70. Accountability and Apologies
Sometimes in life, no matter how good our intentions are, we do things that don’t align with our values.
We say things we wish we hadn’t said.
We react off the cuff instead of replying thoughtfully.
We give someone information we did want to share but we word it in a way that makes us cringe later.
And then we’re left wondering, should I apologize?
And if so, how do I want to frame and phrase my apology?
Maybe you want to apologize for your tone of voice but not the words you said.
Maybe you want to apologize for getting heated but you want to clarify or reiterate information that you think is also essential to the situation.
Maybe you want to apologize for all of it.
Being able to discern what you want to apologize for (and what you don’t want to apologize for) is important.
And this discernment will set you up to apologize in a more authentic, honest, non-people pleasey way.
So how do we do this?
We get thoughtful and creative.
Apologies can be anything you want them to be. They can include anything you want to include.
And you’re allowed to be sorry for some things and not others.
This week on the podcast, I’m discussing how to apologize in a way that feels authentic to you and to ensure that you’re not apologizing for anything you don’t want to apologize for.
We’re also talking about accountability and what it means to be accountable for your actions without blaming and shaming yourself about them.
It’s a very juicy topic and I can’t wait to share it with you!
If you want to supercharge your capacity to create a life that blows your mind, I have some one-on-one coaching slots opening up soon. Send me an email and let's talk about it or click here to schedule a call with me and we’ll see if we’re a good fit to start working together!
If there are topics y’all want me to talk about on the podcast, feel free to write in and let me know by clicking here! I’d love to hear from you!
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WHAT YOU’LL LEARN FROM THIS EPISODE:
How we sometimes apologize as a form of people-pleasing.
Why it’s 100% up to you what you want to apologize for.
How to incorporate connection orientation into your apologies, if you want to do that.
Why an apology sandwich might be the best way to get both your apology and your point across.
Why self-criticism and negative self-talk doesn’t help us take responsibility for what we’ve done and move forward constructively.
What happens when you expect yourself to live in perfect alignment with your values 100% of the time.
How to move into compassionate accountability instead of shaming yourself.
The most common questions I get around regret, shame, accountability, and apologizing.
LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE:
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FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
This week we’re talking about accountability and apologies.
You are listening to Love Your Job Before You Leave It, the podcast for ambitious, high-achieving women who are ready to stop feeling stressed about work and kiss burnout goodbye forever. Whether you’re starting a business or staying in your day job, this show will give you the coaching and guidance you need to start loving your work today. Here’s your host, Career Coach, Kori Linn.
Hey, y'all, happy Wednesday. We have a great episode today that I think is super important. I think they're all super important, so every week I’m like, “This one's my favorite.” But they're all my favorite. But before we get into that, I just want to share some of my clients’ wins.
So I have two clients who've had some really amazing wins recently. One of these clients has been looking for a new job for four and a half years. And we started coaching together a few months ago and that's one of the main things we've been working on.
And I am so pleased to report that she has accepted an offer with a place she really loves, for a job she's really excited to do, with people she really likes. And it didn't take that long, you know once we started working together.
And I think that's really important to point out because I see so often when people are working on big goals that they've been working on for a long time and they haven't made as much headway as they would have liked to, they can get really downtrodden. And they're like, “Well if it hasn't happened yet, why would it happen?
I think for a lot of people it's just really hard to keep believing in their ability and keep going. So I love sharing wins like this with you all because things can change in an instant. I think this is also why coaching is so helpful. Because sometimes we're trying something one way and it's not working, but we just keep doing the same things that same way over and over again.
And what coaching can come in and do is help us kind of tweak how we're going about it in a way that maybe seems really subtle, but can create extremely different results. So that's a super fun thing. Oh, and also it's a pay increase, so that's also just super fun, always.
And the company she's starting with is allowing her to start later so that the timing works better for her. That's the kind of thing where I see a lot of people who are like, “Oh, I can't ask for what I want. I can't ask for the pay I want. I can't ask to start when I want. I can't ask for the health insurance I want.” And sometimes you'd be really surprised by what companies and other people are willing to do when you're willing to own what you want.
That actually brings up like, let's have a little micro lesson here. I talk about this actually, with my clients all the time, that as much as we all think we can read each other's minds, we can't. And other people do not know what we want, and we do not know what other people want.
And I see so often that people know what they want, but they don't want to tell somebody. They're like, “Well, I want my boss to do these things, but I'm never going to mention that.” I see this a lot with partners, I want my partner to do this, but I'm never going to ask them to. And I would just offer, like you're allowed to do that if you want, obviously. But why?
It would be like going to a restaurant and then sitting there and not ordering anything and expecting them to bring the exact pizza you want. Why would we do that? Especially considering everyone has so much socialization in their heads that they're following their own socialization.
So if what you want is a pepperoni pizza with arugula on it, but their socialization is to give everyone a cheese pizza because some people don't like greens on their pizza and some people are vegetarian, then they're never just going to give you what you want.
And it's not because they're not willing to. It's not because they wouldn't be happy to. It's not because they don't have the capacity to, although sometimes those things may be true, but we find that out by fucking asking. Let's just keep it as an option, though. Let's just keep it as an option.
You always, of course, get to make the sovereign choice on whether that's an option you want to employ. But I'm just going to say that I've secured a lot of things in life that I wanted to have by asking for them. And it's super fucking uncomfortable when I do it. And let's be clear that many other things come into play also. Like I have a lot of privilege, and so me asking for things may be a different situation.
