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The Apology Equation

/ 37:49/E57
Nothing ever gets better untill you admit that something is wrong.


Clarity comes when you solve the problem. You can’t solve the problem unless you define the variables, you can’t define the variables unless you understand the method to do so.

Transcript:
https://app.podscribe.ai/episode/51073280

Speaker 0 (0s): Good times. It's bet, buddy Friday, you made it man. Time to celebrate and to celebrate this weekend, you made it through a lot down. You made it through five days of monotony. You made it through five days of propaganda. Five days of people flapping their gums and yapping their mouth out of the TV and the radio. You made it. 

Go ahead, go ahead. Put two fists out. Give yourself a little fist bump or take your hand, reach over your back and just keep yourself a little Pat, Pat, go ahead and Pat it down. You deserve it. You deserve it. I hope you, you set yourself up for a little prize at the end of the day, man, maybe your prize, the glass of wine. Maybe it's a cold beer. Maybe it's a bong load. I don't know what it is, man, but I hope you celebrate. You got to celebrate the victories in life and sometimes just making it a Friday, tell you what, that's a victory, especially in today's climate. 

You know, some people see things the way they are and say why you should try to see things the way they've never been and say, why not? Creativity is a lot like looking at the world through a kaleidoscope. You look at a set of elements, the same ones everyone else sees, but then reassemble those floating bits and pieces into an enticing new possibility. 

Today is the Friday wrap up. We're going to wrap this thing up with a tight little bow on there and hopefully give you something you can use in your life. I had a pretty eventful week. I had a pretty eventful weekend. I learned a really good lesson this week and I want to share it with you. I'm excited too. You ever had like a pretty tough week where you felt kind of off. Maybe you felt a little aggressive, you felt a little anxiety, maybe a little anger. 

You know, you just felt awful little bit. You felt like short fused things are kind of getting to you. I think a lot of people are feeling that way. I think it has a lot to do with the propaganda coming out of the airwaves and it kinda got to me this week. I want to share with you what happened. I learned a really good lesson, but I had to go to a pretty dark spot to get there. And I'm not proud of what I did, but I'm proud to share with you what I learned from it. 

Speaker 1 (3m 1s): You know what it is. I'm sorry. You know what? I'm sorry. I'm sorry guys. Hey, I fucked up the importance of an apology. Let me back. You know what, how about, I shouldn't say like this, the importance of a sincere apology you guys ever think about why an apology is so important for a lot of reasons, for a lot of reasons, you know, nothing ever gets better until you would admit that something's wrong, but most people never want to admit they're wrong because they don't want to confront the thing that they're wrong about, or they don't want to get in trouble. 

But if it's not at the level you want, it's wrong. If it's not something you're proud of, then it's wrong. You know, a sincere apology usually comes from telling yourself the truth, but we all know the truth can hurt. Right? Well, that's what happened to me. I did something that I'm not proud of. Let me set up the week for you. 

Let me, let me, let me try to not rationalize why I did what I did, but let me try and paint you a picture of what I went through this week, which led me to an incident where I had to apologize. I'm going to tell you the story, and then I'm going to tell you what I learned. And then I'm going to tell you why I think it's important. 

So this week was a bit rough where I live. The lockdown is really starting to come into effect and they're, they're starting to clamp down. And the affects on the community are no longer able to be ignored. Starting to see the mom and pop businesses boarded up, starting to see the banks, not open, starting to see people in the community, getting upset at their neighbors about having parties and rightfully so. 

We're starting to see the distribution of information, be suppressed. We're starting to see the laws being pushed upon people. We're starting to see the rights of people taken away. 

And it's easy to feel like the frog and the pot of water. You know, that analogy. If you put a frog in a pot of water, he'll stay there and you can slowly turn up the heat until the water begins to boil. And if you do it slow, if you do an incremental, you can boil that frog, call it the boiling frogs and the frog will stay in there. He doesn't realize the water's getting that hot, that fast. He doesn't realize, and he'll stay in there and burn to death. 

If you were to stick a boiling pot of water and put a throw a frog in there, he'd jump out. But if you do it incremental, he'll stay in there and die. A lot of people have used that analogy for human behavior. And it seems to me, that's something that could be applied to our situation regardless of where you live. 

