Summary
Joe and Brett explore the many forms apologies can take — from habitual “I’m sorry” as a strategy to avoid others’ anger, to shame-based apologies extracted from children, to guilt-relieving apologies that don’t change behavior. They contrast these with the “upright apology”: one delivered from empowerment, with a straight back and no shame, where you simply own your behavior and acknowledge it’s not how you want to be.
The conversation reveals that shame-based apologies actually lock in the behaviors they’re meant to correct, just as shame locks in any bad habit. An empowered apology restores emotional fluidity — allowing grief, fear, or other emotions to move through rather than staying stuck. They also explore how apologies function in power struggles between partners, where extracting an apology becomes a weak surrogate for genuinely feeling seen and respected.
Joe and Brett discuss receiving apologies with the same uprightness — letting the feeling permeate without buying any story attached to it. They connect apologies to the Hawaiian concept of ho’oponopono, where the deeper meaning is simply “the light is brought to it” — pure awareness without right or wrong. The episode concludes with the insight that full awareness of a pattern, rather than action plans and strategies, is what actually transforms behavior.
Key Concepts
- Apology as a tool for self-transformation
- Habitual apologies increase rather than prevent conflict
- Shame locks in the very habits it punishes
- Apologies in power struggles are surrogates for being seen
- Receiving apologies requires permeability without buying the story
- Awareness transforms behavior where action plans fail
- Fully feeling a pattern ends it without figuring anything out
Key Quotes
“When you make an apology that’s upright, that’s empowered, it feels freaking fantastic. It’s an awesome feeling. You feel strength in it, you feel responsible, you feel empowered.”
“There is no shame in making mistakes. There’s no shame in acting in a way that you don’t want to act. We all make mistakes multiple times a day. That makes us human — it doesn’t make us something to be ashamed of.”
“If I apologize with shame, then the thing that I’m doing is going to reoccur. But if I apologize with empowerment and my own responsibility…”
“It’s not about wrong. It’s just about — that’s not the way that I want to behave, and I’m acknowledging that. I’m taking responsibility for that.”
“The more and more the apology happens, it’s not about me or them. The apology is about freedom for both of us.”
“You don’t fully understand it. If you fully understood it, you wouldn’t do it. So let’s just work on the understanding of it instead of the doing.”
Transcript
foreign [Music] when you make an apology that’s upright that’s empowered it feels freaking fantastic it’s an awesome feeling it’s like oh right you feel strength in it you feel responsible you feel empowered welcome to the art of accomplishment where we explore how deepening connection with ourselves and others leads to creating the life we want with enjoyment and ease I’m Brett Kistler here today with my co-host Joe Hudson [Music] thank you Good morning Joe how are you doing oh man it’s been a heck of a day it’s yeah it’s actually been like more like a heck of a week for me frankly it’s the you know we just finished a week-long last week one of the groundbreakers and and it’s you know super intense you go from 7 30 in the morning until 10 o’clock at night if you’re helping facilitate that you’re doing it seven days in a row and so I’m just when I get pretty tired and then coming back into work it’s like it’s been full on there’s been no there’s no no shortage of things to do and so I’ve just noticed that I’m a little um I don’t want to say overwhelmed but I feel uh a pressure that I that is definitely like not my standard feeling of pressure in life and I can’t say that I’m great at enjoying it I’m getting better but I’m not great at enjoying it yeah yeah I can resonate this week there’s just a sense of a lot of things occurring and then I just find myself having to curate it a little bit be like sorry I don’t have time for this or I’m not not prioritizing that or yeah I know you really want my attention over here and I’d love to give it to you and I have this other priority yeah and I can find myself going into this sort of a sort of like apologetic not enough kind of energy and yeah which brings us to what we wanted to talk about today which is apologies and yeah tell me a little bit about what brought this topic up for you today it came up a couple ways the first was that in groundbreakers we have a exercise that’s based in apologies and you I know you’ve done some of them as well a couple of them that are based in apologies and so that that brought it up in my mind and then I had um somebody in the business make a you know mistake and they were apologizing to me and we had this long conversation about apologies and I was like oh let’s let’s talk about this it was really interesting it was interesting to hear how she thought about it and how I thought about it and so I thought oh this will be a great conversation yeah well let’s get started with just a definition like