The apology formula

I once had a professor who completely forgot we had class one day.  The next time we saw him he told us that he always does three things when he makes a mistake:

1. Apologize
2. Do whatever he can to make up for it/repair the damage
3. Do whatever he can to make sure that it does not happen again

In this case, he apologized, set up a makeup class, and wrote the class time in his schedule for the rest of the semester. It is a pretty simple formula, but I think following it can help us get out of patterns where we keep making the same mistake over and over again.  I’m thinking that it could also be applied to ourselves.  For example, if I had a slip on my diet I could do the following:

1. Apologize to myself
2. If it is reasonable, make up for it by eating a little less in other meals and/or exercising a little more
3. Examine what happened and take action so that it doesn’t happen again.  For example, if I overate because I did not have breakfast because I didn’t have time, I would set my alarm 15 minutes earlier.