So where I work, I live in Hawaii and as I'm seeing all these things happen, as I'm seeing the ramifications of the virus begin to take hold. Some of the things that are happening in my place of work are they're beginning the contact tracing. And that happened at the beginning of this week. However we weren't told about it, you know, I'm on the fence with contact tracing, like as a man, as a leader, I want to help the community. 

I'm willing to make sacrifices I'm willing to do what's right, because I'm not the youngest man, but I'm still a man and I'm strong. And I want to help out people that need help. People are scared. They want to know if they got in contact with the virus, they want to know if they should get tested. And what I know about contact tracing is that it can help a lot of people with that. Like I said, I'm on the fence. I want to help. 

However, the way it was introduced at my workplace was rather nefarious. And let me explain what I mean by that. I went into work earlier in the week and there was a, a young girl, probably in her twenties, sweet girl, she's standing outside and she's acting very suspicious in that. She's telling everyone, Hey, we have this new policy where we want to make sure everyone is safe. 

And the best way we can do that is by, everyone's got to open their phone and scan this thing so that we know you don't have any symptoms. Now think about that. You want to make sure everyone's safe. So I have to open my phone and scan a code. So, you know, I'm safe. That's a logical fallacy, right? It's a, non-sequitur like your, it doesn't your premise. 

Does it lead to your conclusion? What do you mean I'm to open my phone so you can know him safe. So while a lot of people were just like, Okie-dokie, they just opened their phone and they started scanning this QR code. I thought to myself like, wait, that doesn't make sense. So I, I asked her, I said, I don't understand how does this make us safe? And then the suspicious behavior became more intense. Not in that. 

She's waving her hands, all nuts or crazy like that. But her answers were just, they didn't make sense. I'm like, I don't understand. She goes, well, if you have any of these symptoms, you can't work. I said, okay, but why, why do you need me to scan that QR code at this point? I didn't know it was contact tracing. I just saw this code. And she was like, well, listen, it's just, it's just easier. If you open your phone, open your phone right now and take a picture. That's just put on your phone. And I'm thinking you are really, you really want me to put this on my phone, which makes me really not want to put this on my phone. 

So I go, well, why don't I just what's what's the alternative? And she goes, well, you could just fill out this piece of paper over here, but then you have to do that every day. And I look over at the sheet of paper and it literally has three questions on there. It's all printed. And then there's like three check boxes. Do you feel sick? Have you been coughing? Do you have a fever? That's it? So all it would take for me is to take my pin and go one, two, three, three hash marks. 

And I'm like, that's, I think that that's easier than opening up my phone. You know, that that's what's going on in my internal mindful process. And so I asked her, I go, you know, if I scan this code, what does it do? Does it stay on my phone? And then she kind of lost it. And she's like, well, you know, it's, it's just easier. It's just easier. And I go, yeah, I'm not doing that. So I filled out the piece of paper and I went inside and mind, mind this. 

When I go inside to my work, I have to go through a barbed wire fence and then I have to go through a metal detector. And then I have to go through a couple of security guards that want to search all my stuff. You might be asking yourself, wow, why do they want to search you? Well, you know why they want to search? Because in the environment I work while not at my particular building, but in the environment where I work, it's a multinational corporation and buildings all over the United States and the world. 

They've had problems with employees coming in and shooting the management team like disgruntled employees come in and they killed their managers. So I am not a violent person who am not a thief. I have to be subjected to the Barb wire fence, the metal detector. And then the, you know, the search of all my stuff. I got nothing to hide. I got zero to hide. However, I think it's important to note the aspect that that can have on behavior. 

Like if you treat people like animals, if you treat people like criminals, if you assume people are gonna come in and kill you, people feel that like, I'm not violent, not a criminal don't want to hurt anybody. But when I have to go through that process every day, I got to tell you it's it's asinine. It makes me feel like I'm not trusted. It makes me feel like, you know, what, how dare these guys treat me? 

Like, I'm such a piece of garbage. Like I give my life to this company. I've worked my tail off to come in here and be the best that I can and provide service. And these guys don't even care enough about me to trust me. However, they want me to trust them all the time. When they're in there, they talk about how we're a team, talk about how much they care. They care so much that they want to have these evasive, you know, violations of privacy. That's important. We're gonna get back to that in a minute. 