But being willing to ask is what's in our control. The privilege and the structures that we have in place in our culture and in the countries and cities we live in, we can also impact that in the long term. But what we have more impact on in the short term is ourselves, right?
And being willing to ask for what we want and then see what the fuck happens. Because also if you ask for what you want and someone doesn't want to give it to you, that's not about you. That's about them. And so you can also move along and go somewhere where someone else is more willing to give it to you, et cetera, et cetera. But if we don't ask for it, we're generally not going to get it, whatever the it is.
Okay, so that was one of my client’s wins. Yay, that client. I'm not going to share their name because anonymity is important. Although I do have permission to share these wins because consent is sexy all over, not just in the bedroom activities. Okay, good.
The second client win I want to tell you all about is another client who really loves their work, and they want to stay where they are. But they felt like they were adding so much fucking value and they didn't feel like they were being compensated equal to the value they were adding. So they did what I was just talking about, and they fucking asked for a raise.
And they didn't just ask for a small raise, they asked for a 50% raise. Can we just like, take a moment and pause and like revel in the brazenness and delight of that. And here's the thing, did they get a 50% raise? No, but they got a 30% raise, and that's pretty fucking spectacular. And they probably wouldn't have gotten that if they didn't ask for the 50% raise.
They also got an increase in stock, which is always a super fun thing to have. Especially when you love where you're at, want to stay there, and really want to help that company succeed. Getting stock is basically like betting on yourself, as well as the rest of the company.
But you know, I like to think of it as like betting on myself and my capacity to do great things within the company. Not that myself is within any companies anymore. I'm just within my company over here and we don't have stock.
Anyways, that was a tangent, unnecessary. But that's a little bit of what you get over here. It's just me, stream of consciousness, talking a lot. Okay, now that we've talked about those, that's amazing. I'd also like to shout out a friend of mine, who I'm also going to shout out anonymously, who planted the seed a while back for this podcast episode.
And then also some clients and I have been having conversations that are related to what we're going to talk about today, which is accountability and apologies. Okay, so sometimes in life, no matter how good our intentions are, no matter how much we're trying to live according to our values, we do some shit that doesn't line up with those values. We do some shit that we consider to be a mistake. We do some shit we wish we hadn't done.
You know, I know we talked about regret recently, so maybe we do something we regret or we're just like, “That's not exactly how I wish I would have done it.” But sometimes also, we do something that we aren't unhappy that we did, but maybe feathers have been ruffled and we're like, okay.
Like basically, here's the part I'm sorry for and here's the part I'm not sorry for. Like here's the part I wish I'd done differently, and here's the part I don't wish I'd done differently because I'm happy I did that or because that was important to me for some reason.
Okay. So to give you an example, let's say you have a work colleague and they said that you didn't turn in a deliverable on time. But you know you did turn it in on time. And you're like, “No, I totally turned it on time.” You’re yelling or getting a little angry and upset in a way that doesn't line up with how you want to show up at work.
In that case, what you might want to apologize for is the demeanor with which you answered. But what you might not want to apologize for is correcting them when they were incorrect about you having turned the assignment in.
So in this case, being able to see a situation where there's something you'd like to apologize for, but you don't want to apologize for all of it, and being able to use discernment about what you want to apologize for and what you don't want to apologize for. And another frame I have for this is how to apologize in a meaningful way that's not about people pleasing.
So sometimes people apologize as a form of people pleasing. They're like, “Oh, I have to apologize to manipulate this other person into not being mad at me anymore.” They're probably not being quite that frank inside their own head. But I definitely hear that a lot of like, “Oh, I have to apologize.”
First of all, you don't ever have to fucking do anything because you're a human with freewill. I was going to say you're a whole ass adult human, but the reality is kids have freewill too, as we are aware often in ways that delight us and do not delight us.
Everyone's got the freewill. You get to do whatever you want. If you choose not to do some things, yes, there may be consequences. But I find that really putting it in the perspective of the free will, at least for me, helps me feel so much more empowered. And then really think you're like what the fuck do I want to do if I get to do whatever I want? Which, like I just said, I do.
Okay, so let's just assume though, that in this scenario you do want to apologize, but you don't want to apologize for everything. I think getting a piece of paper and writing down, “Okay, here's what happened. Here's the things I want to apologize for. Here's the things I don't want to apologize for. How do I want to frame this apology so that that's clear? But so the apology is still oriented towards whatever I want it to be oriented towards.”
So last week we talked about connection orientation. So if I were apologizing to Alex, I will be like, “Okay, what do I want to apologize for? What do I not want to apologize for? But how do I take all of that and orient that towards what I want to have, which is connection?”
So now we're a little bit outside the work example because we're in my relationship example. But Alex and I live together, and we spend a lot of time together. And sometimes I say things that I wish I hadn't said, or I say things in a tone of voice that doesn't fit with the values that I have for who I want to be in my relationship.
And in that case, I would be like, “Okay, maybe I'm sorry I said it in his tone of voice. But I'm not sorry that I brought up some information.” But I want to wrap all of that into the orientation of being connected to her and to our relationship.
So in that case I might be like, “Hey, I didn't say that the way I meant to. I do think it's important for us to be able to talk about X thing, which maybe feels a little bit difficult. But it's not who I want to be to speak to you in that tone of voice, and I'm sorry for that.”
So that kind of sets me up that I'm being clear about what I'm sorry for, and I'm being clear about what I want to have happen. Which is the ability to talk about something that maybe previously I delivered in a salty tone of voice. And orienting towards both connecting and continuing that conversation.
