavior was inappropriate? And if those are the things like why? Why, why, why, why, why? What do you want to have happen? Or do you even care about the apology at all or are you actually just more interested in a conversation? Like are you interested in understanding why they did what they did?
I think usually when we want an apology, it's because we think someone else behaved badly, right? So we want them to indicate remorse for that. And I think that does make sense in some ways. And I think it's what we're deeply socialized as children, again, people were probably making you apologize a lot or extorting apologies from you a lot when you were a child. So we think it's like the appropriate behavior.
But I think it's much more interesting to think about what you actually want to have happen. Do you actually want to feel reconnected to that person? Do you actually want to trust that person and right now you sort of don't trust them? Do you actually want to understand why they did the thing because that's going to help you think about whether you want to have continued relationship with them?
And obviously, I can't answer these questions for you. Only you can know. But I think they're worth you digging into when there's something where you really feel like you are owed an apology, or you really think you can't move on until you get one. I think that these are questions to dig into.
And then because we can't control other people, I think the question is, like, if the other person doesn't volunteer an apology to you, what do you want to do? And how do you want to go about creating whatever it is you desire in the situation, right? So if someone did something and they didn't apologize to you, do you want to reach out to them and have a conversation about it? Do you want to create connection with them and create curiosity to try and understand what happened there?
I think so often we want a certain kind of thing, we want a certain kind of experience, we want a certain kind of relationship and then we just like sit around and wait for it to happen, right? We want a certain kind of work experience is another one. And then we try to like, we either try to force it or we sit around and wait for it to happen versus thinking about like, how can I create what I want in a way that's not about forcing?
So it's not about like, “Oh, I'm going to make him say he's sorry to me.” Instead of like, oh, I'm going to make him say he’s sorry to me, it's like, well, what do I actually want here? What I actually want here is to feel connected and I want to understand what happened. So how do I create connection and understanding? And is that even something I can create with the other party in this case, right?
And sometimes it's not, right? Sometimes the person you're mad at and you want an apology from is never going to do it, like they're never going to talk to you again. Or sometimes the person you're mad at and want an apology from his dead, right? Or sometimes the person you're mad at and want an apology from, sometimes it's not a person, right?
Sometimes you're like, I'm just mad at the world and I want an apology from like the whole world. And that's probably not going to happen either. But you can think about like, what is it that I want to have happen? And what's the version of it I can have? And how can I create it for myself?
And there are a few steps that I've seen work really wonderfully for this if you want to have a conversation with the person that you would like an apology from. Or it might not even be you want an apology from them, it's just like you feel like there's been conflict or you want to address something that's not working for you.
I think these four steps come from a book, but I actually don't know what the book is. And the reason I know about these four steps is because someone used them on me once and it was actually one of the most beautiful, incredible experiences of my life. Which is saying a lot considering someone was basically telling me, “Hey, you did this thing, and it was not cool to me.” Right?
Like they were calling me in about a way I behaved and when I reviewed that way I behaved I was like, ‘Oh yeah, I agree. That was not in line with who I want to be as a person.” And we were able to have like this incredibly beautiful conversation. And I expressed that to them, I was like, “This is the fucking coolest thing that's ever happened.” And then that's when they told me that they used these four steps they had learned about.
And so I don't know who to attribute these to, I'm not going to attribute them to the person who did this to me because I don't want to call them out. Not that it would be calling them out, but like that's private. But it's a wonderful person and they learned these from someone else, who I think learned them from someone else, who I think learned them from a book. But again, I don't know what the book is.
And the steps are, one, see possible good intent and don't move to the next step until you can get there. Two, say where the hurt was. Three, find a similar goal and state that. Four, ask a question. And I just really love these.
And I think they actually marry really well with the idea of the compliment sandwich or the feedback sandwich, this idea that we've talked about before, where you first say something that's true, but that's either like gratitude, or a compliment, or like an expression of belief in the other person. And then you explain what didn't work. And then you draw it back together by like, you know, in this case, it's kind of like it could be like explaining what your vision is.
So you're demonstrating that you care about the other person and you're willing to see the wholeness of their humanity and that they probably weren't trying to hurt your feelings. And then you say what the hurt was. And then you bring it back into the positive by stating the similar goal. And I think that's sort of like linguistically putting yourself on the same side as the other person.
