How To Do A Sincere Apology
Not A Random Pressured-By-Peers Half-Hearted Mandatory B.S.
6 min readMay 12, 2021
The Starters
- Setting Ego Aside.
We’re terrible at apologizing because we have an innate need to preserve our positive self image; we don’t want to feel bad about ourselves. Ryan Holiday, the author of Ego Is The Enemy, described ego as “unhealthy belief in our own importance,” so when we liberate ourselves from the ego, we find the objectivity we need to correct the course. - Disarming your defenses.
Psychologist Dr. K. Schumann on her research found that affirming self-worth eliminate perceived threat to self-image. Before stepping up to apologize, have a little chat with oneself about how this mistake was a momentary lapse and not a shameful long-term value judgment. Thus, instead of delivering a defensive false confidence in a meaningless mockery, it is better to reassure ourselves that dignity will not be broken by apologizing. - Understanding your mistake.
Realizing, admitting, and taking personal accountability for your mistake need certain amount of courage and honesty from a responsible person. Dr. Guy Winch wrote people who can’t own their errors as the ones who “need to warp their very perception of reality and challenge obvious facts in order to defend their not being wrong in the first place.” Nobody becomes less trustworthy by making a mistake, they become more trusted — because of how they’re held accountable and managed the settlement. - Having a plan.
A Good Apology writer, Dr. Molly Howes, stated “the words “I’m sorry” are not a magic incantation that instantly inspires faith in someone” and the same words are “rarely the first part of a good apology.” Let the wronged person know how we intend to fix the situation in a step-by-step trust-building manner.
The Don’ts
- Unnecessarily Long Explanation.
Performance apology, where we’re apologizing only because someone else suggested it, usually contains excessively boring message that may show self-humility but doesn’t quite convey clear nor concrete words to make amends but rather assume how the hurt party must have been feeling. The implication is that it would have never happened otherwise and becomes “worse than no apology at all, as they add insult to the original injury” said bestselling author Dr. Dan Neuharth. - Misplacing The Blame.
Often times, an apology sounds like, “I’m sorry if I hurt you,” or, “I’m sorry that you feel that way,” or simply, “I regret,” to condition the apology and imply the other person (or another related party) is the one triggering the mess. Gaslighting and casting doubts onto the situation in order to “minimize the other person’s feelings and experience”—author and therapist Nicole McCance, can and will backfire further from the solution. - Justifying The Behavior.
Delivering phrases such as, “I was just kidding,” or the famous political leaders passive-voice, “mistakes were made,” or heavier, “God makes nobody perfect; myself and you included,” calls to argue that hurtful behavior was okay because it was harmless; it is simply the way to dodge, dissociate, and disconnect one self from the errors. Any excuses are weak excuses, Benjamin Franklin pointed out, “never ruin an apology with an excuse.” - Shifting The Topic.
Connecting our current wrong-doings with how we’re treated the same in the past — how one mends their trauma, bends it, and throws the exact same thing to another person — doesn’t only speak to our character, it’s proof of our character and how we (don’t) learn and grow as a human being. Instead of drawing the attention to own issue, where the subject is reversed to us, take an example from rapper Jaime Meline who “…leave the people I encounter with the feeling that they have been respected and treated with warmth and appreciation” when validating the hurt person.
The Dos
- Listening Patiently.
Author, Dr. Harriet Lerner said, “no apology will have meaning if we haven’t listened carefully to the hurt party’s anger and pain.” Listening, for a very long time, has been one of the key methods that can decide a situation. By the same token, it helps people understand others better as we must first care about the hurt person’s experience and feeling. - Being Empathic.
An apology is essentially acknowledging that our actions caused suffering to someone else. The easiest way to recognize the importance of their emotion is to imagine we are the person going through the problem right now, shared Susan Sarandon, Oscar-winning actress and activist, “when you start to develop your powers of empathy and imagination, the whole world opens up to you.” By trying to understand things from their perspective, resolution of a conflict will help both parties moving forward. - Expressing an Actual Regret.
It is helpful for the hurt person to know that we feel bad about causing them pain, and want to take it back if we could. This needs to be stressed enough: they felt awful, and would like to know that we feel even more terrible for what we did to the point where we wish we hadn’t done the damage. However, if we felt zero guilt over what’s been done, this part wouldn’t work, as journalist Lyn Nofziger famously quoted, “I cannot show remorse because I do not believe I am guilty.” - Asking for forgiveness.
The secret ingredient to sincerely offering an apology is the intention — this pledge is not about us, it’s about whoever we hurt. Youtuber Anna Akana on her how to spot an emotionally manipulative apology video criticized, “an apology with no intention or action or reflection to fix the root of a behavioral problem is basically taking ‘an L’ so the other person shuts the hell up.” Untrue meaning is the same as denying the repair attempt and might not produce the results we want, lacking any impact in the process.
The Aftermath
- Managing Our Expectations.
According to Communication Trainer Joanne Lescher, “the biggest apology misconception is that people think saying “I’m sorry” should immediately result in the other person accepting their remorse.” Even if we apologize sincerely and correctly, it doesn’t erase what’s been done, and the hurt party has prerogative that allowed to refuse to let go any apologies they deem inadequate. - Offering A Helping Hand.
Sure, nobody knows what’s really inside our heart, but providing a more solid solution ensures the hurt person is respected and that the apology is not just a passive-aggressive tick we can check and say goodbye afterwards. Avoidance will never give a sense of relief needed for restoring both parties’ trust since we must deal with uncomfortable situation to reach a certain level of healing — as Japanese musician Yoko Ono claimed, “healing yourself is connected with healing others.” - Learning From The Mistakes.
As complicated as it may seem, apologies are down to two concepts: acceptance and responsibility. Conflict is inevitable and we’re all bound to mess up one way or another yet admitting you’ve made a mistake “is a crucial step in learning, growing, and improving yourself” as written in Scott Berkun’s essay collection, Mindfire. Take the correct, valuable life-lesson so that the progress in the journey of becoming wiser accelerates. - Changing For The Better.
Think carefully about this last, and most vital, step — as empty promises will do more harm than good and showing no integrity in our part. One option to do a restorative reparations is to give a chance to get right what the person got wrong the first time, possibly a do-over in collaboration. Making it right requires us to put our words or intentions into action, that we honor this commitment to prove our trustworthiness and accountability, that all the fuss is genuine after all. “It is wrong and immoral to seek to escape the consequences of one’s acts” — Mahatma Gandhi.
