If you pay attention to the news you may have noticed that when famous people get
in trouble, and they try to make an apology, it usually makes things worse
they just sound like they don't get it what they did. My name is Anna Runkle I'm
also known as the crappy childhood fairy and, well if you grew up with a crappy
childhood like I did, maybe you don't know how to make an apology either it's
actually kind of a high level skill. If you don't really have a role model then
you might have some bad habits for what to do when you hurt somebody's feelings
like I don't know raise your voice or start making excuses or start blaming
the other person for your behavior or my favorite just blow up the relationship
altogether. So you don't have to do that anymore and I can show you how to make a
good apology. So let's just take a hypothetical situation where you would
have hurt somebody's feelings, let's say you trashed your friend behind her back
like gossiped about her and said something negative and it got back to
her and you heard it got back to her but she hasn't confronted you about it yet,
what do you do? The first thing is, take some time if you can and just reflect on
it just think through what happened? What did you do? And if you need some help, do
you have a friend that you really really trust I mean who can be honest with you
about what your part might have been in saying this and what might be better
behavior? It's always really good if you can run this by a second person for a
second opinion because you know we actually run the risk of sort of just
blaming ourselves too much for things and then not enough for things so...but if
you don't have anybody handy and you're in a pinch just think quickly what did I
do? Okay I trashed my friend. The second thing is, take inventory about it. And you
may have seen on our youtube channel or on the blog the inventory the video
how to take an inventory, and in this I show you how to write down your fears
and resentments about a situation, and then just kind of pray and meditate on
having it removed having the fear and resentment removed and this can kind of
help clear it. A lot of times our hurtful behavior is coming out of you know just
like a tangle of fear and it's not totally conscious. When the fear is gone
it's a lot easier to see clearly what was happening, and this is
all not part of the apology yet, you're still just preparing for the apology to
get clear about what you did. The third thing is you write down what your part
in it was, it's really helpful to write it down just so that you can like
logically think through so I actually write it in columns I put the person's
name and I put down what I did, and kind of detail it "I told our mutual friends
that our friend used to shoplift but that was a secret and I promised I would
never tell anybody" I'm just making something up. Then in a next column you
write down, how would you feel if somebody had done that to you? So if I
had told somebody a secret that was embarrassing and they had told people
about it, I'd be really upset I'd feel angry I'd feel worried what people thought
I would be not sure I could ever trust my friend again. So you write down, this
is how I would feel if it had been done to me. Okay then write down how do you
intend to go forward from now on? Can you be different? and I mean be sincere about
this don't be unrealistic but do you think, if we use this situation as an
example, do you think that you could stop trashing people behind their back? And I
actually recommend that you just completely stop talking bad about people
behind their back in all cases, but let's just take this friend are you willing to
never do that again and to keep secrets? Yes? Okay great so write that down. Now
you're almost prepared. So now it's time to contact that person and ask if you
can have a talk, that you wanted to talk to them about something that you did and
that you feel bad about. Now I just want to have this whole other thing here that
if you're in the moment and you trash somebody and they're there and they
confront you about it, you can skip everything I said up until now, you're
face-to-face with the person. And I also I really recommend that when you
apologize to somebody you make it as direct as possible. Don't send a text
when you could do it on the phone, don't do it on the phone when you could do it
in person, as direct as possible will give you the
best chances of a good clean, thorough apology that mends hearts.
So now that you're with the person you tell them what you did,
and you tell it to them totally clean without any excuses like "I was
under a lot of stress I was tired" no excuses. No bringing in their part in it
"You know you were saying all this stuff about me" you don't bring that in, you
just say, I said this stuff that I promised to keep secret
and that was, I broke my promise to you. Then you go ahead and tell them how you
would feel if that were done to you. Now you've done your
homework on this, you go well I would feel angry I'd feel betrayed I'd feel
worried what everybody thinks. But it's really important to say
that you understand how it feels to have that done, that's the part where you know
you really want people to get it when they're apologizing to you, and then you
tell them I am sorry. You let them know how you intend to change your behavior
in the future. "I intend to never talk behind your back
again or to share secrets that I promised to keep secret." And then ask them to
forgive you, please forgive me. Now here's the hardest part sometimes, this is the
tenth part, you totally let go of what happens then. You just honestly give your
apology and sometimes people will hug you and say it's okay or sometimes
they'll say I have no idea what you're talking about I didn't even know and
sometimes they'll just get really angry at you and it will be worse. Now the odds
of them getting angry go down when you make a good clean apology that doesn't
have any sort of blame or excuses in it and that demonstrates that you get it
what you did. But sometimes it just doesn't go that well, and you can let go
of that because ultimately you're making the apology for yourself for your own
peace of mind and to be able to hold your head up and know that yeah you made
a mistake, but you cleaned up your mess afterwards. And then hopefully your
relationship can recover from that. It's beautiful making an apology because it
does help face reality about the consequences of you know when we break
promises or when we act in ways that are not consistent with the love and
friendship that we feel other people. So I hope this tool, you can
write it all down, I hope this tool helps you just make a
really good apology and go ahead and run out there today if there's somebody that
you've been putting off your apology, now you know how to do it