Versus just being like, “Oh, that blew up. So now I'm going to apologize and then bury it and never talk about it again.” Asterisk, never talked about it until we fight about it again, which is probably, if we don't talk about it now, going to be quite shortly, right?
So that's just what I want you all to think about is like, apologies can be anything you want them to be. This is, again, where I also really like the compliment sandwich, but we could over here call it the apology sandwich. So if I'm apologizing, I can start with the apology. That would be like the compliment part, right?
So I'm like, “Hey, I'm really sorry, that didn't come out the way that I meant it to.” And then in the middle is the part where whatever information I think might be difficult to share or difficult for them to hear. You know, it didn't come out the way I wanted it to. I do really want to have a conversation with you about X or Y really isn't working for me. ABC, blah, blah, whatever.
And then we wrap it back up with either another apology, something positive, or an indication that we want to work on it with them, something like that. So it could be like, but again, I don't want to be a person who speaks to you in that tone of voice. So I'm sorry for that, how can we move forward?
Or like, hey, I'm sorry, that's not how I want to talk to you. I do want to talk about that. What's a way we could talk about that together that would feel okay for us? And what's our protocol if one of us gets upset? That's actually kind of a separate idea, but that's a good idea to also have.
So that's the apology. I think I'm actually kind of doing this podcast a little bit backwards. Because I've talked about the apology before I've talked about the accountability. And I actually think internally, you probably need to address these in the opposite order. So my apologies for that. Lots of apologizing in this podcast, it's like on the brain.
Okay, accountability. So when we do something that we wish we hadn't done, that doesn't live up to our values, that doesn't represent who we want to be in the world, what I see a lot is we feel guilt and shame. And it’s a lot of like negative self-talk. Like I'm the worst, why would I do that? I lost control, I lost my temper. I'm an asshole. I'm a bitch. Like, what the fuck is wrong with me?
It's a lot of self-blame, self-judgment, self-criticism. And the thing about that is most of us learn that shit is kids. That's not an accident that we all do that. And it's not natural and built in either. It is a framework of, oh, I didn't do the thing I wanted to, ergo I'm bad and or something's wrong with me, et cetera, et cetera.
But here's what that does, it makes us really centered on ourselves and our own behavior, and usually through the lens of how shitty we are. And that does not help us reconnect with the other person. It does not help us take responsibility for what we've done. It does not help us move forward with something that is constructive.
Usually what it does, is it makes us feel shitty. And then from that place of feeling shitty we're either feeling sorry for ourselves, so going into self-pity. Or sometimes we flip it and we're like, “Well, no, they're the asshole and they did this. And that's why I misbehaved in this way.” Right? So we criticize the other person, we try to shift the blame.
Or what some of us do is we go into like a numbing and avoiding thing. We're like, “I was an asshole, but I don't want to think about it. So I'm going to go scroll TikTok for four hours. Or like, “Oh, why can't I be better? But I don't want to think about it so I'm just going to have a bunch of glasses of wine.” Right?
All of this is not so you can go blame yourself if you're doing any of these things. This is just to help you understand the structure of what it does when we look at ourselves with criticism, blame, and shame, instead of accountability. And what I'm going to call, let's call it compassionate accountability, right?
Because if we're just being accountable without the compassion part, I think a lot of people think they're just being accountable when they're actually blaming and shaming themselves. So we're just going to add that in to help us understand which of these activities we're currently doing.
Okay, so a lot of y'all are going to have the question, because I hear this all the time, “If I don't blame and shame myself, what will keep me from doing this again?” Here's the thing, punishment is like not really effective.
Sometimes it's effective for surface level change, but it is not effective for truly reorienting behavior. And it makes people feel bad about themselves, and when we feel bad about ourselves we want to comfort ourselves. And we don't want to go in there and examine what's going on.
We don't want to be curious because it's too painful, because we see it as evidence of our suckiness. So what I would actually offer is that it's going to be easier to adjust your behavior in ways that bring it more in line with your values when you don't shit all over yourself when you have a fuck up. Okay? Okay.
Also, there's never going to be a time when you're going to have zero fuck ups. I know, this is painful. I think a lot of us are a little bit addicted to the fantasy that if we just shit on ourselves enough, and beat ourselves up enough, and wish we were different enough, then somehow we're going to become like a magical non-human person who never makes mistakes.
I distinctly remember this one time I had this argument with Alex, this was years ago. We had been at a party, and I had done something, and she didn't like it. And the next day we were talking about it. and I remember crying and being like, “Listen, I want to tell you I'm never going to do that again, but I just don't think that's true.”
Like I work on myself all the time, I do so much coaching and self-coaching and all this shit, but I'm probably going to do that behavior again. We can talk about our feelings around it, and I can make so much space for your feelings. But I just had this moment where I was like, there's no way I'm perfecting myself to the degree that I do not do that anymore.
I know y'all are curious, it was like when I'm at a party, I don't like to leave. I like to have a slow transition style. I'm actually probably at some point going to do a whole podcast on transition styles. I don't like to transition from one activity to the other.
There's actually this book about transitions that really helped me understand that this is kind of a pattern. And it's probably also based on my thought patterns. But listen, we can only work on so much shit at one time. And sometimes this work is about really making big changes in our lives, and sometimes it's also just about understanding ourselves and working with that.
So I'm slow to transition. So she often is like, “I want to leave a party.” And I'm always, always like, “Five more minutes. 10 more minutes. 15 more minutes. 30 more minutes.” Right? So this is like part of our relationship, is that there's always this negotiation of when are we going to leave? And how much notice does Kori need to prepare herself and wrap up whatever she's doing?
