Someone once said to me that saying you’re sorry does not take away the pain that it may have caused someone. What you have to do is go into yourself- to the root cause of that behavior that caused the pain- and eradicate that trait completely. Snatch it out! Get behind the real reasons of why you chose to react that way. Search yourself.

Ok, so now we know that saying “I’m sorry” does not take away the pain that we may have caused that person, right? But why do we even apologize if we’re going to do the same things over again? We may think that saying that we’re sorry fixes everything, and that the person will forget about the damages that we caused.

When we do nasty things, most of the time the pain lingers for weeks, months, and even years. And, a lot of the pain we caused may have really hurt the other person’s self-esteem; even humiliated them. We have to understand the full extend of damage that we are capable of.

A real apology is when you snatch that trait out completely. Saying that you are sorry is saying that you will not perform that same negative act over again. Saying that you are sorry is saying that you’ve gone in and snatched that behavior from the root so that no other behaviors of any kind will result from a negative source.

So, are you really sorry?

When you play games with people’s head and heart you lose your ability to be trustworthy. Being dishonest, cruel, unethical, slanderous, lying, cheating, disloyal- and everything else that is uncool- takes all of your credibility away. Which, in return, makes it harder to redeem yourself.

This week, I encourage you to apologize to everyone you are at odds with. Make sure, however, that when you apologize, that it is a real apology. Really try to feel the other person’s pain. Go within yourself and snatch the roots of that behavior right from the very core and replace them with brand new positive seeds. Replace those negative roots with seeds that- once watered and nurtured- will flourish into beautiful actions that will not warrant you having to apologize all over again.

—Penna

The I’m Sorry by INNER PRINCESS Magazine, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.