None of us are angels. We are flawed humans that don’t always behave as we should. So how can we recover when we’ve been jerks?
Apologize!!!!!
If you’ve been bad. Apologize. Even if you don’t think you did anything really wrong. Apologize.
Everyone makes mistakes. Everyone hurts other people at some point in life. It is literally impossible to get through life without ever hurting other people.
The difference between good people and not so good people? Good people apologize!
Do it for yourself!
Recently – some neighborhood kids broke my backflow. It cost us quite a bit to fix it. It was apparently spectacular. Water shooting 15 feet into the air.
The good news is – none of the kids were hurt by what happened. The problem is that they were scared to even talk to us or see us. We weren’t home at the time and they lied to their parents about what happened. But there were witnesses. And they had to confess.
Before they apologized – I would walk outside my house and the poor kids felt so bad about what happened – they would put on their hoody (trying to hide as if I didn’t know it was them) and then walk in the other direction to avoid me.
I wasn’t mad at them, but they didn’t know that. They were punishing themselves out of guilt.
One of the kids has since apologized. His mom and I arranged that because we didn’t want this kid to be scared of me and he needed to find out for himself – I wasn’t mad. His mom came with him to help give him courage and had him apologize. And I accepted his apology and thanked him for his apology.
You could see immediate relief on his face. All that fear and worry – gone.
Apologies aren’t something you do for the other person. You do it for yourself to keep faith in yourself as a good person – because that’s what good people do.
If you’ve been a jerk. Apologize.