And what that does is it sets up like, this isn't me versus you. This isn't me versus you, this isn't good versus bad. This is like, hey, a thing happened, and I want to talk about it. And I think we have a similar goal, and can we move forward together on this?
Here's the thing, when we're upset and we want someone to apologize, I think often what we want is for someone else to take all the credit for all the shit that's not working. And I get that impulse. Trust me, I get it deeply. But I don't think it makes sense and I don't think it works. And I think it puts us in a really disempowered position, right?
It puts us in this position of like I need someone else to take ownership so I can feel better. And I'm just not a fan of anything that depends on anyone else taking ownership for you to get to feel better because I am a fan of you feeling better already, right? You getting to feel better now. I'm a fan of you feeling powerful. I'm a fan of you feeling like you have the capacity and ability to create a life that delights you, even as you interact with other humans that you can't control, right?
And I think that can also give you some empathy for like if you're considering apologizing to someone else, they may be feeling that way. They may be feeling like they want you to take credit for their feelings. And you can also still decline to do that. You can apologize for what you did if it doesn't align with your values, or if it does align but you want to apologize anyways, whatever you want. And you can apologize in a way that doesn't take ownership for their feelings.
I think both can be true, that you can do something that doesn't align with who you want to be. And also, you don't have to take ownership for the thoughts that they thought about that thing. You can be understanding that they have those thoughts because a lot of us often do. But you don't have to take ownership of them.
Okay, so that's my breakdown on apologies, and apologizing, and being apologized to. and wanting other people to apologize. And I hope that was really helpful for you.
And if that's something that you want to dive more deeply into and think about like how you use coaching in a way to help you create that satisfying as fuck life and career, while also still interacting with all the other people in the world who don't know about coaching and don't think in these frameworks, then a great way to do that is to work with me one on one or in SAF. And in order to do that you can grab a consult call on my website.
All right, that's what I have for y'all today. Have a great day, bye.
Thank you for listening to Love Your Job Before You Leave It. We'll have another episode for you next week. And in the meantime, if you're feeling super fired up, head on over to korilinn.com for more guidance and resources.
You are listening to Love Your Job Before You Leave It, the podcast for ambitious, high-achieving women who are ready to stop feeling stressed about work and kiss burnout goodbye forever. Whether you’re starting a business or staying in your day job, this show will give you the coaching and guidance you need to start loving your work today. Here’s your host, Career Coach, Kori Linn.
Hello y'all, and happy Wednesday. I'm so excited to get to spend some time with you today and to talk about apologies. But before we get into that, I want to tell you all about something else.
So if you listened a few weeks ago we had the episode about emotional calluses, where I told the story from my own life recently about how my brain reacted when I got the feedback that I asked for from my wonderful SAF clients, my Satisfied As Fuck clients. And I warned them that that podcast would come out and that they were going to kind of get to see behind the curtain of my own experience.
And when it did come out, one of them told me that while they loved the podcast as usual, they felt sad for me, right? They felt sad for me because I had some difficult feelings. And I wrote something back to that client and I wanted to share it with all of y'all because I think it's really impactful. And it felt impactful to me, and I wrote it, so here we go.
I wrote to that client, “Honestly, I’ve felt humiliated a lot in my life, as probably most humans have. And it is the pleasure and the delight of my life that now I can do something interesting and useful with that feeling of humiliation when it comes up for me. Back in the day, before I was a coach, when a big feeling would come up, it was just about me trying to find a way to live and keep going, right?”
And I'm going to ad-lib here for a little bit, like me trying to find a way to just get through that negative emotion. Trying to just figure out how to get on with my life, how to navigate the ups and downs of having an emotion. And that was a lot. That was hard. That was really hard for me back then. But now when a big feeling comes up, it's kind of an adventure, right?
I actually wrote in the original post to the client, “It's such an adventure.” And it is. And then I wrote, “That,” which like it being an adventure, “doesn't mean I always enjoy it.” Right? Having a big feeling, like having humiliation, not a super fun time. Not as fun as an ice cream cone. But it's an adventure in its own right, right?
Big feelings are a different experience for me now. And if people want to feel sad for me, when I share my experience of having a big feeling, I get that. A lot of us as humans, we do feel sad when other humans experience big feelings, especially when it's a human we care about. And also what I want my client to know and what I want y'all to know is, interestingly, I'm not sad for me. I'm not sad for me that I felt that humiliation.
