What can I do? And I was like, Oh my gosh. Well, there’s just so much stuff and all of these things. I couldn’t quite really come up with an answer. And she said, How about this? How about the few days leading up to the conference and then the actual day of the conference? Why don’t I just be like your sidekick, your right hand girl and just whatever you need, I’ll just be there to help you and I can run to the store, or I can take care of small tasks that come up. And I remember in that moment thinking, Oh my gosh, this woman is like the greatest answer to prayer ever. And it really was like she was so amazing. She just stepped into that role so powerfully. Like I literally, it almost wants, like, I almost wanna break into tears just thinking about what a gift she was in that moment.

But as we started working together the day or two before, and I had all of these things that needed to get done, all of these last minute details, I kept finding myself, like, she would say to me, Okay, what next? What do we need to do here? And then I would think of something that maybe needed to get done, like for example, the name tags. And I would say, Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry to ask you to do this. This is such a big task, but could you help put the name tags together? And she would look at me and be like, Of course I can totally do the name tags. And then I would give her the name tags and I would say something like, Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry. This isn’t organized better. I’m sorry that they’re not an alphabetical order, or, you know, and I would apologize for things.

And then she maybe would take on the name tags. She would do it, and she would say to me, Okay, I’m done with the name tags, anything else. Then I would kind of look at things that still need to be done. And I, and I would say, Oh my gosh, I’m sorry to ask you this, but could you take care of this project now? And this kept going on. I didn’t even realize that I was saying it until one moment. She literally grabbed me by the shoulders and looked me in the eyes and she said, Lorissa, stop it. . And I was like, Stop. What? And she’s like, Stop apologizing. I’m here to help you. I know that everything’s not perfect and organized. That’s why I’m here. I have gifts in this area. You don’t have to apologize that it’s not perfect. And so she kind of startled me with this because again, I didn’t even realize how many times I was saying I’m sorry.

And you know what is so funny? When she said this to me when she was like, Stop apologizing. Do you know what I said to her? I was like, You’re right. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m apologizing. It’s almost funny to think about it. But I kept doing it. Like I kept, like I couldn’t not do it. It was almost just this subconscious habit that I had gotten into. And a couple weeks after the conference, we went to coffee together and we were talking about the conference and stuff. And I think I apologized a couple more times. I’m, and she again reminded me, she’s like, Lorissa, you really have this bad habit of constantly apologizing for things that you don’t need to apologize for. And it really, like, we had a conversation around it. And she said to me, she said, The only reason I’m bringing this to your attention is because I used to struggle with this as well.

And somebody called me out on it and it has helped me so much. And she said, I don’t apologize for every little thing anymore. And so this started me on a journey of just having deeper self-awareness around constantly apologizing. Now, I think that one of the reasons why we do this, and I know for myself in particular, I consider myself a recovering perfectionist. I’ve always struggled with perfectionism, and I can tell even as I’m recovering, I still struggle with this from time to time, but this has been an area in my life that I’ve really tried to work on. But I can see the constant apologizing, the constant saying, I’m sorry, almost in a relationship to my perfectionism. And this is what happens a lot if we struggle with perfectionism. We have, we have really high expectations for ourselves. We set really high expectations for ourselves. And then of course, we’re always gonna fall short of that. Like we’re never gonna be able to fully attain the perfect ideal that we have set. So when we fall short of it, we feel like we have failed in

Some way. We feel like we’ve made a mistake, we feel like we’re not good enough. And so when we feel those emotions of failure, of not being good enough, of making mistakes and not being perfect, we feel like we have to apologize for it. That it’s our fault for not being perfectly organized or our fault for not doing all the things perfectly. And so I started to really notice this in my life when I started to tackle the concept of perfectionism. And not that I really wanna go into that whole concept today, but I just want us to have awareness around constantly apologizing, constantly saying, I’m sorry. And I want you to understand something when we’re always saying, I’m sorry, we are saying that out loud. Our brain believes that we’re sorry about something. And when we feel like we’re sorry about something, it evokes the emotion of guilt.

Now this is what I see not only within myself, but within a lot of my one-on-one clients. And particularly they say, I struggle a lot with guilt. I always feel guilty about something. And we bring it back to this concept about apologizing all the time about perfectionism, always having high unrealistic expectations for ourselves oftentimes leads to this. And so I’m just sharing this with you in this podcast today, because these are areas in our life that we can work on and maybe we might need to look at and say, Okay, am I struggling with perfectionism? Am I always apologizing? Do I always walk around deep down inside with this constant nagging feeling of guilt that I’m never good enough? And so for me, when my friend brought this to my attention, it was such a gift. And I hope that this podcast episode is a gift for you too.

