Rachel (00:01):
You're listening to Relationship Coaching with Rachel, episode 55.
(00:17):
Hey everybody, I wanna talk about such an interesting topic and is something that I've kind of had to navigate my way through, and it's all about apologizing. So if you are ready to grow, when you are trying to make changes in your life, I'm always looking for a little bit of self-improvement, always trying to just do a little bit better than I did yesterday. And sometimes I fail and fall flat on my face, and sometimes I'm like, oh, not bad. Did a pretty good job. So every day's gonna be a little bit different. So when we go through this growth phase, it sometimes means apologizing. Now, no matter how much work we do on ourselves, we're still gonna have to work on ourselves. There's always work to be done, and there's always gonna be situations when we act, or let's say we react in a way that we probably wish we hadn't reacted.
(01:23):
Sometimes it could look like reacting impulsively instead of taking a break. Processing and choosing our best action doesn't always happen. In theory, that sounds great, but it just doesn't always happen that way. We just try to keep getting better and better. But when we do fall short, we can access and own the thoughts that caused this initial reaction. Now I wanna tell you something about apologizing and then I'll go into my story. When we're apologizing from a place of fear, it just has this different energy. It's more like they're gonna be mad at me, I owe them an apology. Or just say, if someone comes up to me and says, you owe me an apology, and I'm like, I don't think so. like this debt that we have to pay off. But when we apologize quickly and from a place of: this feels like the right thing to do, it feels, it just feels good.
(02:43):
I can't explain it, but when you've done it, you apologize from a place of, I'm in trouble. This person's gonna be mad at me. It feels really gross. That's the only way I can describe it. It just feels icky. I wanna tell you that apologizing actually feels good. I decided to finally put constraints around my personal phone time during my workday when I am busy recording or writing emails or connecting with clients, my phone used to just be on, especially if I saw someone in my family called, I'm like, oh, I gotta talk to them. That's most important. And then I would get to a place, I'm like, wow, it's seven at night. And I don't think I really did anything for work. And for some reason when working from home, I just had a tendency or I'd got into this habit of just answering my phone when a non-emergency would come up.
(03:45):
And I will tell you that every single thing is not an emergency. Up until this point, thank goodness. And this has gotten me into a bit of trouble before, but I just couldn't. It was like this addiction. It's almost like social media. My mom would call, I would answer the phone, my sister would call, especially my sister, because we're super close. So here's the thing, I've been really working on planning ahead of time around my work schedule and my husband's travel schedule. If you have been following me or listening for a while, he works out of the country a whole lot. So he's got kind of an upside -down schedule and really planning my work around my energy. I get so much done in the morning and it's just where my brain just lights up in the morning and I have the most creative energy at that time as well.
(04:40):
And I do tend to get up about four 30 to five 30, depending. I actually don't even set an alarm anymore. It's kind of strange. So here's the thing. I answered the phone when I already planned to not talk to anyone in my family. I had this big work list going on. I had a bunch of errands to run, but what did I do? Of course, I answered my phone. I knew not to do it, but I did it. So that's on me, and this is kind of where it all starts. Oh, did I mention at this point when the phone rang, I hadn't eaten anything and it was almost 12 noon. You probably know how this story is going to play out, and you're probably right, but I will continue. So my phone rang and I answered it. Of course, I did because it was my sister, someone in my family, and she just happened to be upset and needed to vent to someone.
(05:36):
So I was already annoyed by the fact that I let myself get distracted with so many other non-essential things, social media probably. I don't have that part written down, but I'm guessing that's what it's gonna be. So I was already in a mood. I would like to call it a salty mood, a little too salty, but I answered it. Okay. Now, my sister, her problem was very sincere. Her soft heart was broken for someone else. She had witnessed someone else being mistreated. And I , I'm not laughing because it's funny, I'm laughing because oh my gosh, I'm rolling my eyes at myself. I didn't respond very kindly. I responded in a way that was my old self, the self that I don't like to show up. I was snippy. I was short, and I was, my tone was very annoyed. Anyone could probably tell by my tone that I wasn't, I was bothered and I was still listening.
(06:41):
Here's the lesson that I needed to learn. This is super important. I have it written down just dear Rachel. Just because the phone rings doesn't mean you have to answer it. I used to have my focus preferences turned onto the do not disturb feature on your phone, and it would just block everything out until I thought I could wing it. I'm like, no, I'm cured. I'm totally cured. And so I turned him off. This is a terrible idea. Terrible. And since I've slowly stopped adhering to my morning schedule. It was amazing. This is a great schedule. This morning schedule, I slowly started to creep back into some old habits. Now, the result that I created, was me. I created this by answering my phone when I had everything planned out. So my sister and I ended the call, both irritated with each other, and I think we both felt it.
(07:43):
Now, here's something interesting. The way that we were brought up was to emotionally hurt the other person. This was a learned behavior. This dawned on me, this was such a beautiful teaching moment for me. This was a learned behavior that I thought was out of our systems. This was like, I'm cured. But what happened is we both went there, both of us, two little girls who couldn't manage their emotions. We were never, here's the thing, we were never ever taught to apologize to anyone, and that is the big thing that I wanted to relay to you. This just dawned on me this day, what just happened? I felt crappy. She felt crappy. And I was like, oh my gosh. Neither one of us was ever taught to apologize from a place of, oh my gosh, I think it just hurt this person's feelings and it had everything to do with me.
(08:49):
She was in a vulnerable state. I shouldn't have answered my phone. So fast forward to the next day. I decided to make a phone call and apologize without making an excuse. To make a long story short, we both agreed that it was a tough week for both of us in very different ways. And then of course, as sisters do. We just laughed because both of us had forgotten to eat before that phone call. And I'm just gonna say, we are known to start a ruckus if we're hungry right? So when I wrote this out it was about 30 minutes after the conversation, and I'm happy to say that learning to sincerely and timely, I'm gonna just make a pause there. A timely apology, is one of the biggest gifts that I have ever given to myself, and this again, is coming from a former world champion grudge holder.
(09:55):
And I had just gotten into the habit lately of like, huh, I don't think I need to apologize and come. It came from such a good place, but because I was writing my thoughts, got to slow down a little bit, and I was able to have this beautiful, magical, aha moment, this realization that I think we all are kind of looking for. If I had apologized early, early on in my preteen age, it felt like I was groveling. It was just this weird kind of head game. But actually coming out of that is such a teachable moment. I think I do still get a little bit MD or salty about growing up and what was taught to me, but I'm like, you know what? This is actually, this is bloomed, I guess, if you will, or opened up into the thing that we need, the thing that I need at this moment in time.
(10:56):
So if you are ready to learn how to let go of a grudge and step into the person who will apologize when she is wrong out of love and not out of a place of I owe someone something. Being able to forgive too, being on the other side of that and going like, okay, yeah, I get it. We were both hungry. We were both just having a bad day and we took it out on each other. I would love to, if this speaks to you, I would love to invite you to work with me one-on-one and if these tools in this way of looking at a little bit of drama with your mama resonate with you, let's chat. Let's, let's talk about it. I have a Mama Drama Boundaries guide, and it's on my website. It's free. All you have to do is type in your email and it'll be immediately uploaded. I'll also send you an email with that, and I look forward to talking to you next week.