what is what is an apology and is it always in the form you know is it always in the form of like I’m sorry or I apologize or like can they be subtle overt I think the form is there probably all the time some version of I’m sorry or I apologize but I mean it can mean such radically different things right so there’s the people who you’ve met who said who say like I’m sorry 10 times 20 times a day and that seems to be a strategy of making sure people don’t get upset at them and of course it actually I would argue increases the amount of times people get upset with them because I noticed that when people are scared of somebody else’s anger that the person who’s likely to get angry is more likely to get angry when someone’s scared of them because they feel alone in it so I think that that’s one one reason people apologize oh I’m so sorry I’m so sorry you know that kind of habitual thing um and then there is another form of apology which is a way to shame someone or shame yourself yeah I think kids get that a lot unfortunately and that one’s more of you know feeling bad it’s like it’s a way to make somebody feel bad for something that they’ve done extracting an apology out of them or a way for you to get to feel bad you know a lot of people are addicted to shame whether they know it or not so that’s something that they get to do to themselves another way that I think people use apologies is it’s a way to ease their own guilt you know they feel bad they they feel that shame and it’s like their way to relieve their guilt and to take away a bad feeling that could be any example of people who are apologizing for something and then not actually shifting their behavior in any way exactly yeah and then the way we use it and the way that it can be used in the the way that I would Advocate considering it is that it’s an incredibly powerful tool for transformation meaning that if you can apologize to somebody and be in your power to be empowered in it to take responsibility in it to own that this is the way that I was and it’s not the way that I want to be like I’d know very few jewels that are as good at creating transformation inside me is to apologize in that way if I apologize with shame then I’m most likely going to it’s going to reoccur the thing that I’m doing is going to reoccur but if I apologize with empowerment and my own responsibility and then there’s a very unknown way to apologize or I don’t know if it’s unknown it’s a very strange so I do this a lot someone’s having a hard day I’m like hey I’m sorry that you’re having a hard day and they’re like well you’re not responsible I’m like yeah I know and I know I’m not responsible for your happiness and I’m just I just want you to know that I feel like I’m I’m seeing you that you’re seen and and that I don’t want this for you that I’m here with you and I love using apologies that way like it feels great it’s like for me it’s a great way to just let somebody know that hey I see that this is not easy for you and I’m not trying to fix it and I’m just here with you for me that that I use that I think that’s used very rarely yeah I think there’s also ways that it can be used really it’s used really often in some some forms and that kind of points to how how there there can even be like a different way of delivery of this particular apology for example at a funeral people will just be like oh I’m so sorry I’m so sorry I’m so sorry and it can be you know if you’re if you’re one of the bereaved it can be really difficult to just have everybody be sorry for you and then it then it becomes like a platitude and it doesn’t feel like connection it doesn’t feel like being seen correct and I think that’s true for any of these apologies is that there can be they can be platitudes they can be kind of oriented towards an outcome of making people feel better rather than for as a as you said a tool for self-transformation through responsibility or as a a mode of genuine connection that’s right they can be automatic or they can be just the thing that you say or they can be a way to make somebody feel bad you know passive aggressive apologies are pretty amazing too and that’s the amazing thing and so the power has been taken out of them and it’s you know you get this this kind of American story of like oh he can’t say he’s sorry you know like there’s that like that’s not something that he would ever do it’s like that would be admitting weakness or something to that effect and whenever I see somebody who has a hard time saying I’m sorry it’s always because somebody extracted an apology from them when they were younger and it was a way to make the person small to make the person feel bad to exact control over them say you’re sorry you know that kind of a thing it’s like you’re supposed to admit that you’re wrong and that’s when you’re using the apology as a tool of self-transformation as responsibility it’s not about wrong it’s just about that’s not the way that I want to behave and I’m acknowledging that I’m taking responsibility for that yeah say a little bit more on that I’m it’s not about anything being wrong and you’ve also spoken to a Shameless apology as well yeah so literally the way you would do this in your body is you