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Tool 26 · Develop yourself

What have I done that I have not repaired?

A guided 20 to 30 minutes conversation, here in TAIU. This exercise will not manufacture a debt. No apology owed is a real result. So is an apology that should not be sent.

A man stopped on the pavement of a terraced street in the early evening

Who would the apology be for?

If the honest answer is you, wait.

No apology owed is a real result. So is one that should not be sent.

What you'll look at

  1. 01What happened
  2. 02What you said at the time
  3. 03What you have told yourself since
  4. 04Whether you are still in contact

A note from Mark

Mark Eve, founder of TAIU

The best apology I ever received was four sentences long and contained no explanation at all. The worst was two pages and was entirely about the person who sent it.

That is the whole difficulty. An apology is one of the few things we do that is meant for somebody else. It is extraordinarily easy to make it about yourself while sounding humble.

I would also say the answer is not always yes. I have watched people carry something for a decade. On inspection, it was a decision they had to make, one that somebody else did not like. That is not a debt. It is a cost. It should be described accurately.

Read my full view ↓

Where something is owed, the test I use is simple. Name the harm, say what you will do differently and ask for nothing. If you cannot resist asking to be forgiven, you are not ready yet.

What you'll get

This will not sort you into a personality type.It will give you answers about your own life that you can test.

  1. 01

    What you are actually responsible for

  2. 02

    Whether anything is owed

  3. 03

    Who the apology would serve

  4. 04

    What repair would look like

  5. +

    Your TAIU handover: a summary of what the conversation found, written so you can take it with you.

See everything included ↓
  • 01What you came here with
  • 02What actually happened
  • 03What you are responsible for
  • 04What you are not responsible for
  • 05What the other person may have experienced
  • 06Whether an apology is owed
  • 07Who the apology would serve
  • 08The rival reading
  • 09If an apology is owed, what it has to contain
  • 10What repair would actually look like
  • 11What deserves protecting
  • 12The credible alternative
  • 13What, if anything, should change
  • 14What remains unresolved
  • 15Where this goes next

When you finish

Bring it back to your tree.

Your tree is where TAIU keeps a picture of your whole life, in parts like work, money and health.

This session works on the whole of you, not one part of your life. Nothing is scored. At the end, you are asked once which part of your life this touched most. You can answer none.

The conversation writes this summary for you. Keep the sheet, print it or paste it into My Tree. Nothing from the conversation is stored by TAIU.

  • Session
  • Date
  • The part of life this belongs to
  • What we found
  • The alternative we tested
  • What deserves protecting
  • What should change, if anything
  • Next actions
  • What to notice or find out
  • What remains unresolved
Open My Tree

What now?

  1. 01 · Save it

    A plain account of what happened, without prosecution or defence.

  2. 02 · Test it

    Write the apology. Do not send it for a week. What survives the week is the part that is about them.

See more ↓

Before you send anything

An apology that arrives years later can be an event in somebody else's week that they did not ask for. Consider what receiving it would actually be like.

If they have asked for no contact, that request outranks your need to repair. Where the harm is serious or involves anybody's safety, this page is not the right instrument.

What I would do

  1. 01

    Separate harm from fault. You can hurt somebody by making the right decision, and that does not require an apology.

  2. 02

    Apportion honestly. If two people broke it, take your half and leave theirs alone.

  3. 03

    Strip out the explanation. Almost every unsuccessful apology is a defence with an apology attached to the front.

  4. 04

    Ask who it serves before you send anything. Years later, that question matters more than the words.

  5. 05

    Consider that the repair might be behaviour rather than words. Some things are apologised for over a year, not in a paragraph.

Test it

  1. 01

    Read your apology and delete every sentence that explains you. See what is left.

  2. 02

    Ask whether you would still make it if they never responded. If not, it is a request rather than a repair.

  3. 03

    Say what you would do differently, specifically. If you cannot, the apology is not finished.

The alternative

The obvious conclusion is that you should apologise and will feel better. Both halves can be wrong. Sometimes what you owe is not an apology but a change in behaviour that lasts longer than a conversation. Sometimes the person you have been thinking about is not the one who was damaged. Sometimes what you are carrying is not guilt but grief, and no apology addresses it. And sometimes the honest reading is that you made a decision that hurt somebody, it was the right decision, and you have been treating their unforgiveness as evidence that you were wrong.

Think about this

  • What actually happened, told as you would tell it to somebody with no stake in it.
  • What you said at the time, in the words you used.
  • What part of it was yours, and what part was not.
  • Whether they have ever raised it, or whether this has been yours alone.
  • Who an apology would actually be for.

Take this to Ask Mark

You have done the exercise. Now look again at what it found.

This looks at what you found and helps you understand it. It is not another exercise to repeat.

Take this to Ask Mark →

Go a little further

READ · BOOK

On Apology

Aaron Lazare

Best for understanding why most apologies fail.

Read more ↗
Was this useful?

READ · BOOK

The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work

John Gottman

Relevant when the exercise identifies a partner relationship as an area you want to work on.

Read more ↗
Was this useful?

READ · RESEARCH

An exploration of the structure of effective apologies

Roy Lewicki, Beth Polin and Robert Lount

Best for knowing which parts of an apology carry the weight.

Read more ↗
Was this useful?

Recommended by the TAIU community

What helped you?

If you've read, watched, listened to or tried something that helped you think about this differently, we'd like to hear about it.

We review recommendations before sharing them with the community.

Finished the exercise?

What did this uncover?

Tell us whether it helped and what you discovered. It takes less than a minute.

A woman sitting in a parked car at night outside a house with lit windows

Next tool

The conversation I keep not having

If something needs saying that is not an apology

Continue →Something I am carrying →

Further thinking

  • On Apology

    Aaron Lazare

  • An exploration of the structure of effective apologies

    Roy Lewicki, Beth Polin and Robert Lount

  • The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work

    John Gottman

See the thinking ↓

Book

On Apology

Aaron Lazare

Lazare, a psychiatrist who studied apology for decades, is precise about what an apology has to contain and about how often it is offered to relieve the person giving it. The distinction between acknowledging the harm and explaining yourself runs through the whole book and it is the distinction most people get wrong.

Article

An exploration of the structure of effective apologies

Roy Lewicki, Beth Polin and Robert Lount

The study tests apology components separately and finds that acknowledgement of responsibility does most of the work, while the expression of regret that people tend to lead with does the least. If you are drafting something difficult, it tells you what to put first.

Book

The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work

John Gottman

Relevant when the exercise identifies a partner relationship as an area you want to work on.