Again, was it super fun or easy to feel it when it came up? No, it felt fucking terrible. But I'm not sad for me that it happened. I'm happy for me that it happened. And I'm happy that I've built a mindset, and a skill set, and a life, and a career where I get to spend time with my own emotions and to make meaningful, beautiful things out of them that help other people navigate their human experience too
To me, that's so much the essence of the work that I get to do. And I love that added layer. I love the added meaning, I love the added depth. And I'm very pragmatic in some ways, so I just love the usefulness. I can see the beauty in just being willing to have my emotional experience, whatever it is, like I think that's an incredibly beautiful thing.
But the idea that I can take my emotional experiences and, first of all, get to know myself better, get to love myself more deeply through them. But also I can make meaningful shit to help other humans. Because in this world humans are having a lot of suffering, right? Like we have amazing spectacular things in this world also, and a lot of suffering. And even like when we have a lot going well for us, we have a lot of suffering.
Living a human life means engaging with the full spectrum of emotion. And that's true for me, even as a coach with all my coaching tools, and it's true for my clients, and it's true for everyone else. And so when I get to take my experience of that and make something meaningful, and a gift for the world, and something that's going to help other humans, like first of all get through their lives, I think about that person I used to be who was just trying to get through it. I'm going to help other people get through it.
And not only do I get to help people get through it, but I get to help people blow their own fucking minds with what's possible for them. I get to help them enjoy their existing life more than they ever thought they could. And I get to help them make big and small changes that create their satisfying as fuck life, right?
And what that might look like for one person is like leaving their job and starting a business. And what it might look like for another person is staying in their job and having a much better experience of it. Or for someone else it might look like falling back in love with their significant other. Or for someone else it might mean cultivating a different relationship with their parent, which may be something that they didn't even think was possible.
There are so many things we can do and so many ways we can change our lives when we do this work. And the fact that my own emotional experiences get to help with that, it just is really incredible. It is, to me, the privilege of a lifetime to get to do that. The fact that this gets to be my job still blows me away.
And when I think about helping other people cultivate a satisfying as fuck life and career, I have a human brain too, right? So sometimes my brain is like, “Who the fuck do you think you are to do that?” And then I look at my life and career and I'm like, “Holy shit, I have built a business where I get to do satisfying as fuck, to me, work. And I make a bunch of money doing it. And I get to use my money to vote my values in the world. And I get to have free time in my life because that's how my business is set up.”
And it's like all these ripples in my life and into the lives of others. And also, it is satisfying as fuck. And if that's possible for me, I believe it's possible for you. And it might surprise you how it looks for you, right? I think when I was younger I thought there were so many things that needed to change. And I changed a lot of them, right?
I quit my corporate job and launched this business, and I built it up. And some of them I didn't change, right? Some of the things I thought needed to change, didn't need to. And when I changed other things, they stopped being a problem, or when I changed my thoughts about them they stopped being a problem.
So that's just something I want you to know, is that like, yeah, being a human is a wild experience. Having the full spectrum of human emotion is a wild experience. Not all of it's enjoyable, and it can all be a beautiful part of your life. It's okay if you don't think it's all beautiful, but I also want you to know that you could get to a place where you do think it's all beautiful, if that's what you want to do. Or that it's all meaningful, maybe beautiful is the wrong word here.
And I just, I really want to impress upon you that you can have a satisfying as fuck life, and it doesn't mean things will be perfect, right? Again, I was just talking about like I have a satisfying as fuck life and I also felt massive humiliation very, very recently, as you're all deeply aware of.
So I'm not trying to sell you on the idea that a satisfying as fuck life means you always feel perfect and safe and happy. That's like not, that's not what it's going to be like. But it can be wildly delicious, and it can be beyond your wildest dreams.
And let me just say right now before we get into talking about apologies, if that has you salivating, if that sounds delicious as fuck to you to have that satisfying as fuck life, I really deeply invite you and encourage you to come get on a consult call for the Satisfied As Fuck January cohort, because that's the exact work we do in that program.
And having done that work with the current group for a few months now, I can just say like doing that work in a group is just exceedingly powerful. And the realizations and breakthroughs and insights that are happening in that group, they're always sort of like ricocheting and piggybacking off of each other. And the collective growth in there is absolutely breathtaking.