would feel that your back is upright you’re not tucked in shame often times when people feel shame their eyes are down or their back is hunched or their tail is tucked in so to speak and and so it’s literally having your body operate as a good cue about what it feels like to come from this this place and to say like there is no shame in making mistakes there’s no shame in acting in a way that you don’t want to act there’s no need for shame in any of that stuff we all make mistakes multiple times a day we all do things that we don’t like that makes us human it doesn’t make us something to be ashamed of and so how do you acknowledge that in your own power how do you stay empowered and say I you know hey this happened and I’m responsible for this part of it and I that’s not how I want to be and I apologize to you instead of like I’m so sorry that I hurt you you know like you can feel the difference in the in the tone when a lot of us learned apologies as kids as you as you said they were often extracted or they were often you know taught to us in such a way as to model some form of shame or guilt that we’re supposed to feel in certain situations so that we don’t do it because there’s a there’s this belief that shame is a tool for for justice and transformation yeah which is quite prevalent yes let’s just speak to that for a second let’s speak to that so here’s the thing is that there’s something that anybody who’s listening to this podcast has been doing for a decade maybe less because they’re younger that they haven’t wanted to do right so there’s something there’s some bad habit there’s some Behavior there’s some way of being that they haven’t wanted to do but they’ve been doing it for 10 years and the thing that I can tell you about all any one of those is that um that the person who’s doing that behavior has shame around it so what would make us think that shame stops us from doing something right like shame is absolutely an emotion that comes up that we don’t want to feel and so we try to avoid it but at the same time shame is the thing that locks bad habits in place and so you know we teach shame we shame our kids you see it happen all the time but usually the thing that you shame your kid about is something you’re going to shame your kid about for five or ten years because they’re going to keep on repeating that pattern it doesn’t it just doesn’t work and if you take a a real look at it if you say oh here’s all the things that I kept on doing I do feel shame around those things I tell myself I shouldn’t do them I tell myself I have to change it I I beat myself up for doing it that’s all shame or if you look at the things that you have like a child who keeps on doing something you’re shaming them for the thing that they keep on doing you can guarantee it or they just wouldn’t keep on reiterating it so so shame just doesn’t work right and as you as you extend that to apologies it’s the it’s the apologies that are delivered with shame that tend to be the kinds of apologies that get repeated because the actions get repeated that’s right that’s exactly right yeah that’s why I say it it needs to be empowered for it to be a real tool of transformation right so going back to how a lot of us were were taught apologies there is there must be some value in modeling apologies for children to learn and what’s the distinction that you would make between modeling an apology and like guiding a child through the process of apologizing and having that be done without shame and I guess that also points to how we can be doing it how we can apologize in Shameless empowered way yes so like with our kids we’ve never asked them to say I’m sorry it’s just never happened and yet oddly our children say they’re sorry all the time and they say it in a very empowered way and I think what happens is that for adults or for kids when they get to see it which is pretty rare or more importantly when they get to feel it when you make an apology that’s upright that’s empowered it feels freaking fantastic it’s an awesome feeling it’s like oh right and you feel strength in it you feel responsible you feel empowered it’s it’s the way that you that we like feeling and so when you do that and you do that a couple times you’re like oh yeah this is great why would I not do this but when you’re been told that you have to do apologies in a way that makes you feel small that makes you feel like you’re bad that makes you feel like there’s something wrong with you and why the heck would you ever want to apologize except to get out of trouble right and then you’re teaching your children or you’re teaching yourself that the way that I can navigate danger in the world is by making myself small and by kowtowing to Authority you know instead of being in myself and being in my truth right which is a like a form of self-attack as manipulation yeah or a form in some people it turns into a form of self-attack to prevent other people from attacking them a lot of people will attack themselves as a way to make it hurt less or to have less attack on them it doesn’t work but they that’s the thought process or the emotional explanation yeah and something interesting about this this idea of stopping the hurt