The amends cop-out
I’ve been around the personal development block long enough to know the difference between someone doing the hard work and someone just polishing their own ego.
Right now, there is an absolute epidemic of the latter, and it usually takes the form of a perfectly crafted letter, text message or a long-winded email. Let’s call it what it is: the amends cop-out.
And that’s assuming they actually wrote the message themselves. We haven’t even begun to talk about AI.
We’ve reached a point where people aren’t just refusing to pick up the phone or look you in the eye—they are literally outsourcing their remorse to a machine.
They aren’t even doing the bare minimum of finding their own words to apologize.
We live in a culture where people convince themselves they are righting a wrong, but what they are actually doing is hiding.
Hitting “send” on an apology gives you an immediate hit of relief, but it completely sanitizes the process. It allows you to bypass the messy, unpredictable reality of looking another human being in the eye and dealing with their reaction.
You get to feel cleansed and enlightened without ever having to sit in the discomfort of the damage you actually caused.
When I was a kid, if you broke a neighbor’s window or stepped out of line, your parents didn’t let you slip an apology note under their door. They marched you over to Mr. Martino’s, made you ring the bell, and forced you to look him in the eye.
You had to stand there, apologize, pay him back for the window from your paper route money and take your lumps. Maybe they yelled at you. Maybe they were just deeply disappointed.
But you hashed it out, the air was cleared, and you usually walked away with a clean slate and a stronger foundation. That friction wasn’t just a punishment—that friction is where the actual change happens.
I will acknowledge the obvious exceptions. If someone is unsafe, or if a letter is genuinely the only way to respect a strict boundary they’ve asked for, then yes, write the letter.
But let’s be fiercely honest with ourselves: nine times out of ten, picking up a phone to type out an amends instead of actually calling the person you’ve wronged isn’t about respecting the other person’s boundaries. It’s about protecting your own.
Genuine repair requires genuine presence. You have to be willing to hear the crack in their voice or the silence on the other end of the line.
You have to stand there and let them be angry without shrinking, getting defensive, or running away.
You have to look them in the eye and say, “I am sorry for what I did to you. What can I do to make it better?”
That takes grit. It takes a willingness to completely surrender control of the outcome. If you aren’t willing to face the music and deal with the real-time repercussions of your actions, you aren’t making an amends.
You’re just managing your own anxiety—and you are robbing both of you of the profound, hard-earned respect that only comes from standing face-to-face and taking responsibility.
Thomas Edison famously said, “Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.”
A true amends is one of the greatest opportunities you will ever have to repair a relationship and build your own character, but there are no shortcuts. You have to be willing to put on the overalls.
If you’re ready to finally learn to be responsible for yourself and your life, get my free weekly ReThink Tuesday Tune-Up HERE.
