I was raised as an only child, this meant I had a lot of time on my hands. Therefore, opposed to going outside and socializing with others, I preferred to stay inside and read. This has resulted In me becoming more of an introverted person. Recently I have taken a job in retail where I am forced out of my comfort zone and have to engage with people. One habit of my introverted self that I cannot seem to get rid of is my tendency to say sorry. Even when something is not my fault I still cannot stop myself from doing it. After a while I noticed that when dealing with customers from Eastern cultures they acted embarrassed when I apologized to them for doing something rather minor and insignificant. They usually then began profusely assuring me that it was no big deal and telling me that it was okay. To me it seems that they felt as if they had committed a great offense to me. To me it seems that in Eastern cultures apologies carry a lot more weight than in Western cultures. I found this to be a very interesting concept which is why I feel compelled to write about it. The google definition of the word sorry is: “feeling distress, especially through sympathy with someone else's misfortune”. The second definition which applies more here is: “feeling regret or penitence”. In our Western culture “sorry” is as common of a word as “the”. We say it whether we accidentally bump into somebody or spill our drink on them. We say it so often it is hard to unlearn it. At the start of October I decided I would try to say sorry less. It was not in the manner of being rude to others by not apologizing for things I did wrong. My goal was to try to stop compulsively saying sorry. One thing that helped me significantly is pausing before responding. This helps because it gives you time to formulate an actual response opposed to just blurting out “I’m sorry”. You can also try asking a question. Sometimes we use sorry as a way to get someone’s attention. The issue with this is you may come off as passive and people may not listen to you. Instead of saying “Sorry for getting in your way”, try saying “May I move past you?” Another way you can transform “sorry” is turning it into a “thank you” statement. Instead of saying “sorry for being late”, try saying “thanks for waiting for me”. My personal favorite trick you can try is replacing sorry with another word. I usually try to replace “sorry” with “yikes”. This takes the responsibility off of you and instead just acknowledges that the thing happened. These are the methods I used to try to say sorry less. I hope these methods benefit whoever happens to need them. This website here greatly assisted me in my journey so if you are trying to do what I am taking a look at it may be a good idea.
https://www.thesaurus.com/e/ways-to-say/stop-saying-sorry/ Brody T.
12 Comments
Sunsia
11/6/2023 01:59:46 pm
It was interesting for me as an international student how everyone said sorry for everything. They say sorry when they go past you, they say sorry for not being able to hold the door for you. It was odd to me that the word sorry seemed to lose the meaning cuz some of them were truly just saying it out of habit. I think ur way of using alternatives for the word sorry when ur not actually sorry could be tied back to our yey lesson where we had to change negative phrases to positive ones. In my opinion i think ur method is way better just blurting sorry out because saying it out of habit for years could even make it seem like ur belitting urself. If you know what i mean. I think im just saying stuff rn.
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Taylor
11/6/2023 02:00:50 pm
Hi Brody! I really connect with this blog because I say sorry probably 50 times a day and for no reason half the time. I feel like your blog really shows how saying sorry for everything isn't necessarily a bad thing but it can be annoying to always be apologizing for something even if you didn't do anything wrong. I'll try some of the things that you suggested to say instead of just apologizing.
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Mateo
11/6/2023 02:03:29 pm
Brody, the customer service aspect of your blog was so relatable to me. As a barista I often found myself saying sorry for some very minor customer inconveniences or even just to push past people to get across the place. I really like your idea of replacing sorry with things like "Can I get past you please" or others, and think more people - myself included - should embrace vocabulary like this!
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Merle S.
11/6/2023 02:05:39 pm
I really like the topic of your blog. I really think that many people say sorry too much, even though they haven't done anything wrong. Personally, I also say sorry for every little thing and my friends always tell me that I shouldn't apologize so often
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Melina
11/6/2023 02:06:16 pm
I grew up in a culture that saying sorry is not as frequent as it is in western culture, so the beginning of the time I immigrated I found it really strange. However by time I also found myself saying sorry too many times. The method of switching up the sentences sounded interesting to me and I will try to use this method regularly.
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Sarah
11/6/2023 02:06:53 pm
Brody you are so real for this honestly. In a way I am just like you! I apologize whyyyy too much even if it's not my fault. I am glad to hear that you have found ways to stop saying sorry because I know that can be very hard to do considering if it's so engraved in your mind. I wish you the best of luck
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Merle R
11/6/2023 02:08:26 pm
I would definitely agree with the things you mentioned and I think especially with the word sorry it's likely that people use it in every second sentence. I think it's a really good idea to think first before you share your thoughts with others, because then you can form your answer wisely and also creating new ways to describe a situation is a good point. I can relate to that topic very well and I think I will try in the future to use phrases like Thanks for waiting more.
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Rosetta
11/6/2023 02:12:26 pm
I could not relate to anything more while reading this your blog. I find myself saying sorry in the most unessecary situations just because I didn't know what else to say, so the alternatives for saying sorry that you listed is super useful for me. And thanks for the link, I'm sure that that will be a great resource for me. And I especially liked when you said, "This takes the responsibility off of you and instead just acknowledges that the thing happened", because I find that being very true. We should acknowledge the thing that happened instead of dumping the unessecary responsibility on someone else.
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Laetitia
11/6/2023 02:14:28 pm
I think your blog is very interesting. I never knew that saying sorry is also a thing which is different in cultures. As I also say sorry like 40 times a day, it is a cool challenge to try to apologies less. This inspired me to try this too. Great blog!
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I can relate to this a lot brody and im glad theres other people similar to me that can share something like this. sharing your solutions are very helpful, like saying thank you for waiting for me instead of saying sorry for being late. id love if you could tell me hear some more solutions for this!
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Jaden
11/6/2023 02:17:54 pm
I totally agree what you saying in this blog. I was kinda surprised at first when western people often say 'sorry' because I used to live in Asian country most of my life. For in my country, you say sorry when you did really big mistake and western people say sorry for even a little thing.
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Lianne
11/6/2023 02:25:17 pm
Brody,
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