Why am I talking about myself in the third person? Anyways. And when Alex is ready to go, she's just ready to go. So I just want you to absorb that for a minute. We are all human, we will all have fuck ups. No matter what our values are and whether they're lofty as fuck or not that lofty, we're all always going to have times where we don't live up to them. And that doesn't mean we're doing life wrong.
In fact, if you're someone like me, who has really, I think I have really lofty values, that means I fuck up a lot. And so for me, it's also this balance of how can I let myself have these lofty ideals without feeling like a fucking failure all the time? And I've tried having lower ideals, and that also doesn't mean I can hit them all the time. You would think that it would, but somehow, no.
So let's just all absorb that idea. None of us are becoming perfect, that's just not what we're doing. And I just am saying it over and over again because I do not think I can overstate this. And then from that point of view of we're never going to be perfect, I think the conversation around accountability really changes.
Because if you're expecting yourself to be perfect, and maybe subconsciously you're expecting that even if consciously you're like, “Duh that's not a thing.” Every time you don't live up to your values, every time you don't live up to your standards, every time you do something in a way you wish you hadn't, you're going to feel like you're fucking failing at life.
But if you really absorb that's not what we're doing in this incarnation, there is no perfect. There is no version of me who lives up to her values 100% of the time. Values are not a destination we get to, they’re like a compass that we use to guide us on our path. You're going to know that sometimes you're not going to hit the mark.
And I think that's important, and it's not about letting ourselves off the hook. It's just about normalizing that on this journey we're going to get a little lost sometimes. And it doesn't mean we're not going the right direction, it doesn't mean we can't get to where we're going. It's just part of what we're doing here.
And it's an opportunity to get to know ourselves better. It's an opportunity to get to know our socialization and our thought patterns more deeply. And yes, y'all, it's an opportunity to love ourselves more. It's an opportunity to love ourselves when we're not being perfect. And that shit is essential.
Here's what it's also an opportunity for, it's an opportunity for us to be curious with ourselves and be like, “Why do I do that?” Like with me, I'm like, “Why do I snap at my girlfriend? Why do I do that?” And sometimes it's like what I talked about in the anger podcast, where it's like because my brain saying she's being disrespectful. Then my brain is angry and then I'm like, “I also behave in ways that I think are disrespectful.”
So when I can get curious, I'm like, “Oh, I can see why I would behave in that manner. That's not what I want. Hmm, okay, so I can apologize for the way I didn't behave in the manner I wanted. And I can see what I don't want to apologize for. And I can see how I want to direct things moving forward with that person.” And I can see what I've done as just a neutral thing I've done, even if it's not something I want to do again. And I can trace it back to its root causes.
And from there, I can change the root causes. So for me with the example with Alex and the thought that she was being disrespectful, which again, from the anger podcast, I was like, “Oh, I can change that cause, I can change that thought. That's not the thought pattern I want to be having when she is saying these words out of her face.” Right?
So at this point you're probably wondering, “But wait, if I can change the cause, why can't I be the perfect person who never fucks up?” Right? And it's a good question. But I think the answer is because we're super complex human beings with like big sexy brains and gajillion thought patterns. And also we have stress responses, and our nervous systems get triggered and freak the fuck out.
And we have like bajillion socialization, did I say that already? I don't care, I'm saying it again. We have so much socialization from our own lifetimes, but also like the epigenetics that get passed down. And the things that happened to our ancestors impacted their genetic code, which is impacting us.
And on top of all of that, we're human beings. And so are our values tend to be impossible standards, I'm just going to say. It's not like our values are like six times out of 10 I will blah, blah, blah. Our values are like, kind people speak kindly. And then sometimes we're elevated and we're having a stress response and we were parented in the fucking 80s and 90s and yelling comes out of our face hole.
I understand the impulse to try to use thought work and coaching to become a perfect person, so you never have to feel shitty about yourself. But I'm just going to tell you right now, it doesn't work. It just doesn't work.
And trying to use it that way, I think, is actually going to make you feel more badly about yourself. And that's definitely not the goal of what we're doing. And again, going to drive you right back to old behaviors that are not what you want.
Okay, so what I'm really saying is can we let your own actions be data that tell us about you as an ecosystem? So that we can understand the ecosystem and make subtle changes to it that help our behavior come more into alignment with our values without the perfectionism of ever expecting ourselves to be perfect people?
Also, here's what's good news, if you expect yourself to never be perfect and you know how to apologize, you don't need to be perfect. It's like not even a thing. So many people want to be perfect just so they never have to feel shitty about themselves. But the feeling shitty about ourselves is optional. So instead of trying to be perfect, we can just choose not to be assholes to ourselves when we're humans.
And this brings us full circle, right? Because the next question is, but what if me being human means another human is upset? What if me being human means another human is angry at me? What of me being human means one of my best friends or family members feels super fucking hurt by what I've done?
And my answer to that is probably sometimes they will. And that's why we know how to apologize. And that's why we know how to bring ourselves back to who we want to be. And that's why we know how to be connection oriented, or why we're learning how to be connection oriented. Because I think all of that is to be expected. But it doesn't have to be the final chapter. It doesn't have to be the end of the story.
I think trying to live our lives so that no one else ever has a negative feeling is just very anxiety inducing and impossible. Versus setting ourselves up like yeah, having wonderful relationships and a great career means that I'm going to have difficult feelings and other people are going to have difficult feelings.
