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The Five Kinds of I’m Sorry

by Alan C. Fox 0 Comments

 

forgiveness-peopletoolsMany people never say “I’m sorry.”  I’m sorry for them because they are going to offend people in the same way the next time around. I’m sorry for those other people because they’re going to be offended again.  This hurts relationships.

When my wife, Daveen, and I arrived home late Saturday evening after a full day – a play in the afternoon, dinner with friends, then a musical in the evening – she said, “You seem distant.  Does that have anything to do with me?”

“Yes, it does.”

“What?”

“At dinner when I said, ‘You didn’t finish your salad,’ you said you did.  I was just making conversation and you disputed what I said, without any particular reason.  You do this often, and when you do I don’t want to talk to you.”

There are five kinds of, “I’m sorry.”  I’ll tell you which she used at the end of this blog. I list these in rising order of sincerity.  The most effective “sorry” is number five.

  1. “I’m sorry you chose to respond so badly to what I did (or said).”  This is not really an “I’m sorry” at all.  It says that you think I was the one at fault because I responded badly.
  2. “I’m sorry you’re upset.”  This is a little better.  It acknowledges that you have some regret.  But it might also mean that you’re unhappy with me because I’m upset with you.  This one sounds defensive to me.
  3. “I’m sorry I said (or did) that.”  Now we’re starting to cook.  You have given an apology about your own words or action.  You’re not quite acknowledging your role in my unpleasant experience, but it’s a start.
  4. “I’m sorry I hurt your feelings.”  We’re almost there. You are acknowledging a cause and effect situation.  You agree that you did something and that I reacted with hurt feelings.  I can begin to heal.  But I won’t go all the way toward reconnecting because your “sorry” is limited.
  5. “I’m sorry.”  Eureka!  We have found it!  Simple, clear, and direct.  You are telling me that you feel badly that I feel badly.  My hardness toward you melts.  I say, “Thank you,” we reconnect, we go on.  A bonus which you might want to substitute could be, “I’m very sorry.”  Or, “I’m sorry.  I’ll never do that again.”  This last one feels really good.

The way you say “I’m sorry” is extremely important.  If you want to establish or maintain trust and connection you need to quickly repair a relationship rupture.  When I’m offended our connection is either stretched or severed, but if you sincerely and quickly apologize I feel my heart loosen and I can more easily forgive you and forget the insult I felt.

apologies-power-peopletoolsWhich one did Daveen use this evening?  The best one.  She said, “I’m sorry. Thank you for telling me.”  Of course, had she used one of the others I wouldn’t have used that example in this blog, because if I did I probably would have hurt her feelings and – horror of horrors – I would have had to say “I’m sorry” myself.

I hope I would have used the best “I’m sorry,” but sometimes . . . well, sometimes I don’t believe I did anything wrong and I use number one, or mutter under my breath, “but you don’t deserve an apology.”  That’s not really a good idea.

Recrimination and defensiveness are easy—and destructive.  It takes thought, attention, and caring to preserve trust and remain connected with a sincere, immediate, and simple, “I’m sorry.”

Alan

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Got A Problem? Let Your Subconscious Solve It

by Alan C. Fox 0 Comments

 

Subconscious-peopletoolsI am often asked, “What is your favorite People Tool?”  My answer changes from day to day because I have many favorites.  If you want to make your life easier, however, then try “Stuff It into Your Sub.”

When I was a freshman in college I read one paragraph in my Psych 101 textbook which presented an idea I have used with outstanding success ever since. I have to admit that in college my primary goal was not to learn anything. I just wanted to get the best grades I could, with minimum effort. Yes, I was lazy. I still am, though my wife, Daveen, says I should say I am “efficient,” which sounds much better. But I must have learned something along the way, not by mastering entire books, but rather by remembering and using those ideas that seemed useful to me. This was one of the best.

Simply put, the idea I found in Psych 101 was that your subconscious (your “sub,” not a sandwich) can solve a problem for you without any further active conscious effort. If you need to solve a question but can’t come up with an immediate answer, all you have to do is “stuff” the information and the problem into your “sub.” Then revisit your sub in an hour or day or week to see what your sub has come up with.

While this solution is not infallible, it certainly helps me most of the time.

Originally the idea appealed to me because it was easy. I didn’t have to think. It was like sending my car through a car wash.  My car went in dirty and came out clean. Of course, the sub is even better than a car wash because it deals with big problems and—best of all—it doesn’t cost a dime.