If you struggle with this, I hope that you will have my voice in your head like looking at you. I want you to imagine we’re sitting over coffee and I’m looking you straight in the eyes, and I’m saying to you, Friend, my dear beloved, beautiful friend, stop apologizing all the time. Stop saying you’re sorry every few minutes. Now, sometimes we need a good friend like that to jar us into realizing what we’re doing. Because for me, it was such a habit that I was starting almost every conversation or finishing every conversation or every interaction with those words. I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry. I, And once I was brought to my attention, I started to really be aware of it. I started to notice that maybe when I was at work, if I needed to talk to my boss, for example, about something, I’d go to his office, I’d knock on his door and he’d say, Come in.

And I would open the door and I would say, I’m so sorry to bother you, but I need to ask you this question. And of course he was always like, Oh yeah, don’t be sorry. You’re fine. Totally come in. What do you need? And I started to like catching myself doing that. I’m sorry to bother you. Maybe I’d be in a staff meeting or in a meeting with other people and people would be sharing their ideas, and I’d kind of raise my hand timidly and I’d say, Oh, I’m sorry to interrupt, or I’m sorry to interject. But I have this thought like I always apologized for anything. I apologized. If I had something I wanted to share in a group, I apologized. If I needed to talk to someone, I would apologize. If I needed help with something, I would apologize if I needed to take a day off because I needed to maybe take my child to the doctor.

Now this is the deal about apologizing and saying, I’m sorry. There are obviously times when that is the appropriate response. When we have done something wrong, when we have sinned, when we have made a mistake, then it’s appropriate to say, I’m sorry, those are the appropriate times. But what I was doing was saying, I’m sorry, or apologizing for things that weren’t sin or things that weren’t bad. Ultimately what I was doing was just almost apologizing for simply existing. And this is what I want you to hear so deeply, especially if you find yourself saying to people a lot, I’m sorry to bother you. Let’s look at that phrase, I’m sorry to bother you. What do we really mean when we say that? And what does our subconscious brain hear when we say that? Ultimately what we’re saying is, I’m sorry for existing. I’m sorry that my presence might be a bother to you. And ultimately I could sense that deep within my being when I constantly apologize for just showing up, when I apologize for just doing my job and maybe needing to ask my boss a question like, that’s not something I need to apologize

For. I’m doing my job, I’m doing what I’m supposed to do. And so I stopped doing that and it was a habit that I had to break. So instead of knocking on his door and saying, I’m sorry to bother you, I replaced it with, Hi, I have something that I need to run past you and get your input on. Is now a good time or would it be better if I came back later? If someone sends me an email and I don’t get back to them immediately, maybe it takes a couple hours or maybe I don’t get back to them until the next day. I don’t start out my email with you, I’m so sorry that it took me a while to get back to you. I will start out by simply saying, Thank you for your patience. Let me answer your question. Now in this email, there’s other ways we can reframe things where we’re not apologizing.

We can say something to somebody like, I have this task that I need help with, and I know that you’re really gifted in this area. Would you be interested or would you be able to help versus, I’m so sorry to ask you this question, or I’m so sorry to put you out, but could you help me with this task? One way of asking Phil’s empowering and even complimentary to the other person where when we just open it up with an apology, it almost makes us feel desperate and needy and insecure. And ultimately that is why I’m so grateful that my friend had the courage to call me out in this way. Because as I’ve started to do this work and to stop apologizing for everything, it has really helped me to boost my self-esteem. It’s helped me to boost my confidence, and it has helped me to become a lot more intentional about how I want to show up.

I think especially for us as women, it’s important for us to really own the fact that it’s okay for us to take up space. It’s okay for us to ask for help. It’s okay for us to share our thoughts and our opinions, and it’s okay for us to matter. We are not a bother. Our presence isn’t a bother. Our needing help sometimes isn’t a bother. This is who we are. We’re human beings. We’re made to interact with each other. Were made to help each other. Were made to be in community with one another. And when we can really step into that, when we can step into the space of saying, I’m here, I exist. I’m not perfect. Sometimes I need help, sometimes I need to rely on other people. Sometimes I need to speak up for myself. This is who I am, and there’s nothing about me that I need to apologize for.

I am a gift. I am a blessing. God made me. I’m here. I’m taking up space for a reason. And there’s nothing wrong with that. And when we do that, when we live from that place of showing up in that way, we actually end up being a blessing to others. We actually end up really showing up in a powerful way, serving more powerfully, getting things done, being more focused and inviting others to join us along the way. I have a lot of gifts, but maybe organization isn’t one of them, but when I can reach out to others who do have that gift and I can ask them to help me, it gives them an opportunity to use their gifts in a meaningful and significant way if they want to. But I need to apologize for that and so on and so forth. So I want us all to realize that we can and we should be proud of the space that we hold in this world. We should be proud of our voice and our contributions and what we have to offer. We matter. We’re here for a reason. God put us here. We don’t need to apologize for that. And with that, my friend, I hope you have the most amazing week. Remember that you are Made for Greatness.