And I know how to fucking handle them without being an asshole to myself. And I know how to handle them without being an asshole to others. And sometimes I'll still be an asshole to myself and others, and then I know how to handle that, too.
Okay, we covered a lot today, but I think these are important topics. And if you have questions about them, I want to hear your questions. Come talk to me on Instagram @KoriLinn. And also, listen, doing the work of unlearning decades of socialization can be challenging. If you want to do that work alone, I'm here to support you. I've got the podcast for you every week.
But if you want to do that work with a group of amazing humans, and me, come join Satisfied As Fuck. This is exactly the kind of work we're going to be doing to help you create a career and a life that's just toe curlingly satisfying. And I want to do it with you.
So come to my website, go to KoriLinn.com/learnmore and you can click on the Satisfied as Fuck wait list there. And I can't wait to meet you, and to coach you, and to see what you create in your life with these tools. All right, y'all, have an amazing week. I'll talk to you next time, bye.
Thank you for listening to Love Your Job Before You Leave It. We'll have another episode for you next week. And in the meantime, if you're feeling super fired up, head on over to korilinn.com for more guidance and resources.
You are listening to Love Your Job Before You Leave It, the podcast for ambitious, high-achieving women who are ready to stop feeling stressed about work and kiss burnout goodbye forever. Whether you’re starting a business or staying in your day job, this show will give you the coaching and guidance you need to start loving your work today. Here’s your host, Career Coach, Kori Linn.
Hey, y'all, happy Wednesday. We have a great episode today that I think is super important. I think they're all super important, so every week I’m like, “This one's my favorite.” But they're all my favorite. But before we get into that, I just want to share some of my clients’ wins.
So I have two clients who've had some really amazing wins recently. One of these clients has been looking for a new job for four and a half years. And we started coaching together a few months ago and that's one of the main things we've been working on.
And I am so pleased to report that she has accepted an offer with a place she really loves, for a job she's really excited to do, with people she really likes. And it didn't take that long, you know once we started working together.
And I think that's really important to point out because I see so often when people are working on big goals that they've been working on for a long time and they haven't made as much headway as they would have liked to, they can get really downtrodden. And they're like, “Well if it hasn't happened yet, why would it happen?
I think for a lot of people it's just really hard to keep believing in their ability and keep going. So I love sharing wins like this with you all because things can change in an instant. I think this is also why coaching is so helpful. Because sometimes we're trying something one way and it's not working, but we just keep doing the same things that same way over and over again.
And what coaching can come in and do is help us kind of tweak how we're going about it in a way that maybe seems really subtle, but can create extremely different results. So that's a super fun thing. Oh, and also it's a pay increase, so that's also just super fun, always.
And the company she's starting with is allowing her to start later so that the timing works better for her. That's the kind of thing where I see a lot of people who are like, “Oh, I can't ask for what I want. I can't ask for the pay I want. I can't ask to start when I want. I can't ask for the health insurance I want.” And sometimes you'd be really surprised by what companies and other people are willing to do when you're willing to own what you want.
That actually brings up like, let's have a little micro lesson here. I talk about this actually, with my clients all the time, that as much as we all think we can read each other's minds, we can't. And other people do not know what we want, and we do not know what other people want.
And I see so often that people know what they want, but they don't want to tell somebody. They're like, “Well, I want my boss to do these things, but I'm never going to mention that.” I see this a lot with partners, I want my partner to do this, but I'm never going to ask them to. And I would just offer, like you're allowed to do that if you want, obviously. But why?
It would be like going to a restaurant and then sitting there and not ordering anything and expecting them to bring the exact pizza you want. Why would we do that? Especially considering everyone has so much socialization in their heads that they're following their own socialization.
So if what you want is a pepperoni pizza with arugula on it, but their socialization is to give everyone a cheese pizza because some people don't like greens on their pizza and some people are vegetarian, then they're never just going to give you what you want.
And it's not because they're not willing to. It's not because they wouldn't be happy to. It's not because they don't have the capacity to, although sometimes those things may be true, but we find that out by fucking asking. Let's just keep it as an option, though. Let's just keep it as an option.
You always, of course, get to make the sovereign choice on whether that's an option you want to employ. But I'm just going to say that I've secured a lot of things in life that I wanted to have by asking for them. And it's super fucking uncomfortable when I do it. And let's be clear that many other things come into play also. Like I have a lot of privilege, and so me asking for things may be a different situation.
But being willing to ask is what's in our control. The privilege and the structures that we have in place in our culture and in the countries and cities we live in, we can also impact that in the long term. But what we have more impact on in the short term is ourselves, right?
And being willing to ask for what we want and then see what the fuck happens. Because also if you ask for what you want and someone doesn't want to give it to you, that's not about you. That's about them. And so you can also move along and go somewhere where someone else is more willing to give it to you, et cetera, et cetera. But if we don't ask for it, we're generally not going to get it, whatever the it is.
Okay, so that was one of my client’s wins. Yay, that client. I'm not going to share their name because anonymity is important. Although I do have permission to share these wins because consent is sexy all over, not just in the bedroom activities. Okay, good.
The second client win I want to tell you all about is another client who really loves their work, and they want to stay where they are. But they felt like they were adding so much fucking value and they didn't feel like they were being compensated equal to the value they were adding. So they did what I was just talking about, and they fucking asked for a raise.
And they didn't just ask for a small raise, they asked for a 50% raise. Can we just like, take a moment and pause and like revel in the brazenness and delight of that. And here's the thing, did they get a 50% raise? No, but they got a 30% raise, and that's pretty fucking spectacular. And they probably wouldn't have gotten that if they didn't ask for the 50% raise.
