Instead.

I saw this post in my media feed this morning and it got me thinking that I have this issue:

How often I almost reflexively blurt out ‘I’m sorry’ when I mean to say ‘Thank you.’

I hadn’t really thought out the issue, except that I have been made aware of my habit of apologizing for everything – even for qualities, occurrences, and behavior that require no apology.

A friend of mine -who oddly enough, has a degree in psychology even though she now works as an insurance adjuster for a corporate law firm – was the most recent person in my life to make me aware of my ‘sorry habit.’   She was always pointing out how much it concerned her that I would say ‘I’m sorry’ for the most mundane reasons, and she would often challenge me to attempt to go a whole day without saying ‘I’m sorry.’

And as much as I tried, I couldn’t do it.

She encouraged me to be mindful of my responses to various situations, and even though she tried hard to convey all the reasons why I should do it, she never put it quite as powerfully or as succinctly as this simple set of comic strips does:

If you want to say ‘Thank you’, don’t say ‘I’m Sorry’   (From the folks at Mental Floss)

This is just what I needed, and I found this article quite helpful.

Thank you for reading!