So I go in there and I, when I walk in, I have a friend come up to me and he starts telling me about the new cases of COVID in my building. And there's a young woman who has got like five kids in the hospital on life support. There's multiple other cases, but no one knows the specifics about it. No one's being told about it, except these rumors going around, I have an underlying condition. 

And I know, so throw a lot of other people with underlying conditions or people that have kids with underlying conditions or in Hawaiian, we have a lot of intergenerational homes and there's people that go home to like the kupuna, like the grandparents, and they're worried for them. So you could understand people's desire to know if they came in contact with people so that they can get tested. However that information can get in the way of the corporation making money. 

And so there's this, there is this inconsistency, this in congruence. So once I was told about that, I went and I found my HR guy and I asked him, I was like, Hey, I was just outside. And they wanted me to scan this QR code. And then this other, this other guy was telling me about some other cases of COVID is that particular thing you want to put on our phone is that contact tracing. 

And rather than answer the question, have you ever had some, you know, here's a quick tip for everybody. If you ask somebody a direct question and they give you an indirect answer, it's probably because the answer to your question is yes. So I asked him, Hey, is this contract tracing? And he says, well, you know, what happened is that the department of health is coming in and there's a lot of new things we're going to have to work on. And, you know, we want everyone to be safe. And so right off the bat, I go, yeah. Okay. Yes, yes, it is contact tracing. 

And I feel so bad for this guy. You know, I don't understand how he can sit there and lie to everybody's face. You know, maybe that's his job to lie to everybody. Maybe I'm not being fair by saying he lies to everybody, but I pushed him. I'm like, well, you know, I don't think it's fair for you to say that you're trying to do everything you can to be safe. And he's like, what do you mean? 

I go, well, if you wanted everybody to be safe, you would, you would tell people that they may have come in contact with people that have COVID right. Like people that have underlying conditions, or if you want, if you really were doing everything to make everybody safe, you wouldn't hide accident and injuries. Right. Like you wouldn't do that. All I'm saying is that you just said a moment ago that you're taking all the precautions to keep everybody safe, but you're not really doing that. So you just kind of lied to me, you know? And then he moves into the process of like, well, you know, that's not, we look everyone's, this is new, this is new, you know? 

And I don't think you understand what would happen if this place shut down. And I'm like, yeah, well, I don't think you do either. So we kind of got into a stalemate there. And my issue with this guy, while it was a very candid and respectful conversation, there was, for me, at least there was some underlying kind of backhanded put downs, you know? And I I'm usually look, that's just how it is. 

Like, I mean, you have to talk to people and you gotta communicate and you should try not to utilize ad hominem attacks. And you should try to have empathy and understand where the person's coming from. But sometimes in conversations where there's a lot of emotion, both people tend to, to, to say things, especially when it's not an honest conversation. Like if I can't have an honest conversation with someone and they're constantly dodging questions, it forces me to maneuver my questioning to a different line. 

Right. Instead of having an honest conversations, now I have to ask this gentleman a series of questions that lead him to a place where no matter what he says, like I have to pin him down, you know, I have to start asking him, well, what about this? What about that? And after force him to understand that, what he's saying to me is not only irrational, but it's a logical. And when you do that to people, they tend to get angry. They tend to get mad because you're forcing them to understand what they're saying is untrue. 

I think it was Upton Sinclair who said, it's difficult to get a man to understand something when his paycheck is dependent upon him, not understanding it, right. Especially for a lot of corporate people, you know, they, they rather than deal with the cognitive dissonance, they need to lie to themselves so they can continue to get up every day and do what they do. And I gotta be honest with you. I like, I worry for a lot of the people in management positions at my work. 

Like if this place does shut down, like there's people here that are not good communicators. There's people here who are not going to understand the nuances of what's actually happening. And when that happens, the people in management positions are going to be at risk of, I think they're going to be in danger. I mean, if you look around the country right now, what you're seeing is frustration times a million and people who are frustrated, people who, when they've got nothing left to lose, they lose it. 

There's a lot of people that live paycheck to paycheck. And there's a lot of people that will probably want to take out their aggression on someone who's made a transgression against them earlier. And when you live on an Island, guess what? There's nowhere to hide. People know where you live. People know where you work. Not to mention. Sometimes people come in and they, you know, they could act crazy. Like I don't want to be the victim of someone who loses their mind because they've lost everything. 