They also got an increase in stock, which is always a super fun thing to have. Especially when you love where you're at, want to stay there, and really want to help that company succeed. Getting stock is basically like betting on yourself, as well as the rest of the company.
But you know, I like to think of it as like betting on myself and my capacity to do great things within the company. Not that myself is within any companies anymore. I'm just within my company over here and we don't have stock.
Anyways, that was a tangent, unnecessary. But that's a little bit of what you get over here. It's just me, stream of consciousness, talking a lot. Okay, now that we've talked about those, that's amazing. I'd also like to shout out a friend of mine, who I'm also going to shout out anonymously, who planted the seed a while back for this podcast episode.
And then also some clients and I have been having conversations that are related to what we're going to talk about today, which is accountability and apologies. Okay, so sometimes in life, no matter how good our intentions are, no matter how much we're trying to live according to our values, we do some shit that doesn't line up with those values. We do some shit that we consider to be a mistake. We do some shit we wish we hadn't done.
You know, I know we talked about regret recently, so maybe we do something we regret or we're just like, “That's not exactly how I wish I would have done it.” But sometimes also, we do something that we aren't unhappy that we did, but maybe feathers have been ruffled and we're like, okay.
Like basically, here's the part I'm sorry for and here's the part I'm not sorry for. Like here's the part I wish I'd done differently, and here's the part I don't wish I'd done differently because I'm happy I did that or because that was important to me for some reason.
Okay. So to give you an example, let's say you have a work colleague and they said that you didn't turn in a deliverable on time. But you know you did turn it in on time. And you're like, “No, I totally turned it on time.” You’re yelling or getting a little angry and upset in a way that doesn't line up with how you want to show up at work.
In that case, what you might want to apologize for is the demeanor with which you answered. But what you might not want to apologize for is correcting them when they were incorrect about you having turned the assignment in.
So in this case, being able to see a situation where there's something you'd like to apologize for, but you don't want to apologize for all of it, and being able to use discernment about what you want to apologize for and what you don't want to apologize for. And another frame I have for this is how to apologize in a meaningful way that's not about people pleasing.
So sometimes people apologize as a form of people pleasing. They're like, “Oh, I have to apologize to manipulate this other person into not being mad at me anymore.” They're probably not being quite that frank inside their own head. But I definitely hear that a lot of like, “Oh, I have to apologize.”
First of all, you don't ever have to fucking do anything because you're a human with freewill. I was going to say you're a whole ass adult human, but the reality is kids have freewill too, as we are aware often in ways that delight us and do not delight us.
Everyone's got the freewill. You get to do whatever you want. If you choose not to do some things, yes, there may be consequences. But I find that really putting it in the perspective of the free will, at least for me, helps me feel so much more empowered. And then really think you're like what the fuck do I want to do if I get to do whatever I want? Which, like I just said, I do.
Okay, so let's just assume though, that in this scenario you do want to apologize, but you don't want to apologize for everything. I think getting a piece of paper and writing down, “Okay, here's what happened. Here's the things I want to apologize for. Here's the things I don't want to apologize for. How do I want to frame this apology so that that's clear? But so the apology is still oriented towards whatever I want it to be oriented towards.”
So last week we talked about connection orientation. So if I were apologizing to Alex, I will be like, “Okay, what do I want to apologize for? What do I not want to apologize for? But how do I take all of that and orient that towards what I want to have, which is connection?”
So now we're a little bit outside the work example because we're in my relationship example. But Alex and I live together, and we spend a lot of time together. And sometimes I say things that I wish I hadn't said, or I say things in a tone of voice that doesn't fit with the values that I have for who I want to be in my relationship.
And in that case, I would be like, “Okay, maybe I'm sorry I said it in his tone of voice. But I'm not sorry that I brought up some information.” But I want to wrap all of that into the orientation of being connected to her and to our relationship.
So in that case I might be like, “Hey, I didn't say that the way I meant to. I do think it's important for us to be able to talk about X thing, which maybe feels a little bit difficult. But it's not who I want to be to speak to you in that tone of voice, and I'm sorry for that.”
So that kind of sets me up that I'm being clear about what I'm sorry for, and I'm being clear about what I want to have happen. Which is the ability to talk about something that maybe previously I delivered in a salty tone of voice. And orienting towards both connecting and continuing that conversation.
Versus just being like, “Oh, that blew up. So now I'm going to apologize and then bury it and never talk about it again.” Asterisk, never talked about it until we fight about it again, which is probably, if we don't talk about it now, going to be quite shortly, right?
So that's just what I want you all to think about is like, apologies can be anything you want them to be. This is, again, where I also really like the compliment sandwich, but we could over here call it the apology sandwich. So if I'm apologizing, I can start with the apology. That would be like the compliment part, right?
So I'm like, “Hey, I'm really sorry, that didn't come out the way that I meant it to.” And then in the middle is the part where whatever information I think might be difficult to share or difficult for them to hear. You know, it didn't come out the way I wanted it to. I do really want to have a conversation with you about X or Y really isn't working for me. ABC, blah, blah, whatever.
And then we wrap it back up with either another apology, something positive, or an indication that we want to work on it with them, something like that. So it could be like, but again, I don't want to be a person who speaks to you in that tone of voice. So I'm sorry for that, how can we move forward?