___________________________

 The great decisions of human life have as a rule far more to do with the instincts and other mysterious unconscious factors than with conscious will and well-meaning reasonableness. The shoe that fits one person pinches another; there is no recipe for living that suits all cases.

—Carl Gustav Jung

Modern Man in Search of a Soul 

___________________________

Here’s an example. My wife, Daveen asked me to drive from Los Angeles to San Francisco to see our daughter Ingrid present her final report in a college class. I wanted to please Daveen and I wanted to support Ingrid. But I don’t like driving eleven hours round trip, and I wasn’t sure I could afford to take a full day and a half away from work. When you’re lazy (I should say “efficient,’ I suppose), deadlines have a way of catching up with you. So I stuffed the problem into my sub. Here’s the solution it came up with: Daveen drove both ways because she wanted to deliver a car full of something to Ingrid. I flew both ways.

zen-peopletoolsWhen I wrote my first book, People Tools, I paid close attention to how I solve challenges in my life. When my process was clear but the name of the tool was not, I simply stuffed the “People Tool” into my sub, which has given me many chapter titles that I have used.

To be efficient, and solve a problem which baffles your conscious mind, just Stuff It into Your Sub.

Alan

 

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My Trip to Bountiful

by Alan C. Fox 7 Comments

 

Bountiful-PeopleToolsI’m reflecting on the play A Trip to Bountiful, in which an elderly lady escapes the slammer of her son’s big-city apartment to revisit the rural home of her youth.  Tom Wolfe, who wrote You Can’t Go Home Again, published after his death, might have forewarned her to expect a ramshackle building rather than the childhood home in her memory.  Tom says it all changes, leaving only a remnant in each of us.

A woman named Jill and I lived together more than forty years ago.  We never intended to marry, though I think Jill would have preferred that.  Jill now lives by herself in Harbor, Oregon, formerly Brookings.  I suppose the name change to ‘Harbor” means that Brookings will gradually join, in the mist of fairy tale memory, the village of Brigadoon, a hamlet in the highlands of Scotland which appears only once every hundred years.

Recently Jill was tabled for back surgery, recovered in her daughter’s house for a year, and is now nailed to her own home by a titanium pin in her back, living in a forest of trees, memories, and love.

I send Jill a little money every month to supplement her meager social security.  She asked me recently if I minded her using part of her wealth to buy a walker for a friend, or donate to the local food bank. Unlike her back, Jill’s love is not stuck either to her home or to her past. Jill’s love for everyone is profound, pervasive, and unrestricted by time, loss, or fear.  Jill’s open heart is why I love her.

I brought with me my father, my wife, and Jill’s daughter, granddaughter, and son-in-law who live four hundred miles, a heartbeat, away in San Diego.  We brought lunch, a Gnome for Jill’s garden, and a small lightshow box which responds to music.  Jill gifted to me her electric back stimulator, saying “maybe it will help you, it doesn’t help the pin in my back.”  She gave to my wife a beautiful sweater. And she gave to both of us a photo of my son Craig, taken on a camping trip back in 1972, when all of us were children.

Our afternoon passed, as the best times do, in a single breath or two.  While Jill and the others chatted away in the kitchen I enjoyed a passionate conversation with her son-in-law.  My father slept in a cozy chair as Jill’s nine-year-old granddaughter played in the garden, in the laundry room, on the computer – everywhere she moved.  Beneath the canopy of the trees we shared a time of comradery, laughter, reminiscence, a party that began when we were born, or when we first met, or when we fell in love.

Paradise-PeopleToolsforBusinessSoon it was time to leave.  Jill and I hugged goodbye–a long goodbye with the full body contact, intimacy, and tenderness of two human beings who once shared their lives and, in the more important ways, still do.  I might agree with Tom Wolfe that you can’t return to your home of memory, but you can revisit the home inside yourself, your loves who will remain, your treasured and treacherous remembrances.

What is Bountiful?  The companionship and encouragement of family, of strangers, of friends.

Where is Bountiful?  In the nurturing earth, the forest shade, and in your pulsing spirit.

You do not have to travel far to visit Bountiful, for Bountiful, just as the fairy-tale village of Brigadoon, exists for you, and for me, in our hearts, always and forever, anywhere and everywhere we are.

Alan

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