And if you want to do that work in a community while getting to know other people and supporting them and being supported by them, and having your mind blown not only by the coaching you receive, but by the coaching they receive, that's the place to do it. If you are looking for more of a personalized, private coaching space, I do still have a few slots for one-on-one coaching. And I welcome you to sign up for a consult for that if that sounds more your speed.
All right y'all, let's talk about apologies. This actually came up because we were talking about it in SAF. And they invited me to do a podcast on apologies and I was like, “Fuck yeah, I'm going to do that.”
And so basically I think the original question was like, how do you know when to apologize? But I also want to talk about what about when you want someone else to apologize, or someone else does apologize, or you think they should, but they don't, et cetera, et cetera.
So first of all, when should you apologize? Okay, so the first thing I'm going to say about that is I don't think there's a should. I don't think there's a right or a wrong. I don't think it's like these are the times when we apologize, and these are the times when we don't. That's not what we do here. We're always returning your attention to your own authority and your own agency.
You get to decide when you want to apologize. And you get to decide when you don't want to. That being said, I'm still going to break it down for you. So the reason that the person asked this is because in coaching that is thought work oriented, which my coaching is mindset oriented, there is this idea that thoughts cause feelings.
We talk about this sometimes on the podcast, but I'm going to sort of like play it from the beginning, or explain it from the beginning in case anyone's new to this episode. And because I think a review of these concepts will be useful.
Okay, so in mindset oriented coaching there is the idea that thoughts cause feelings, feelings cause actions, actions cause results. And there's this idea that circumstances, that is like whatever neutral facts are happening, those are not responsible for our feelings. Because in between the circumstance and our feelings there’s always the layer of our thoughts and the way we're interpreting things.
So through this framework there's the idea that if I do something, I am the circumstance in someone else's situation. So they're going to use their thoughts to determine their feelings to determine what actions they take to determine what results they create for themselves.
And so the person was asking like, if I can't create someone else's feelings, and only they can create their feelings with their own thoughts, then how do I know if I should apologize or not? How do I know when that makes sense or if it's appropriate, et cetera, et cetera?
Okay, so that's the basic idea is that thoughts cause feelings. So we can't cause each other's feelings. But sometimes other people are mad at us, and they think we should apologize. And sometimes we're mad at other people and we think they should apologize. So how do we explain all that?
Okay, so here's how I think about it. And you get to decide how you think about it, but this is how it breaks down for me. To me, the first thing for me to consider is, am I pleased with how I acted? So even if no one's mad at me, even if no one's angry or upset about my behavior, how do I feel about it? Am I good with it? Does it align with my values? Do I like it?
Now, me being a human and you being a human, a lot of times we do shit that we're not cool with. Like we do things that don't make sense to our own set of values. And there's a lot of reasons for this, right? Like one reason is that we have a lot of internalized social conditioning that plays out in how we think, feel and act about stuff.
And part of it's also because we're imperfect human beings and no matter how worthwhile our thoughts may be, no matter how worthwhile our values may be, no matter how like whatever our ideals might be, sometimes we choose to do other stuff. Or like sometimes we're like in a fight, flight, freeze, fawn, fit in stress response and we're acting that stress response out instead of thinking on purpose like, how do I want to handle this? Who do I want to be in this situation?
So again, the very first thing I think about is like, do I like who I was? Am I cool? Like does current me want to cosign what past me did? Do they feel super fucking good about it or are they like, “Oh,” or are they like, “Oh no.” There have been so many things in my life, y'all, that I have done that afterwards I'm like, “Oh no.”
And especially the older I get and the more I study things like anti-racism, and the more I study things like patriarchy, and the more I learn about socialization and culture, the more I look back at my past and feel that like, oh no feeling of like, oh, I've done so much shit in my life in the past, that doesn't align with my current ideals, my current values, and who I currently want to be as a person.
So I also think that's an interesting thing to add, is like sometimes you're going to discover something, like suddenly your brain will come on and be like, “Oh, 20 years ago you did this thing.” You haven't thought about the thing maybe in 20 years, but it’s like you have changed, now your brain will bring this up. It's like this is a discrepancy between who you want to be and who you've been.
So I just am going to go ahead and say for just a minute, I think that's really interesting to notice. And you can still do apologies for 20 years ago. And also you can choose not to. That would be like a separate little breakdown of when it makes sense to and when it makes sense not to. But ultimately I would say do whatever you want for whatever reason you want.