And so I, as someone who cares about the community and trying to mitigate factors, and I think the best way to do that is to have an honest discussion with the group. We may be, we don't come to an agreement on what is accurate, but we can come to an agreement on having a discussion. And I think you can mitigate a lot of factors just by having the group discussion. That's one of the points I was trying to get across to this gentlemen is like, look, we need to have a talk. 

Like you guys have to tell people what it is you're doing. You don't have to say the names of the people that have COVID. However, I think it's in everybody's interest that we play as a team, right? Silence is violence. So that discussion I had it, it just, it made me more aware that what's going to happen is more of the same. 

We're not going to talk to people. We're going to try to hide everything. And for anybody who's in their forties or fifties or third, late thirties, you've seen experiences that tend to repeat. You've been in situations where you're like, Hey, this is a very volatile situation. Something could happen here. And that's where I think we are where I work. So that was earlier in the week. And I had had a tough kind of week. 

And I was leaving work later in the week. And as I was exiting the, the area I had to go back through the Bob wire fence, the metal detectors have my backpack surged. And as I was leaving, I go through all the processes and the last checkpoint, the guy's like, Hey, I need to look through your bag. So he looks through my bag and he's like, Hey man, you got to open up all these packs, you know? And you got to open up this thing. 

And I had showed them like, I've got a backpack with like seven zippers. And so I'm opening stuff up. And you know, the guy did a great job. He's doing a thorough job, but because I was tired and because I was acting like a little bitch, because I felt like, you know what? I feel like this guys treat me like a criminal. Like, I'm not a criminal man, but I had taken it upon myself to say, this guy thinks you're a criminal. So he wants to look through all your stuff. So I let him know. I go, what you think I'm stealing stuff, man. 

You think I'm a criminal? How dare you treat me like that? And I, you know, I, I was kind of giving it to them. And then I realized like, so I yelled and I, I was just being a Dick. I had let the pressures of this situation weigh on me to the point. Right. Took it out on somebody that didn't deserve it. And I left the building and I sat in my truck and I thought to myself, you know, what, what a fucking asshole that guy was, how dare he treat me the way that he treated me, when to look through all my shit. 

Like I'm some sort of a criminal and you know what? And I just went down this rabbit hole of negativity and I sat out there and I was mad and I went home and slept. And then I came in the next day and worked my day. And you know, it was just kind of having a quiet day. And then when I got to the guard shack at the end of yesterday, one, there was one of the security guards was in there, not the guy that I yelled at. 

So as soon as I got to the guard shack, I saw the guy that was in there. And as soon as I made eye contact with him, like I just had this overwhelming feeling of like guilt. And I said to the guy go, you know what? I want to apologize for being such an asshole yesterday. And he kind of laughed and he's like, yeah, man, you're not usually like that. And he's like, you know, the, the guy you were being addictive as he's out on his round somewhere, he's like, I'll tell him that you, you apologize. And I go, you know what, fuck that. 

I want to tell him, I'm going to tell him where's he at? And he goes, always doing some rounds and stuff. And so I told him again, I go look, man, I'm sorry. And he's like, look, man, you didn't yell at me. I'm like, I know, but you were there and you saw the way I acted. And I'm better than that, man. And I want to apologize to you for having to see me like that leg up. I was being an asshole saying shit, that that guy didn't deserve. You guys are doing your job. You probably don't want to be here any more than me. And he kind of started laughing and his leg, you got that. Right. 

So I went around and I looked for the other security guard and he was out doing some rounds. And I put the stuff in my truck and I thought about leaving because the first security guard said, look, man, I'll just tell him that. And, and you know what? I'll let him know. So I put the stuff in my car, but I just sat in my truck and I'm like, you know what? I can't, I can't fucking leave, man. Like that would be, that's not enough, man. I, I took some shit out on this guy that didn't deserve it. 

What if that was me? So I went back to the, I put everything in my truck and I went back and you know, the other security guard, he was walking around and I says, Hey man, can I talk to you for a minute? And he looked at me like you mother fucker, what? You know, like I was going to be more of a Dick. And I just told him, I said, you know what? I want to do apologize for my behavior. Yesterday was unacceptable. And I was acting like a little bitch, man. 