Or like, hey, I'm sorry, that's not how I want to talk to you. I do want to talk about that. What's a way we could talk about that together that would feel okay for us? And what's our protocol if one of us gets upset? That's actually kind of a separate idea, but that's a good idea to also have.
So that's the apology. I think I'm actually kind of doing this podcast a little bit backwards. Because I've talked about the apology before I've talked about the accountability. And I actually think internally, you probably need to address these in the opposite order. So my apologies for that. Lots of apologizing in this podcast, it's like on the brain.
Okay, accountability. So when we do something that we wish we hadn't done, that doesn't live up to our values, that doesn't represent who we want to be in the world, what I see a lot is we feel guilt and shame. And it’s a lot of like negative self-talk. Like I'm the worst, why would I do that? I lost control, I lost my temper. I'm an asshole. I'm a bitch. Like, what the fuck is wrong with me?
It's a lot of self-blame, self-judgment, self-criticism. And the thing about that is most of us learn that shit is kids. That's not an accident that we all do that. And it's not natural and built in either. It is a framework of, oh, I didn't do the thing I wanted to, ergo I'm bad and or something's wrong with me, et cetera, et cetera.
But here's what that does, it makes us really centered on ourselves and our own behavior, and usually through the lens of how shitty we are. And that does not help us reconnect with the other person. It does not help us take responsibility for what we've done. It does not help us move forward with something that is constructive.
Usually what it does, is it makes us feel shitty. And then from that place of feeling shitty we're either feeling sorry for ourselves, so going into self-pity. Or sometimes we flip it and we're like, “Well, no, they're the asshole and they did this. And that's why I misbehaved in this way.” Right? So we criticize the other person, we try to shift the blame.
Or what some of us do is we go into like a numbing and avoiding thing. We're like, “I was an asshole, but I don't want to think about it. So I'm going to go scroll TikTok for four hours. Or like, “Oh, why can't I be better? But I don't want to think about it so I'm just going to have a bunch of glasses of wine.” Right?
All of this is not so you can go blame yourself if you're doing any of these things. This is just to help you understand the structure of what it does when we look at ourselves with criticism, blame, and shame, instead of accountability. And what I'm going to call, let's call it compassionate accountability, right?
Because if we're just being accountable without the compassion part, I think a lot of people think they're just being accountable when they're actually blaming and shaming themselves. So we're just going to add that in to help us understand which of these activities we're currently doing.
Okay, so a lot of y'all are going to have the question, because I hear this all the time, “If I don't blame and shame myself, what will keep me from doing this again?” Here's the thing, punishment is like not really effective.
Sometimes it's effective for surface level change, but it is not effective for truly reorienting behavior. And it makes people feel bad about themselves, and when we feel bad about ourselves we want to comfort ourselves. And we don't want to go in there and examine what's going on.
We don't want to be curious because it's too painful, because we see it as evidence of our suckiness. So what I would actually offer is that it's going to be easier to adjust your behavior in ways that bring it more in line with your values when you don't shit all over yourself when you have a fuck up. Okay? Okay.
Also, there's never going to be a time when you're going to have zero fuck ups. I know, this is painful. I think a lot of us are a little bit addicted to the fantasy that if we just shit on ourselves enough, and beat ourselves up enough, and wish we were different enough, then somehow we're going to become like a magical non-human person who never makes mistakes.
I distinctly remember this one time I had this argument with Alex, this was years ago. We had been at a party, and I had done something, and she didn't like it. And the next day we were talking about it. and I remember crying and being like, “Listen, I want to tell you I'm never going to do that again, but I just don't think that's true.”
Like I work on myself all the time, I do so much coaching and self-coaching and all this shit, but I'm probably going to do that behavior again. We can talk about our feelings around it, and I can make so much space for your feelings. But I just had this moment where I was like, there's no way I'm perfecting myself to the degree that I do not do that anymore.
I know y'all are curious, it was like when I'm at a party, I don't like to leave. I like to have a slow transition style. I'm actually probably at some point going to do a whole podcast on transition styles. I don't like to transition from one activity to the other.
There's actually this book about transitions that really helped me understand that this is kind of a pattern. And it's probably also based on my thought patterns. But listen, we can only work on so much shit at one time. And sometimes this work is about really making big changes in our lives, and sometimes it's also just about understanding ourselves and working with that.
So I'm slow to transition. So she often is like, “I want to leave a party.” And I'm always, always like, “Five more minutes. 10 more minutes. 15 more minutes. 30 more minutes.” Right? So this is like part of our relationship, is that there's always this negotiation of when are we going to leave? And how much notice does Kori need to prepare herself and wrap up whatever she's doing?
Why am I talking about myself in the third person? Anyways. And when Alex is ready to go, she's just ready to go. So I just want you to absorb that for a minute. We are all human, we will all have fuck ups. No matter what our values are and whether they're lofty as fuck or not that lofty, we're all always going to have times where we don't live up to them. And that doesn't mean we're doing life wrong.
In fact, if you're someone like me, who has really, I think I have really lofty values, that means I fuck up a lot. And so for me, it's also this balance of how can I let myself have these lofty ideals without feeling like a fucking failure all the time? And I've tried having lower ideals, and that also doesn't mean I can hit them all the time. You would think that it would, but somehow, no.
So let's just all absorb that idea. None of us are becoming perfect, that's just not what we're doing. And I just am saying it over and over again because I do not think I can overstate this. And then from that point of view of we're never going to be perfect, I think the conversation around accountability really changes.