is that one way that we’ve described shame is that it seems to be something that just prevents emotions from being felt it’s like when we have certain feelings that we don’t allow shame is the thing that holds them in place and then by not letting those emotions move we don’t update our you know our body and our emotional system doesn’t update to the actual reality of the situation or in this case of what we’ve done and how we really feel about it deeply and so then that makes the thing persist there’s something here there’s almost a chicken and an egg kind of thing where it’s like if you’re feeling the shame it might feel really difficult to make an empowered apology because you’re just feeling shame but then there’s also if you make an empowered apology the shame in you this fear of being seen the moment you apologize without shame or just apologize owning yourself owning your part you release a lot of that shame because you’re seen and then that shame moves so sometimes making that kind of apology can suddenly just crack open the the lid and a bunch of emotion moves and it’s no longer the emotion of you know shame and guilt and stuckness and anguish it becomes just the emotion of grief of whatever whatever is underneath it that you need to feel to process what actually occurred and move forward from there yeah that’s what happens people when the apologies are empowered there might be grief that moves or fear that moves and it and it feels like a cleansing it feels like it’s an emptying out of of the holding and yeah and if you feel that moment if you you can close your eyes and you can think about a time when you felt shame where it was just like maybe like it was just this really powerful moment of Shame for a lot of people it’s like a punch in the gut kind of feeling I’m like oh and you’ll notice what it does is it’s like oh and then it’s like stops you it’s a punch in the gut it’s like oh and you just stop it it actually prevents the emotional fluidity that allows you to change the habits and so apologizing without shame brings that emotional fluidity back and lets you feel empowered in it so it’s not I’m grieving it’s I’m empowered and I’m grieving there’s something else here as well one of the things that I think makes it makes it difficult or creates resistance to apologizing is that sometimes we especially if those of us who have this sort of a self-attack pattern is that we might believe that if we apologize we’re then more likely to buy the other person’s story wholesale and abandon ourselves yeah that’s right that again is making yourself small and that’s making making yourself ashamed it’s and it does do that if you think about it this way a lot of people use apologies as part of a power struggle and the person who apologizes is the loser and the person who’s apologized to is the winner and it’s a it’s a really weak surrogate for being seen it’s a really weak surrogate for being acknowledged and being respected and being respected by somebody who respects themselves so if you think about this in terms of a relationships you have husbands and wives and they get into fights those fights are all about power struggle if both people felt like oh I’m being seen and I’m being respected and I’m being acknowledged there’s no fight the fight is when somebody doesn’t feel seen doesn’t feel acknowledged doesn’t feel respected so the apologies is this the surrogate from for what’s really wanted and it’s it’s not a bad surrogate meaning that it’s it makes you feel good for a little while it’s like a like a sugar high or something like that okay I feel like I won that or I’m in control for a moment but it feels a ton better to be with somebody that they respect themselves and they respect you they see themselves and they see you and it just feels great whereas if somebody’s respecting you but they’re cowering it doesn’t feel great it’s not as good of a feeling but it’s better than feeling like a loser so people go for it yeah that’s interesting to bring the to bring this notion of power struggles into into apologies and it almost seems like if you bring that into awareness you can even apologize for the power struggle itself which is something we’ve used when we’ve talked about fear Triangle stuff like hey I’m sorry for playing the victim with you I’m sorry for playing the role of Savior you know I’m sorry for projecting onto you that you are this way when in reality I’m actually this way I’ve been exhibiting this Behavior there’s this way that apologizing can be something that just drops you out of your own role out of your own yeah whatever whatever it is that you’re stuck in yeah if I’m in a fight with somebody I will stop and look for any way that I can apologize that’s an integrity that’s empowered I’ll be like okay what can I I’m in the fight it means I’m responsible somehow okay what is it that I need to what is it not that I need to that I can apologize for the feels empowered and I will apologize for it so if I have that thought man immediately I’ll do it and it feels great and it often just changes the entire conversation I’m sorry I don’t want to be talking to you in this way I’m sorry for being in a power struggle with you that’s not how