Flex and Firms Flex and Firms. This is the Flex and Frooms catch up podcast.
If there's one thing that is very important in life for you and for the people around you, it's learning how to apologize. Something that FLEXI once said which has stayed with me is the idea that you are responsible for fifty percent of the drama in your life. Very hard to understand as a human being, but once you think about it that way, you think, yeah, damn, actually that is statistically likely. It came across this article called
how to Apologize like a Pro in The Atlantic. I read it just out of curiosity to fact check whether or not my method works, because I think that I'm very.
Good at I would say so too apologizing. Yeah, off the bat, it is you're always making.
Mistakes, And I said, maybe we should be looking out for those who can apologize really well.
Hate got too much experience, show us the receipts.
So they're talking about apologies in a neurocognitive viewpoint, So obviously we just think, like, on the surface level, I'm just gonna say sorry. But it turns out that apologizing, both receiving apologies and giving them is extremely complex, and it actually includes three distinct processes. Let me explain them to you. First is cognitive control, because you're making a choice to say sorry, even though doing so is difficult
and uncomfortable. That involves the lateral prefrontal cortex. It's giving year eleven psychology.
The same psychology in year eleven. Yeah, whoa is that a thing I don't know about? That's a HSC subject.
Did you have it? Not in your South Wales?
Oh?
In my time?
Oh?
Yeah, yeah Wales? Yeah, let's see Victorian thing.
The second is perspective taking, which involves thinking about how something you've said or done was experienced by another person.
By putting yourself in the position.
That's empathy, that's tempopororial junction. And the last is social valuation. That's the way you calculate how much your apology will help everyone involved, as opposed to just yourself, which mobilizes the ventromedial prefrontal cortex.
That's a tricky one.
A lot of words here, but ipso facto. The first is deciding to do it even though it's hard. The second is empathy, so putting yourself in the other person position, and the third is social evaluation, calculating how much your apology will help not only yourself but the other people. So it's a very complex thing to do. I think we can all agree. I feel like this maybe has become something that we all talk about in the last few years. Are apologies, but no apology is better than
a half assed apology, Like there's nothing more infuriating. Then one's like, I'm sorry you feel that way.
I remember having a lot of my core fights, not fights, but my.
What do we call them?
Like grievances in relationships, like all interpersonal relationships, is people who say sorry when it's not necessary. True. So for example, let's say we're ordering food at a restaurant and you ask for a coke zero, and then the waiter says to you, oh, sorry, was that a pepsi?
And you say, no, sorry, it's a coke zero. And it's like, why are we throwing.
Around sorry sorry sorries so flippantly when it's not required. And in the States where it's completely required, people dodge around.
The world and one of them bitches always to the sorry.
I used to say, it's so much that people say stop apologizing.
I was wont that I'm the self apologizing constantly. Stop that, please continue this is great.
So the way you apologize has a huge influence on your apology's likelihood of success.
Hold on, that's really interesting as well, the framing it as a way framing an apology is something that needs to land and be successful as opposed to just an action you do well.
I think that you know, it seems unnatural to do that, but I think it's important to do even just as an exercise to get to the bottom of why you think you should apologize. Like, I really like what they said about how much is it gonna? I think it's easier to apologize when you know that doing so is the thing that looks good as well. So in this scenario. In one experiment, subjects were asked to imagine themselves at as a pedestrian who's been hit by a cyclist and the cyclist was at fault.
That has happened to me? Seriously, Yeah a cyclist hit you?
Yeah? Fuck?
Did it hurt?
I don't remember how it felt, but I was on the floor. Oh babe, I was also a child.
Oh okay, Like turn Lizzy, Yeah sorry, Liz, want to little rope with it.
I mean, she's a listener. We've not mad, but she calls you for me.
Okay, amazing. So what they did was that to evaluate a settlement, fifty two percent said they would definitely or probably accept the proposed cash offer if there was no apology. When if there was a partial apology in the form of sympathy for injuries but no acknowledgment of responsibility, the acceptance rate fell to thirty five percent, But with a full apology sympathy plus responsibility, the rate roads to seventy three percent.