Because if you're expecting yourself to be perfect, and maybe subconsciously you're expecting that even if consciously you're like, “Duh that's not a thing.” Every time you don't live up to your values, every time you don't live up to your standards, every time you do something in a way you wish you hadn't, you're going to feel like you're fucking failing at life.
But if you really absorb that's not what we're doing in this incarnation, there is no perfect. There is no version of me who lives up to her values 100% of the time. Values are not a destination we get to, they’re like a compass that we use to guide us on our path. You're going to know that sometimes you're not going to hit the mark.
And I think that's important, and it's not about letting ourselves off the hook. It's just about normalizing that on this journey we're going to get a little lost sometimes. And it doesn't mean we're not going the right direction, it doesn't mean we can't get to where we're going. It's just part of what we're doing here.
And it's an opportunity to get to know ourselves better. It's an opportunity to get to know our socialization and our thought patterns more deeply. And yes, y'all, it's an opportunity to love ourselves more. It's an opportunity to love ourselves when we're not being perfect. And that shit is essential.
Here's what it's also an opportunity for, it's an opportunity for us to be curious with ourselves and be like, “Why do I do that?” Like with me, I'm like, “Why do I snap at my girlfriend? Why do I do that?” And sometimes it's like what I talked about in the anger podcast, where it's like because my brain saying she's being disrespectful. Then my brain is angry and then I'm like, “I also behave in ways that I think are disrespectful.”
So when I can get curious, I'm like, “Oh, I can see why I would behave in that manner. That's not what I want. Hmm, okay, so I can apologize for the way I didn't behave in the manner I wanted. And I can see what I don't want to apologize for. And I can see how I want to direct things moving forward with that person.” And I can see what I've done as just a neutral thing I've done, even if it's not something I want to do again. And I can trace it back to its root causes.
And from there, I can change the root causes. So for me with the example with Alex and the thought that she was being disrespectful, which again, from the anger podcast, I was like, “Oh, I can change that cause, I can change that thought. That's not the thought pattern I want to be having when she is saying these words out of her face.” Right?
So at this point you're probably wondering, “But wait, if I can change the cause, why can't I be the perfect person who never fucks up?” Right? And it's a good question. But I think the answer is because we're super complex human beings with like big sexy brains and gajillion thought patterns. And also we have stress responses, and our nervous systems get triggered and freak the fuck out.
And we have like bajillion socialization, did I say that already? I don't care, I'm saying it again. We have so much socialization from our own lifetimes, but also like the epigenetics that get passed down. And the things that happened to our ancestors impacted their genetic code, which is impacting us.
And on top of all of that, we're human beings. And so are our values tend to be impossible standards, I'm just going to say. It's not like our values are like six times out of 10 I will blah, blah, blah. Our values are like, kind people speak kindly. And then sometimes we're elevated and we're having a stress response and we were parented in the fucking 80s and 90s and yelling comes out of our face hole.
I understand the impulse to try to use thought work and coaching to become a perfect person, so you never have to feel shitty about yourself. But I'm just going to tell you right now, it doesn't work. It just doesn't work.
And trying to use it that way, I think, is actually going to make you feel more badly about yourself. And that's definitely not the goal of what we're doing. And again, going to drive you right back to old behaviors that are not what you want.
Okay, so what I'm really saying is can we let your own actions be data that tell us about you as an ecosystem? So that we can understand the ecosystem and make subtle changes to it that help our behavior come more into alignment with our values without the perfectionism of ever expecting ourselves to be perfect people?
Also, here's what's good news, if you expect yourself to never be perfect and you know how to apologize, you don't need to be perfect. It's like not even a thing. So many people want to be perfect just so they never have to feel shitty about themselves. But the feeling shitty about ourselves is optional. So instead of trying to be perfect, we can just choose not to be assholes to ourselves when we're humans.
And this brings us full circle, right? Because the next question is, but what if me being human means another human is upset? What if me being human means another human is angry at me? What of me being human means one of my best friends or family members feels super fucking hurt by what I've done?
And my answer to that is probably sometimes they will. And that's why we know how to apologize. And that's why we know how to bring ourselves back to who we want to be. And that's why we know how to be connection oriented, or why we're learning how to be connection oriented. Because I think all of that is to be expected. But it doesn't have to be the final chapter. It doesn't have to be the end of the story.
I think trying to live our lives so that no one else ever has a negative feeling is just very anxiety inducing and impossible. Versus setting ourselves up like yeah, having wonderful relationships and a great career means that I'm going to have difficult feelings and other people are going to have difficult feelings.
And I know how to fucking handle them without being an asshole to myself. And I know how to handle them without being an asshole to others. And sometimes I'll still be an asshole to myself and others, and then I know how to handle that, too.
Okay, we covered a lot today, but I think these are important topics. And if you have questions about them, I want to hear your questions. Come talk to me on Instagram @KoriLinn. And also, listen, doing the work of unlearning decades of socialization can be challenging. If you want to do that work alone, I'm here to support you. I've got the podcast for you every week.
But if you want to do that work with a group of amazing humans, and me, come join Satisfied As Fuck. This is exactly the kind of work we're going to be doing to help you create a career and a life that's just toe curlingly satisfying. And I want to do it with you.
So come to my website, go to KoriLinn.com/learnmore and you can click on the Satisfied as Fuck wait list there. And I can't wait to meet you, and to coach you, and to see what you create in your life with these tools. All right, y'all, have an amazing week. I'll talk to you next time, bye.
Thank you for listening to Love Your Job Before You Leave It. We'll have another episode for you next week. And in the meantime, if you're feeling super fired up, head on over to korilinn.com for more guidance and resources.
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