I want to be with you I’m sorry for raising my voice that’s not how I want to be with you and I know you deserve better than that yeah that can that can be one where there’s you know there’s various levels of self-recognition and shamelessness that can that you can discover because you could also be like oh okay what Joe said was when I’m in a fight with somebody I’m going to look for an apology what’s an apology I can make and it’s like oh you know what yeah I’m really sorry for putting up with all your Victory crap for all these years yeah or or the opposite um I’m really sorry for being such a bad boyfriend I’m gonna try harder yeah that whole thing yeah right both of them you know don’t work right yeah so there’s like a buying of a story that can happen it’s like if your apology is buying some story then you can go back to our episode on beliefs when the story falls apart and see what what emotion might there really be underneath that and if the apology brings that emotion then you might actually be onto something and there’s a quick hack which is when you apologize never use the word you never make it about them it’s always about you yeah you know so when we do our exercises we are always very clear like the word you is the is the if you’re using that it’s not a real apology yeah and that points to something else where if if it’s for you and if it’s about you this this reminds me of the of uh one way to see forgiveness where people talk about forgiveness being it’s not for them you don’t forgive them it’s because you know you’re letting them live rent free in your head or whatever it is the forgiveness is for you it’s for your own freedom for your own purification and I see that also just having a nice mirror here on the apology side and what is it what is it to just be apologizing for yourself and not to be trying to make anything happen to any other person I would say that there’s a way of apologizing that you’re not trying to make yourself or anybody else feel differently which is one way and then there’s a way of apologizing which is doing it for yourself but not for them not to make them feel differently and then there’s the apology of trying to make them feel differently and if there’s the apology is just in the ownership of like I I want to acknowledge the truth of this situation it can be really powerful and it can be really powerful to do it for you what I’ve noticed as I’ve like the more and more the apology happens it’s not about me or them the the apology is it’s about freedom for both of us it just creates Freedom if you can do it empowered it just creates far more freedom for everybody and it’s about Freedom it’s not about it’s not personal anymore which seems weird right it’s an apology it feels like one of the most personal things but it right right it’s a very intimate thing it’s very intimate and then there’s this way of doing it where it’s absolutely not it’s actually just recognition which is this comes back to another thing we’ve talked about a lot where there’s this belief that a lot of us have that if you if you see something that needs to change there’s something you have to do about it something you have to do about it by tweaking your own Consciousness by Shifting the weights on which emotions are repressed or invited and that there’s something to do about it yeah right and really like the the kind of apology you’re that we’re talking about here is just something that is shedding light on something which reminds me of sort of the there’s this Hawaiian phrase I’m going to get it totally wrong but it’s hoopono or some something or other like that which okay I’m getting that entirely wrong but I think it’s like I love you thank you um yeah I’m sorry please forgive me thank you I love you yes and then there’s another deeper version of that which I don’t know I wish I could bring it up in the moment right now but the translation to it is the light is brought to it or something like that where it’s not that there’s even a right or wrong it’s just that oh you know uh the light is brought to it I now see yes that’s right so I now see clearly what I did I see clearly more clearly what what the dynamic was here and my part in it and there’s no shame or wrong everything was just unfolding as it was going to because of the way that we are conditioned and the way that the situation played out with all of our history and now I see more clearly and that’s it just seeing more clearly just the awareness yeah it’s amazing that question and self-transformation what do I do next how counter productive it can be compared to just awareness and realization and you know just exploring and understanding and you know you hear people oftentimes with that they say oh I’m stuck in my head you know like a second hour I get it I get it but I don’t crock it or my head gets it but my body doesn’t or I know I shouldn’t smoke but yet I still do some version of that thing and so what do I do about it and I’m always saying back like you don’t fully understand it if you fully understood it you wouldn’t do it like there’s just no way to if you fully understand it so let’s just work on the understanding of it instead of the doing because you’ve been trying to