More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Read between
October 28 - November 8, 2023
Sometimes, the failure of the other person to apologize when they should hits us harder than the deed they should apologize for.
Yet both personal integrity and success in relationships depend on our ability to take responsibility for our part (and only our part) even when the other person is being a jerk.
It doesn’t matter if the statement you make after the “but” is true—it makes the apology false.
The apology is the chance you get to establish the ground for future communication.
“I’m sorry you feel that way” is another common pseudo-apology. A true apology keeps the focus on your actions—and not on the other person’s response.
The little word if also invites the other person to question their own reactions.
Another fine way to ruin an apology is to view your apology as an automatic ticket to forgiveness and redemption, that is, it’s really about you and your need for reassurance.
Part of a true apology is staying deeply curious about the hurt person’s experience rather than hijacking it with your own emotionality.
As the next chapter illustrates, high-stakes situations call for an apology that’s a long-distance run—one that may require us to sit on the hot seat and listen with an open heart to the anger of the wounded party on more than one occasion. There is no greater gift, or one more difficult to offer, than the gift of wholehearted listening to that sort of pain.
To listen with an open heart and ask questions to better help us understand the other person is a spiritual exercise, in the truest sense of the word.
A sincere apology means we are fully accountable for the part we are responsible for, and for only that.
Words of apology, no matter how sincere, will not heal a broken connection if we haven’t listened well to the hurt party’s anger and pain.
When our identity and sense of worth are at risk of being diminished or annihilated, we will not be able to offer a true apology and face all that the challenge of earning back trust entails. We are more likely to wrap ourselves in a blanket of rationalization, minimization, and denial in order to survive. Defensiveness is no longer merely a roadblock that we can observe and get past after we calm down and limber up the thinking part of our brain. When we have lost sight of our value and worth, defensiveness is where we live.
Most people who commit serious harm never get to the point where they can admit to their harmful actions, much less apologize and aim to repair them. Their shame leads to denial and self-deception that overrides their ability to orient toward reality. No person can be more honest with us than they can be with their own self.
Before you open up a conversation with a person who has harmed you, keep in mind that protecting yourself comes first. Reduce your expectations to zero for getting the response you want and deserve. Speak your truths because you need to speak for your own self—because this is the ground you want to stand on, irrespective of whatever response you receive. A heartfelt apology is unlikely to be forthcoming, now or ever.
No individual will feel accountable and genuinely remorseful—no matter how well you communicate—if doing so threatens to define him or her in an intolerable way. The other person’s willingness to own up to harmful deeds has nothing to do with how much she or he does or doesn’t love you. Rather, the capacity to take responsibility, feel empathy and remorse, and offer a meaningful apology rests on how much self-love and s...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
Don’t demand an apology. Requesting an apology is fine, but demanding one is counterproductive.
If the other person has pushed through his or her discomfort to do the right thing and apologize, we can push through our discomfort and say, “Thanks for the apology.” It’s important to resist the temptation to cancel the effort at repair that a genuine apology is.
The sincerity test of an apology is in the follow-up.
The courage and clarity to define our bottom line, which includes our needs and the limits of our tolerance, is at the heart of having both a relationship and a self.
But a true apology does not ask the other person to do anything—not even to forgive.
Letting go means protecting ourselves from the corrosive effects of staying stuck. Chronic anger and bitterness dissipate our energy and sap our creativity, to say nothing of ruining an otherwise good day. If nonproductive anger keeps us stuck in the past, we can’t fully inhabit the present, nor can we move forward into the future with our full potential for optimism and joy. There is a difference between healthy anger that preserves the dignity and integrity of the self, and ruminative anger that wakes us up at three in the morning to nurse past and present grievances and drum up fantasies of
...more
We need to accept the reality that sometimes the wrongdoer is unreachable and unrepentant—or perhaps long dead—and we have a choice as to whether we continue to carry the wrongdoing on our shoulders or not.
To heal, the hurt party needs to hear an unequivocal validation of the awfulness of the experience, and an affirmation that his or her feelings and perception make sense.
The hardest part is that it requires us to accept that the offending party is never going to apologize, never going to see himself or herself objectively, never going to listen to our feelings with the slightest openness of mind or heart. Letting go of anger and hate requires us to give up the hope for a different past, along with the hope of a fantasized future. What we gain is a life more in the present, where we are not mired in prolonged anger and resentment that doesn’t serve us.