Like if you want to apologize even though it's been 20 years, then you can. And if you don't, I don't think you ever have to. I think that's a very personal choice about if you want to or not.
Okay, so to go back though, it's like does the thing you did, or didn't do, or said, or didn't say or whatever. Does it align with who you want to be? If it doesn't, is there someone who was impacted by the thing you did or didn't do or said or didn't say that you would like to apologize for that impact?
So, again, to circle back to the mindset thought work angle of this, it's just because you did or said something and someone else experienced an impact, doesn't mean you created their feelings. But you may be able to see like, well I did or said this, and their feelings were hurt. And I would like to apologize because their feelings were hurt and because this thing doesn't actually align to who I want to be as a person.
And maybe it doesn't matter who created their feelings, if their feelings are hurt and you don't like how you acted, you can just apologize for that. We can just apologize. And apology is also not a responsibility, right? When we apologize we're not necessarily saying, “Well, since I'm choosing to apologize, I'm acknowledging that I created all of your feelings.” That's not generally how we apologize. I mean, I don't know what you're doing, but that's not how I apologize.
When I apologize, it tends to sound like, hey, I've thought about it and I don't like how I acted there, or that's not who I want to be as a person, or I noticed that this is the impact that you're experiencing and I'm sorry, right? So a lot of my apologies would be oriented towards what I did that didn't make sense to me.
Now, here's the thing, sometimes you're going to do something and you're going to review it and you're going to be like, “Yeah, no, I feel good about that.” And someone else is going to be upset with you. And then you get to choose like how do you want to handle that? Do you want to apologize? And if you do want to apologize, how do you want to word that?
And you can do whatever you want here, right? Just because, if you're a coach-y person like me, just because we have these ideas in coaching like you can't cause anyone else's feelings doesn't mean you can't say to somebody, “I'm sorry, I hurt your feelings.” You're still allowed to do that.
I think sometimes when people learn about like coaching stuff they're like, “Oh, the coaching police will come to my house if I take credit for someone else's feelings or give them credit for mine.” The coaching police are not coming to your house.
And also, I think when people learn about stuff like coaching, it's like a very different way of thinking. It's a different perspective, and as we talk about all the time here, it's an incredibly useful perspective. But a lot of people don't share it, and don't understand it, and don't want to learn it from you, right? And they don't have to have the understanding of coaching in order for you to interact with them. I mean, if you only want to interact with other people who do coaching, there are a lot of us, and you can totally choose that.
A lot of people think that's going to be easier and make their life way better. But it doesn't necessarily because people who know about coaching are also still just humans with brains living a 50/50 life, having good days, having bad days, and having a lot of emotions, right? Just like we talked about earlier, I've done a fuckload of coaching and I had an extremely intense experience of humiliation. So it's all just humans, y’all.
Okay, so thing number one to consider is like, do I like the way I acted, spoke, whatever? If I don't, do I want to say something about that out loud to another human person? If I do want to say something out loud or in writing about that to another human person, how do I want to do that? Like what is the wording that feels good to me? What is the wording that makes sense with my experience of both what I did and who I want to be? Or what I didn't do, right, et cetera, et cetera.
And again, you may up-level into a new way of thinking or a new way of understanding the world and realize you did something 20 years ago that you want to address. That may happen, and then you also get to choose like, how far back do I want to go?
Listen, to be very frank, the more I learn there are so many things that I did that don't align with my values, like so many. Like probably hundreds, tens, dozens, hundreds of things. And I'm probably not going to go back and apologize to people for all of them, especially because some of those people I don't even like, I'm like, who even are they? Like how would I even find them? Could I stalk them on Facebook? Probably, but I'm probably not going to.
And so when it comes to stuff like that, if there's a lot, I may actually do an internal experience where I do an apology that no one else actually hears. I could like write an apology and I could light it on fire. I could kind of say an apology to the universe. I don't talk about the universe a lot on this podcast, but I do think about there being like a consciousness out there that I kind of think about and talk to.
And so if I think I can't get a hold of the people or I'm going to choose not to because it might be weird if after 20 years I suddenly started talking to them to apologize about something that they maybe remember or maybe don't, like I may kind of do what I would consider sending that apology through the universe and just like put it out there. Because I can't actually impact them anyways, necessarily, right?