do stuff over it for a decade it hasn’t worked let’s just understand it more fully right yeah and that smoking example I’ve heard that a really good way to approach dropping the Habit is just to mindfulness just pay really close attention to what it feels like to smoke a cigarette and pay really close attention to what the sensations actually are and The Taste and the flavor and you just might find that it’s actually not as you know that you’d actually been dissociating or suppressing some of the actual sensation to get something else and then shame locked that into place and I think that could be true for any any pattern that we tend to apologize for is what happens if you actually let yourself fully feel what it’s like to be doing that thing what does it really feel like to be arguing with your partner what does it really feel like to be in trigger and abusing a co-worker or an employee a couple of things just that you brought up there this goes Way Beyond apologies as well and I’ll give you an example in a second but just on the smoking front or whatever bad habit see what it’s like if you’re out there and you’re like I have a bad habit I want to see what it’s like to give yourself an upright apology for that thing on a daily basis I’m sorry for hurting myself I’m sorry for hurting you for for smoking this isn’t how I want to be with you or this isn’t how I want to be with myself whatever feels good like what is that like to really be in that empowered apology see what it does to The Habit the other story recently that I had with a it was with a young a young woman and she was she was asking me about this feeling that she had and she you know she’s relatively young so there wasn’t like a whole bunch of pattern in place and so she noticed that she was getting kind of power tripping by wrapping Boys around her finger because she was very beautiful and she could wrap Boys around she was like this doesn’t you know I don’t this isn’t how I want to be and what was the like what’s the solution and I was like just feel it next time you’re doing it just feel it feel it all the way through allow your like don’t stop feeling any part of it have like the full and total experience of it and two days later I was talking to her again and I was like well how’d it go and she said well I saw myself doing it I felt it all the way through I was like oh and what happened and she goes well I didn’t figure anything out but boy I just stopped doing it didn’t feel good that was it like you know and we think that we have to figure it out and then we have to figure out action plan and a strategy and and it’s like no it’s just about allowing yourself to feel it all the way through and I think that really applies to apologies is that if you’re apologizing from an upright place um from an empowered position it does require you to feel it right which and I can imagine somebody listening to this episode or even maybe a lot of our episodes where there’s there’s this theme of there’s nothing to do just feel it just experience it and then the part that wants to do something and really like take action is frustrated like oh like well I’m just supposed to notice things and uh it makes me think of something I’ve been recently doing some morning Pages where I just write for a couple pages every morning whatever comes up and I’ve been finding it to be really helpful for getting into getting into what is underneath something and I could today before we did this episode on apologies I started kind of writing down various apologies for apologies to myself versus apologies to any anything in my life anybody in my life and uh it sounds like you could if you if you’re so inclined to do something about this you could do the introspection and write an apology or say an apology say it into a mirror if you want to and then feel what comes up do you feel shame well then what is that shame what’s underneath a shame maybe write about that a little bit yeah it’s kind of a weird thing because we’re saying don’t do stuff but at the same time we’ve said oh here’s an apology of practice here’s like the page writing is something that we do during master class every day right and like master class is full of action and feeling just to stop and feel is an action in some way so it’s it’s the pointer of don’t do anything is it’s not that we’re saying actually don’t do anything what we’re saying is that trying to figure it out and getting an action plan and a strategy doesn’t work as good as understanding and feeling that I think the more accurate way it doesn’t work as well but it also it can be useful I mean I I wouldn’t say don’t do it at all right yeah or you could say that the the action plan and the strategy will be effective to the extent that it is structured to bring you into yourself into your feeling into into awareness that’s even better I said yeah a lot of our action plans are just ways to get out of the feeling yeah exactly that’s right or to organize our life so that we don’t have to hit that feeling again yeah that’s right instead of learning to be free inside of the feeling so we’ve talked a lot about giving apologies and delivering them and sort of practicing and introspecting around them