“Sorry is not good enough. Something has to be different.”

A thought by Henry Cloud, from his book, Never Go Back: 10 Things You’ll Never Do Again (p. 16). Howard Books. Kindle Edition. (Click on the book title to go to Amazon.com to buy the book.)

We many times believe that being sorry is the key to going back to a broken relationship or a job.

But Henry says, “Something has to be different. There must be fruit, results, or a real change in life or the situation that gives reason to believe that something will be different this time. So here is the main concept: If you ‘go back,’ make sure you are going forward.

“That way you are not going back just to repeat what has already been. You are truly moving forward because something tangible is different. Someone being ‘sorry’ (ourselves included) is not enough; just missing the good parts of what was is not reason enough to return; going back to assuage the pain—temporarily, mind you—is not enough. Life is meant to be forward moving, not backward. Make sure that if you ‘go back,’ you’re not going back to the same thing.”

He continues, “In business, we often see this when someone ends a relationship with a boss, a company, an employee, a strategy, a partnership, or even an industry. They move on for a while, only to go back and do it all over again. They rehire the person or go back to work for the same boss or company that they left for good reason or some other redo. For some reason, they think it will be different this time. Yet they find themselves back where they were to start with.”

He then says, “Remember: There is a reason it did not work. If you are going back, make very, very sure that reason is no longer there. You need to see more than just a ‘sorry’ or a commitment to make it work ‘this time.’ You need to see a real, verifiable change. People do change, and people do learn. Situations change; dynamics that were once present and making something not work can be different now. People build skills, learn new things, develop new capacities, etc. That is what life is about, and all of our lives hopefully are in a direction of getting better, not worse. Just make sure that is the case before you ‘go back’ to anything.”

That really makes sense, doesn’t it?

Yes, yes!

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