As we talked about, their thoughts do create their feelings. But I can still impact myself. And I think sometimes when we choose to apologize the person we're actually impacting the most as ourselves, right? We think we're doing it for the other person, we think we're doing it, so they forgive us, we think we're doing it to explain to them.
But I think sometimes the person who's most impacted by when you choose to apologize is you because it's you holding yourself accountable to saying like, I'm not perfect and that's okay. And I can do something about it, and I can have a conversation with a person. And I would even go further, and I don't think most people do this in their apologies. But I would go further to say, and I can love myself. I can love myself even though I made a decision that I don't want to think is good.
There may be things you've done that you want to think are bad. There may be things you've done that you want to think are wrong. And I think that's okay. And I think sometimes we're not willing to let ourselves see those things because we think then I have to think that I'm bad, then I have to think that I'm wrong.
And so I guess the episode within the episode here is like, you're allowed to see things you've done that don't live up to your ideals, and you're also still allowed to love yourself. And I think for a lot of people that's a really hard idea because a lot of people have deeply entrenched black and white thinking where everything is either or. Either I'm a good person who does good things or I'm a bad person who does bad things. Either everything I do is right and great, or everything I do is wrong and terrible.
And I don't think that's true and, two, I don't think it's realistic. Like humans live incredibly long lives and we're incredibly complex. And we have like these wild brains, and then we have all this socialization. I just don't think it makes sense to have that all or nothing thinking about ourselves and our lives or anything really, or not most things anyways.
So to circle that back to where that came from, a little mini inside step during your apology can also be like this is a way that you reckon with yourself about your lovable imperfection.
So to circle back to another thing we touched on already, what if someone else really wants an apology from you? Listen, sometimes they might, they might really want an apology from you. And sometimes they might really want an apology, and you might agree and want to give one. And sometimes they might really want an apology and you might not agree, and you might not want to give one, and you don't fucking have to.
Especially as we like unlearn our socialization, and like living in a white supremacist, patriarchal, ableist, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, culture, as we unlearn those toxic isms there is going to be stuff that we're going to do that other people are not going to like. And they're going to find it upsetting and offensive because it does not go along with the cultural messaging and the social conditioning that so many of us have been taught. And people are not going to like it when we don't follow that.
And that's an example where I'm like, yeah, they might not like it and that doesn't mean I'm going to apologize for it. So there are times when people will be upset with me. But I will look back at my own what I said, what I didn't say, what I did, what I didn't do, and I might decide I'm good with all of that.
Now, I can still have a conversation with the person, I can still be kind and empathic and connected if I want to, if that's what I want to choose with that person. And that might look like saying something like, hey, I can see that you're having big feelings about what happened. And I've reviewed what I said, did, et cetera, and it actually does align with my values. And I'm still interested in connecting with you. Is there a way we could still connect?
And we could maybe even talk about this and maybe if I explain to you where I'm coming from and hear more about where you're coming from, maybe we can find a deeper layer where we can agree, et cetera, et cetera. I don't know exactly what that's going to look like. And there may also be people in your life where you're just like, “No, I'm not going to apologize and I'm not going to have a conversation with you about it.” That's a totally viable option as well.
Now, me personally, I tend to have, like a chosen orientation towards connection and towards curiosity. And especially as someone who works as a coach, oftentimes I want to understand other people. I also think I want to be understood by other people.
Now, the reality is, sometimes that's not going to happen for me. And I can try to force them to understand me through either trying to explain what I did, or try to force them to love and accept me through apologizing. But what I've come to see is that you really can't force people to, like, love or understand you.
So you just get to decide who you want to be and how you want to show up. And whether that includes trying to connect with them for yourself, for your own reasons, not for them. Because again, you cannot control their feelings. And they might say, “I need you to apologize.” And you might apologize, and they might still be mad. They might say, “I need you to apologize,” and you might not apologize, and they might actually feel fine and come around. We can't control other people.
I do think we're accountable for our actions and our inactions. We're accountable for what we say and don't say. And some percentage of what we do, don't do, say, don't say will probably horrify and disappoint us based on our own values because, again, we're imperfect humans. Lovable, but imperfect humans.
