How and When to Ask for Forgiveness

AVAlexander Volchek

How do you ask for forgiveness? How do you ask for forgiveness properly, and where do you need to ask for it? How should you ask for forgiveness at work? How do you ask your boss for forgiveness? How do you ask your colleagues? How do you ask your partners, your employees, your wife, your husband? How do you ask your children, your mother, your father, your relatives, your friends, the people close to you, your acquaintances? People you've only met occasionally. How do you do it? What inner state should it come from? The thing is, a true request for forgiveness is something your own personality doesn't enter into. It's something where you don't expect a “thank you.” Something where you're ready to hear silence. Something where you're ready to hear a complaint in response to your request for forgiveness. Something where you've asked for forgiveness and receive a very strange state in return, the opposite of what you expected. We're brought up to want to ask for forgiveness and receive something for it, because we're asking forgiveness for something. We always want to do it that way. We want to create some kind of balance. Often, a person says, “But I asked for forgiveness.” Often, a person says, “I apologized several times.” Hold on: you apologized several times, but before that, you stole. Hold on: you apologized several times, but you created a situation in which someone experienced stress for an entire year.

I'm sorry, but you created a situation in which a person lost themselves and never managed to recover. Are you really sure you can ask forgiveness for that? Are you really sure the person is obliged to respond? Truly asking for forgiveness means being in a state where you expect nothing from the other side. Of course, there's one aspect of asking forgiveness where you do it because of certain events that have happened in your life. You feel that asking forgiveness is necessary because you've done something wrong. And generally, people don't ask for forgiveness in ninety percent of cases where they know they've done something wrong. They say, “Why should I ask for forgiveness if the other person doesn't want to ask for it?” That's exactly what expecting an effect from the other side is. But there's a true request for forgiveness, something entirely different in terms of a person's development, scaling, strength, and freedom. The kind that gives real, true freedom. It's when you ask another person for forgiveness from your own heart, from an inner impulse to do so. From the feeling that it's necessary right here and now. By asking for forgiveness, you want to do more than simply give more.

By asking for forgiveness, you don't simply want to balance something out. You want to give the other person freedom, give the other person hope, give the other person joy. Help the other person think about something else happening in life. But asking for forgiveness in this case is absolutely not your selfish desire to change the other person. It's something you need to do for the other person simply for its own sake. If only we all knew how to ask for forgiveness calmly, without thinking whether we'd done it right or wrong, without expecting a response from the other person. Simply ask for forgiveness, even if you're doing it with the same person twenty times. Someone asks for forgiveness three times and can't ask a fourth. They say, “I've already asked for forgiveness three times. How can I do it a fourth time?” Well, that's how you'll do it. You'll ask a fourth time, a fifth, a sixth, a seventh. You'll do it as long as you feel you need to. Don't try to balance out your own mistake by asking for forgiveness. Ask for forgiveness because you need to ask for it. Don't look for any balance between the two sides. It's like a man cheating on a woman and then asking for forgiveness by giving her flowers, gifts, rings, trips. That's not a request for forgiveness. It's manipulation.

You're on Alexander Volchek's channel. A like on the video and any comment are very helpful to the algorithms. I look forward to seeing you in my new videos, on my Instagram, and in V100 mentorship, where I lead a group of people. Start asking yourself for forgiveness. Start asking yourself for forgiveness without expectations. And forgive yourself without expectations, without trying to balance things out. This is a very important key to moving forward. The path to forgiving other people runs through forgiving yourself. Here, everything works the other way around. See you next time!