Oh. My. God. You guys. I’m sorry. I haven’t updated in forever. I had a trip a couple of months ago and always have trouble catching up after. Then I just got really busy. I had to manage life between work, acting, and my accountability groups. Plus, I got really stressed out. I still wanted to update. But again, I was busy. When I did have time, I just couldn’t bring myself to update. It felt like work. I’m so sorry guys….
The above is how I would have resumed my first blog post after a long haitus. When I was sixteen. Or last summer, for that matter.
Why do we apologize so much? It’s fascinating how eager we are to apologize when we a) didn’t intend anyone harm, or b) didn’t actually do anything wrong in the first place.
Apologizing for a mistake when we didn’t intend any harm
Recently, Dallas Travers made the following comment (paraphrased) on one of her Hot Seat Coaching calls: “Nothing we do is ever wrong. We’re all doing the best we can with the tools and information that we have.”
We typically don’t act in a way to purposefully harm ourselves or others. Mistakes happen. We’re human. We’re doing the best we can with what we know. If we knew better, we’d act accordingly. It often takes failure to learn the lessons we need to become that better person we all want to be.
It’s easy to worry. We don’t want to offend others. We definitely don’t want to hurt our friends. And heaven forbid we do something really bad and lose a friend.
Spoiler alert: We usually envision situations to turn out far worse than they actually turn out.
The following is a trick from Shawn Achor. When you’re envisioning that terrible scenario in your head, ask yourself if this: How often has this happened in the past? Did it happen at all? While we may experience a slight inconvenience, we typically exaggerate the actual outcome.
Apologizing for something when we didn’t actually do any harm.
Anthony Meindl says (paraphrased) that “we should never apologize for being our authentic, genuine selves.” Think about that. Write it down. Say it out loud everyday so you don’t forget it. We tend to be very eager to apologize for our human habits and “flaws.” But did we mean to do anything? Or in this case….did we actually do anything “wrong” at all?
So with that….I am not sorry for not updating the past three months.
…let me try that again: I don’t like taking hiatuses from my blog. It feels good when I post. It feels good as an artist. It feels good knowing that I could reach just one person and given them that “aha” moment that I had before learning this theme. Robbing both myself and my friends of these feelings makes me feel guilty. But life happens. We get busy. Things come up. We don’t need to apologize for that.
Go be yourselves, friends. Without any concern.
Talk to you next week. (And if I don’t….well…you know.)
tonyinchicago 