But ultimately, no matter how we choose to show up, we cannot control what other people think about us, we cannot control how they feel towards us. We can decide to do what they're asking us to do, you're always allowed to do that. Like if someone wants an apology and you don't really feel like you did anything wrong, but you want to apologize and just move on with it, like you're allowed to. That's always your choice.
Again, you have the ultimate authority. You have the ultimate agency. But even that, even when we do exactly what people ask us to do, it still doesn't control their feelings. Because sometimes we do exactly what people ask us to do and then they're fucking mad or disappointed for some other reason.
And listen, I just know I've tried enough in my life to control other people through my behavior, what I said, didn't say, did, didn't do, and it just doesn't work. And it usually results in me feeling like a contorted pretzel and then being super resentful of like everyone.
That doesn't align with my values. That's just not what I want to do, it's not who I want to be. It's not the gift I want to give the world. It's not the version of myself I want to give the world, to spend all my time trying to like control other people. So instead, I think it makes a lot more sense for me to think about who I want to be, and then be that person with as much courage, love, and connection as I can. And to be checking in with myself about if shit aligns with my values or not because, for sure, some of its not going to.
And then from there, what do I want to do about that? Do I want to apologize to the person? Do I want to send an apology like through the universe? Do I want to do something else that I haven't mentioned here? There's all kinds of things you could do. Don't be limited by the limited amount of things I can come up with, you could do all kinds of different stuff.
Okay, so that's like the basic rundown on apologizing. Now let's talk about being apologized to or not being apologized to, as will sometimes happen. So remember, again, we talked about mindset, we talked about coaching. Other people can't create your feelings, you can't create their feelings.
So if something happens, and you want someone else to apologize to you, you can invite them to. You can request that they do. You can express to them that you would like an apology and why, but you can't force them to. I mean, in some situations you sort of can demand that they do.
And I see this happen a lot with like children, like we force them to apologize. We can't really like force them, they still have the choice to like open their face or not and make the noises. But we sort of like extort them to by threatening punishments, right?
We can like demand and extort apologies from other people. We can like threaten consequences if we don't get apologies. I don't think that's a great plan, it's just something you literally can do. But if you really want someone to apologize to you, I think the first thing I would just ask yourself is like why? What do you think you're going to get? What is it about their apology that is desirable to you?
Is it that you want to believe that they're sorry? Is it that you want to be able to believe that they know that their behavior was inappropriate? And if those are the things like why? Why, why, why, why, why? What do you want to have happen? Or do you even care about the apology at all or are you actually just more interested in a conversation? Like are you interested in understanding why they did what they did?
I think usually when we want an apology, it's because we think someone else behaved badly, right? So we want them to indicate remorse for that. And I think that does make sense in some ways. And I think it's what we're deeply socialized as children, again, people were probably making you apologize a lot or extorting apologies from you a lot when you were a child. So we think it's like the appropriate behavior.
But I think it's much more interesting to think about what you actually want to have happen. Do you actually want to feel reconnected to that person? Do you actually want to trust that person and right now you sort of don't trust them? Do you actually want to understand why they did the thing because that's going to help you think about whether you want to have continued relationship with them?
And obviously, I can't answer these questions for you. Only you can know. But I think they're worth you digging into when there's something where you really feel like you are owed an apology, or you really think you can't move on until you get one. I think that these are questions to dig into.
And then because we can't control other people, I think the question is, like, if the other person doesn't volunteer an apology to you, what do you want to do? And how do you want to go about creating whatever it is you desire in the situation, right? So if someone did something and they didn't apologize to you, do you want to reach out to them and have a conversation about it? Do you want to create connection with them and create curiosity to try and understand what happened there?
I think so often we want a certain kind of thing, we want a certain kind of experience, we want a certain kind of relationship and then we just like sit around and wait for it to happen, right? We want a certain kind of work experience is another one. And then we try to like, we either try to force it or we sit around and wait for it to happen versus thinking about like, how can I create what I want in a way that's not about forcing?
So it's not about like, “Oh, I'm going to make him say he's sorry to me.” Instead of like, oh, I'm going to make him say he’s sorry to me, it's like, well, what do I actually want here? What I actually want here is to feel connected and I want to understand what happened. So how do I create connection and understanding? And is that even something I can create with the other party in this case, right?
And sometimes it's not, right? Sometimes the person you're mad at and you want an apology from is never going to do it, like they're never going to talk to you again. Or sometimes the person you're mad at and want an apology from his dead, right? Or sometimes the person you're mad at and want an apology from, sometimes it's not a person, right?
