#3. Stop apologizing when you finally get something right.
When you stop anesthetizing your emotions with junk food, tobacco, alcohol, video games, and compulsive shopping on Amazon [Insert your Achilles heel here], it’s easy to get into what I’ve coined as the great guilt-shame cycle.
And it’s normal because you can’t see how dirty the beach of your life is until the tide of excess goes out.
But when the water recedes and surfaces, you begin to see that your shores are full of moral and mental rot and misery.
I know, it’s happened to me.
But I’ll tell you something no one tells you, “If you want to clean that shit up as soon as possible and have your life look more like a beach in Seychelles than Fukushima after the tsunami, the first thing you have to do is let go of the guilt-sorry feeling.”
Start by stopping apologizing for these three things.
1. Stop apologizing for your past mistakes.
You’ve probably done it enough times already.
And if someone keeps throwing things back in your face, they’ll probably never forgive you because they’re not interested in wiping the slate clean.
And there are always people who have the debatable gift of forgetting the good things you do for them and remembering in detail your biggest screw-ups; they call it a selective memory, and I call it a grudge 🙂
Those people want you to keep feeling guilty as long as possible to make you feel inferior to them.
If they weren’t so selfish, they would give you a chance. If they don’t, it’s because they feel good about making you feel bad. Reread it.
I had a friend who helped me a lot when I screwed up last time, but when things started going well again, he started throwing all my past mistakes in my face.
I couldn’t believe how the person who helped me the most criticized me 24/7.
I didn’t understand it until one day, this person got drunk on a birthday and told me, “Your place is always one step behind me as if you were my f*cking shadow.”
Ouch! it hurt. But he also freed me from that toxic friend.
Evil exists, dear reader, and the people who can hurt us the most are the ones closest to us; don’t forget that.
2. Stop apologizing for changing your habits.
If you do not stop apologizing for not doing the things you used to do, social pressure will likely make you fall back into old habits.
Stop apologizing for changing. When you take your life seriously, it is customary to become a mix of Marie Kondo and David Goggins.
And it’s expected that when that happens, your party friends get more restless than a child after sneaking a scary movie on Halloween.
For two reasons,
- They’re afraid you’ll change and stop being their joker/drunken companion/comfort when they feel like a failure.
- They’re afraid that someone else in the group will change because of the call effect your example will cause.
Seriously, your drinking buddies are upset that you want to avoid dying of cirrhosis or getting type 2 diabetes and will tell you things like you look like your mother or an altar boy or that you used to be cool but not anymore.
Please don’t listen to them. Those people don’t want your well-being; they don’t want to be left alone in the predicament you are trying to escape.
You don’t have to explain yourself or ask for forgiveness for not wanting to continue living the life of a teenager past 30.
3. Stop apologizing when you finally get something right.
When you escape from hell, you always bring with you a demon hidden deep in the back of your mind.
It is a dark voice that occasionally tells you, “You don’t deserve to be happy after all the damage you have caused.”
The influence of that voice is not something to be taken lightly, for it acts like water that, drop by drop, erodes stone.
It is a voice that accompanies you wherever you go, and its job is to remind you that you are the worst every time something good happens to you.
- If you get a good job, the voice says, “Eventually, they’ll realize you’re an imposter.”
- If someone healthy and attractive asks you out, the voice tells you, “If you liked them, you’d stay away because you end up hurting everyone who gets close to you.”
- If you start having friends, the voice tells you, “You’ll end up disappointing them when they find out about your past.”
That voice is more of a killjoy than a Grinch at Christmas. And if you let it eat your head, you’ll end up becoming the typical person who apologizes for breathing.
You deserve to be successful, you deserve your share of the pie, don’t apologize for it, and don’t let that voice steal your self-esteem and sour the moments of victory you find along the way (there aren’t that many).
I assure you that if you listen to me, it will cost you less to get out of hell and touch heaven with your hands.
Finally, remember that a bottle of water is worth $1 at the supermarket but $20 in a good restaurant. The same goes for your life; you are worth less in hell than you would be worth anywhere else.
Think about it.
A virtual hug
AG
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