and we haven’t talked that much about receiving apologies no what it’s like to receive the various kinds of apologies that we’ve talked about yeah it’s an interesting thing some people are really good at receiving apologies it’s like um receiving compliments a lot of people want apologies but then they don’t receive them so they’re constantly a Hungry Ghost what I notice is that people who can receive them which means that you’re letting it you’re letting yourself feel it all the way through and bring up any emotion that it might come up and when I say all the way through it literally feels like I’m I have armor up and I’m protecting myself or I’m more like a permeable and the thing can just move right through me that’s the experience that I have and that when I make that pointer to people they usually can get it and if you can fully feel that apology all the way through instead of saying oh don’t feel bad or oh you know he doesn’t mean it or you know all the thousands of ways that people hold the apology back then you can actually feel the relief and often some other emotions that come with it right it sounds like there’s a distinction here as well between being permeable and letting the letting the apology move through you and being somehow overtaken or bowled over by the apology or the energy of the apologies for example if somebody gives you delivers to you an apology with shame and you take on that shame and you feel that shame and then that makes you feel like you’ve actually done something wrong and then you find yourself and then no I’m sorry no I’m sorry what kind of situation I would describe it slightly differently I would describe it as if you feel the apology all the way through and let it permeate you but don’t buy the story yeah if you just feel it is like the only story that you have to buy into is here’s this person acknowledging and trying to create connection and you just feel that feel that they’re trying to take responsibility or they’re not it’s okay like they’re trying to get you not to hit them but whatever that is you know or hurt them whatever it is to allow that full feeling to move through you is a remarkable thing it’s a great call out yeah I feel like sometimes it’s a it’s a story that we might identify as a story and sometimes there’s just some emotional response so if if somebody apologizes to us in sort of a passive aggressive way and they’re like yeah I’m sorry I’ve been sorry I let you do that it was my fault that I let this happen with a subtle implication that you’re wrong or that you’re bad and then there could be just energetically this feeling in you that you feel the feeling of the apology you don’t actually identify what it is in the words that is incorrect because you’re you’re in the story you’re not even seeing the story yeah but you can you can detect it somewhere in your body you’re closing down and you’re constricting and then it’s like what is what is that constriction what do I feel like I’m defending right now yeah I think that if you’re constricting and defending then that’s when you know that something’s not meaning that if somebody does a passive aggressive apology to me and they’re like you know yeah I’m really sorry that I couldn’t read your mind must be as an example then you know if I feel that all the way through if I allow that feeling all the way in my system and I don’t take it personally if I don’t buy the story then I easily can say something like oh wow it feels like you still want me to be upset at something I’ve done what are you what are you feeling that I need to take responsibility for that I’m not taking responsibility for it’s when my constriction comes that I’m just like okay yeah sure yeah sure yeah yeah thanks for that apology you know or whatever response that I would have yeah and I could even see the the exact words of the response you had if there’s constriction can still sound defensive totally like yeah okay well tell me tell me what I’m doing wrong then yeah yeah or yeah okay yeah I see that I’m doing something wrong what did I do like yeah any yeah it’s the tone it’s it is the shame that you’re saying it with the uprightness that you’re saying it with that matters or the defensiveness so yeah I would say just to sum it up to receive an apology the way to do it is the same way that you given apology in your empowered State allowing it to be felt all the way through yeah beautiful that sounds like an episode a pleasure to be with you as always Brett I look forward to we get to talk next week too yeah I’m excited really excited as well have we done one on shame oh no there’s been a coaching session on shame but I think I don’t think we’ve actually done we could do we’ve been yeah it’s been in our list to do to do one on shame for the emotion series let’s do that so that we can leave that as a little bit of a teaser for people who want to learn more about shame all right wonderful all right talk to you soon all right you too bye thanks for listening to the art of accomplishment if you enjoyed what you heard today please subscribe and rate US on your podcast app we’d love your feedback so feel free to send us questions or 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