Do you find yourself apologising a lot? Maybe TOO often?
You may be worried you’re going to upset someone if you don’t say “sorry”.
This is such a subtle way that we start to lose our power, that often we don’t even realise we’re doing it.
If you apologise for things which don’t really require an apology, you may be gradually leaking your power.
You, beautiful woman, do not need to be in a constant state of apologising for expressing your views, concerns, thoughts and feelings.
You do not need to apologise for taking up space, for being you.
You don’t need to apologise for doing something that hasn’t genuinely hurt someone else.
For example, you arrange to meet a friend at a particular time and you arrive late. You apologise profusely because you feel you’ve really inconvenienced your friend.
But, if you take a moment to just pause, and think about it more deeply, have you REALLY hurt your friend by being late?
Maybe you got stuck in traffic, or your child didn’t want to put their shoes on, or maybe you just lost track of time. It’s ok to be human.
What’s really happening here is a fear that you are being annoying and offending the other person. This fear is actually about belonging, and caring about what other people think of you. This is normal but when it starts to get in the way of living your life or causing you anxiety it’s time to make some changes.
One of the ways we can stay in our power, without profusely apologising, is to take a moment to pause, and ask yourself, is this really an apology moment?
Try switching the language around, so instead of saying “sorry”, you say “thank you” instead.
Take the friend incident, rather than saying “Sorry I’m late”, you could say, “Thank you for waiting for me” instead.
Rather than apologising for yourself, you’re showing gratitude and a mutual respect for the other person, which feels more genuine for both of you.
When we are more conscious with the language we use, it helps us to retain our sense of worth and increases self compassion.
This constant state of apologising can become an ingrained habit so that when we are genuinely sorry for something, the meaning gets diluted.
Of course, if we’ve genuinely hurt someone, we should absolutely apologise. But so often we do things which do not require an apology.
If you’re on the receiving end of someone who apologises a lot, does it make you feel any better?
How does it make you feel when you say sorry continuously? Does it add to the feeling of low self esteem and low self confidence?
The next time you say sorry, you could try catching yourself, and thinking for a moment whether the situation is genuinely worth a “sorry”.
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