Two of my oldest Canadian friends have been with me for the past week and it has been absolutely delightful. We have traversed the Wicklow hills, roamed the halls of Kilkenny castle, explored Dublin’s fair city and ventured to the most sun soaked spot we could find: Inch beach in county Kerry. It has been joyful.
Interestingly, and maybe this is no surprise, as I spent time with my fellow Canadians, it became clear that we really do say ‘I’m sorry’ a lot. I am sorry I am taking too long; I am sorry, I need to use the loo; I’m sorry, I can’t stop laughing- and the apologies kept coming. That is until I told them about a trick for chronic apologisers that I’d heard in an Instagram meme from Mel Robins’ podcast.
In the podcast, Dr. Shade Zahrai, a behavioural researcher offered an anecdote for people who can’t stop saying they’re sorry. She invites the listener to shift from inadequacy to appreciation by turning ‘I am sorry that I am being so emotional’ to ‘Thank you so much for bearing with me’. Or in our case, thank you for your patience; thank you for waiting for me; thank you for the joy! Zahrai explains that not only does this influence how we feel about ourselves but it also makes the other person feel good for being included.
Our ‘thank you’ s’ generated plenty of laughter. However, we also discovered was this shift in perspective and the words that we started to use with one another had a knock-on effect. Whenever we would hear ourselves being self-critical, we would adjust our speech and find more positive things to say. This was incredibly useful as we stretched ourselves physically with long hikes and late evenings. Instead of berating ourselves for feeling out of shape (or old- we’ve come a long way since our early teens), we were able to comment on how wonderful it was to slow things down and take in the views. In this way, we were able to really soak in all of the luscious goodness of spending time together. What a tonic!
If you would like to join me at the Sanctuary’s Tuesday morning online community meditation, I would love to see you. We will be doing a ‘taking in the good’ meditation, inspired by the work of Dr. Rick Hanson. This is a practice that is designed to override the brain’s natural negativity bias by shifting towards the positive. We just might find some things to say thank you for 😊.
-Jane
To listen to and download a ‘taking in the good’ meditation, click below:
My Silent Place 
Leave a comment