Of people expecting cash or being fine without cash.
I think they're getting cash either way. So apparently the acknowledgment of responsibility proves to be the most important ingredient of a good apology. Next is importance. Next in importance is an offer of a repair followed by an explanation of what happens. So you want to hit him with the I take full responsibility, here's what I want to do to remedy it, and here's why I did it.
In that order. I think in that order is the best because I think as well, when someone's like, it's really annoying when someone's like, I'm sorry, I did it. I did it because this and it's like I know that you didn't like, I know you're kind of like, like, what's really good scenario? Like your sister steals your top and then they apologize like sorry, I just like thought that you wouldn't care because I'm like, you know, I cared, don't try and explain it away when that's not true.
So yeah, I think even just using this process to think, oh why why do I want to apologize, I haven't had a situation recently where like I've been the bigger person per se and apologized.
The only instance I can think of is I was talking to someone and they had mentioned a relationship or a quirk between them and their father, like their dad. So they said something like, Oh, my dad has this really annoying habit where he asks me a question and assumes he knows the answer. So like, do we need to give an example? We kind of know what that is, like, Oh, where are you going tonight? Probably here down to the
Royal again. And the reason why this person really disliked it is not just the nature of assuming what someone's doing, but I think that they felt their dad always assumed the worst intent and so then it felt like a poor character assessment every time, and then they would have to kind of challenge like no, like this is different. And so because I was just getting to know this person, I would keep doing that. I would, but in a joking manner, right, just like I've explained now.
Like oh, where are you going? Oh, probably doing this again.
And they said it was triggering them in the sense that maybe what I assumed wasn't the worst intent, but the dynamic was super triggering. It had almost become like a filler for acknowledging that I didn't know them, but I wanted to know them, so I was filling in the gaps, like you know. And so the second time I did it, I had to apologize because I was like, not you. You definitely called me out on that one, and I clocked it, and I'm really sorry, but I did.
It's felt insincere because the nature of it was so comedic that it had to I had to bring the energy down clock it then make them feel a little bit like it.
Made them look soooky. Yeah I hate that, and it wasn't.
But I was like, damn, like it was a joke, but I see what's happening here, and now you're triggering and people were there, no, okay, I was like it was really interesting exercise in acknowledging the faults straight away for the bigger picture, but also not truly understanding how it made them feel, like having to connect the dots or like fill in the gaps of like I guess that would be quite annoying, and I guess, but now I'm gonna be like the beneficiary of your dad's issues
and like I don't even know you that well, So I feel like, what work are you doing to be less annoyed by this scenario?
Put it back? But that I thought was really interesting.
But also, you know about love languages, right, so Gary Chapman, the same author, had come with this concept called apology languages, which isn't really taking off because I guess the idea with love language is that most people want all of them, but usually find one or two that you really identify with based on probably what you hadn't received earlier in
your life, what you received a lot of. But with apology languages, people were kind of like, I just don't want one thing, you know, Like it was like accept fault, make restitution, like you know, provide a solution, groovel whatever it might have been. Everyone's like, ideally I want all of them. I want if a great apology is going through the list and be like, this is what I did,
this is why it was bad. But I don't know, in a situation where you don't feel like you've done anything wrong but you've caused harm, that's such a tricky one to apologize because it feels like performance art, like,
I know, is this really helping? I think a good apology has a lot to do with timing, like if you get in quick, I feel like, and depending on the situation, if you get in when it's most needed or when it's requested, that's better than like I'm going to have to think about it and come back and then figure out if I want to apologize or not.
It's like no, no, no, So fam here is how to apologize. These are three core tenants you must do. Number one, acknowledgment of responsibility. That proves to be the most important ingredient, So do that up top. Secondly, off what a repair. I don't know what that looks like. Is it monetary, is it community service? And number three extra fly eyes. And then the last one is an explanation of what happened, of course, and we're ensuring in the explanation thing. We
are still taking a responsibility. That's probably where you can go a bit sidetracked, but yeah, creative revisionist history.
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