Sometimes you're like, I'm just mad at the world and I want an apology from like the whole world. And that's probably not going to happen either. But you can think about like, what is it that I want to have happen? And what's the version of it I can have? And how can I create it for myself?
And there are a few steps that I've seen work really wonderfully for this if you want to have a conversation with the person that you would like an apology from. Or it might not even be you want an apology from them, it's just like you feel like there's been conflict or you want to address something that's not working for you.
I think these four steps come from a book, but I actually don't know what the book is. And the reason I know about these four steps is because someone used them on me once and it was actually one of the most beautiful, incredible experiences of my life. Which is saying a lot considering someone was basically telling me, “Hey, you did this thing, and it was not cool to me.” Right?
Like they were calling me in about a way I behaved and when I reviewed that way I behaved I was like, ‘Oh yeah, I agree. That was not in line with who I want to be as a person.” And we were able to have like this incredibly beautiful conversation. And I expressed that to them, I was like, “This is the fucking coolest thing that's ever happened.” And then that's when they told me that they used these four steps they had learned about.
And so I don't know who to attribute these to, I'm not going to attribute them to the person who did this to me because I don't want to call them out. Not that it would be calling them out, but like that's private. But it's a wonderful person and they learned these from someone else, who I think learned them from someone else, who I think learned them from a book. But again, I don't know what the book is.
And the steps are, one, see possible good intent and don't move to the next step until you can get there. Two, say where the hurt was. Three, find a similar goal and state that. Four, ask a question. And I just really love these.
And I think they actually marry really well with the idea of the compliment sandwich or the feedback sandwich, this idea that we've talked about before, where you first say something that's true, but that's either like gratitude, or a compliment, or like an expression of belief in the other person. And then you explain what didn't work. And then you draw it back together by like, you know, in this case, it's kind of like it could be like explaining what your vision is.
So you're demonstrating that you care about the other person and you're willing to see the wholeness of their humanity and that they probably weren't trying to hurt your feelings. And then you say what the hurt was. And then you bring it back into the positive by stating the similar goal. And I think that's sort of like linguistically putting yourself on the same side as the other person.
And what that does is it sets up like, this isn't me versus you. This isn't me versus you, this isn't good versus bad. This is like, hey, a thing happened, and I want to talk about it. And I think we have a similar goal, and can we move forward together on this?
Here's the thing, when we're upset and we want someone to apologize, I think often what we want is for someone else to take all the credit for all the shit that's not working. And I get that impulse. Trust me, I get it deeply. But I don't think it makes sense and I don't think it works. And I think it puts us in a really disempowered position, right?
It puts us in this position of like I need someone else to take ownership so I can feel better. And I'm just not a fan of anything that depends on anyone else taking ownership for you to get to feel better because I am a fan of you feeling better already, right? You getting to feel better now. I'm a fan of you feeling powerful. I'm a fan of you feeling like you have the capacity and ability to create a life that delights you, even as you interact with other humans that you can't control, right?
And I think that can also give you some empathy for like if you're considering apologizing to someone else, they may be feeling that way. They may be feeling like they want you to take credit for their feelings. And you can also still decline to do that. You can apologize for what you did if it doesn't align with your values, or if it does align but you want to apologize anyways, whatever you want. And you can apologize in a way that doesn't take ownership for their feelings.
I think both can be true, that you can do something that doesn't align with who you want to be. And also, you don't have to take ownership for the thoughts that they thought about that thing. You can be understanding that they have those thoughts because a lot of us often do. But you don't have to take ownership of them.
Okay, so that's my breakdown on apologies, and apologizing, and being apologized to. and wanting other people to apologize. And I hope that was really helpful for you.
And if that's something that you want to dive more deeply into and think about like how you use coaching in a way to help you create that satisfying as fuck life and career, while also still interacting with all the other people in the world who don't know about coaching and don't think in these frameworks, then a great way to do that is to work with me one on one or in SAF. And in order to do that you can grab a consult call on my website.
All right, that's what I have for y'all today. Have a great day, bye.
Thank you for listening to Love Your Job Before You Leave It. We'll have another episode for you next week. And in the meantime, if you're feeling super fired up, head on over to korilinn.com for more guidance and resources.
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