And I had a bad day. That's not an excuse, but I took it out on you. You didn't deserve it. You were just doing your job and you got to deal with some asshole like me running his fucking mouth. And I hope you'll accept my apology yet. I'm sorry. That's not my style. My parents raised me better than that. And I hope you forgive me, man. And to this guy's credit, he just stuck out his hand and he's like, don't even worry about it, man. I'm over it. I'm over it, man. Everybody's got bad days. I thought to myself like, man, you fucking learn from this guy. 

And I'm thankful like I accepted my apology. No part of me didn't want to apologize. Part of me wanted to stay in that zone of like, fuck that man. Like I still do this. It was wrong. But I knew I couldn't go home face my wife and face my kid and continue to talk on my podcast about doing things right. If I'm not going to do things right. 

So what I learned this week was the importance of an apology and how it made me feel and how the emotions leading up to that apology made me feel, you know, when you, when you're angry, when you're frustrated, it's a heightened sense of awareness. And when you're in a heightened sense of awareness, it's important to understand that emotion is trying to teach you something. 

And if you're in a heightened state of awareness, it means it's an important issue. You should be paying attention. If you're frustrated, if you're angry, that means you're about to learn something. But it's also means that you got to pay attention because in a heightened state of awareness, you can get the wrong message. If you're angry, if you're frustrated, it's because you haven't got the message you've been in this situation multiple times and you haven't got it. 

I'll think about that last time, time. You're mad. What message is the world trying to teach you when you're angry, you should think of it as like a warning siren of there's bop, bop, bop, bop. There's an important lesson here. Dummy. You must learn this message. So that's what I learned from it. 

And I think that the importance of an apology is twofold. First off, only when you apologize, do you get to understand the meaning of the event? You know, because you were angry, you were upset and you did something that was rash. You did something that you know was wrong. That's like half of the equation. So if you only have half of the equation, you could never get the answer. 

But once you apologize, 

Speaker 0 (30m 10s): Now you have all the variables. 

Speaker 1 (30m 16s): The argument, plus the apology equals the answer equals the whole, 

Speaker 0 (30m 26s): Like you can't have the front without the back. 

Speaker 1 (30m 28s): You can't move the shadow without moving, 

Speaker 0 (30m 32s): Moving the sculpture 

Speaker 1 (30m 35s): Part of the whole. And if you let your ego get in the way, if you don't apologize, you'll never get to the, 

Speaker 0 (30m 41s): The answer. It's the cycle of life. It's the cycle of learning. 

Speaker 1 (30m 49s): If you can understand that, I think it 

Speaker 0 (30m 50s): Makes apologizing. It makes doing the right thing easier. You must apologize if you've done something wrong, otherwise you will continue to repeat the mistake and it'll happen over and over and over again, had this idea where it's almost like the earth or God or a Kula or Mohammed or whatever, divine, spiritual nature you believe in. 

It's almost like when you do something wrong, it's a test. Can you mean not even know why you did something wrong? It might just be a crazy outburst. And maybe the purpose of that is to see if you will apologize yesterday. I felt when the incident happened, I felt like it was really out of character for me. And then that's when I came up with this idea that the spiritual nature of the planet or whatever divine nature there is, was testing me. 

I said, okay, you're going to act like this. You did this now, what are you going to do? I'm going to give you this equation. So I had to go in, define the other variables. I don't go and apologize, which I did. And then the situation made more sense to me. And then after I apologize, it was almost like things cleared up. Stress was lifted off my shoulder. 

I did the right thing and I passed the test. So now I can move forward. And it's strange, like a lot of good things happened to me right after I did it. I mean, not right after I did it. However, like the next day I started being able to find the creative spirit again, instead of being in a slump, I think that is a good understanding of why it's important to apologize. 

And I liked the analogy of the equation, the event, the blow up, the thing you do wrong is half the equation apologizing is the other half of the equation. And once you do that, you'll be able to end up at the answer. I think it's a good way to look at it. And it's a way that I've been incorporating it into my life. It's been successful for me. So if you get a chance, I think you should try it. 

So that's what we got for today. I love you guys. And remember it takes a man to admit he's wrong. 

The Apology Equation

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