"Oops, sorry!"

"Excuse me, sorry."

"Oh my gosh, I am SO sorry!"

How many times do we say the word sorry in a day? I'll give you a second to think. If you're anything like me, you say it a lot. It is out of habit, a habit I didn't realize I had formed as a matter of fact. Personally I think it's because for a while I was struggling with insecurity, as most young teenage girls do. And it was because of this that I thought I was a "bother" to the world so I had to apologize for everything. If someone ignored my comment, I'd apologize for being annoying (even if they weren't annoyed with me). Additionally if I was trying to squeeze by someone in a crowded grocery aisle it was me who mumbled "sorry" rather than just say excuse me. I think the worst time I apologized unnecessarily was when I was talking to someone about something I was interested in and I thought I was rambling. All of these "sorry's" are not needed, and it makes everyone, but specifically women, seem weak and desperate.

Maybe it is because women are more sensitive to other's feelings, or maybe it's just because some women are more prone to feeling inadequate; regardless, apologies are more comfortable in our mouths than they should be. I think what we need to do is evaluate what we are saying sorry for. Because let's face it, we may be feeling really bad about ourselves and sometimes we wish we could apologize for existing, but that's not an offense within our control. So if something interests us, we cannot apologize for the sheer fact that it does. That makes no sense. This interest is a part of our personality for the time being, so it would fall under the "I'm sorry for existing" category of apologies which makes it unnecessary.

Just as when someone tries to scoot around someone in an aisle, the person scooting isn't the offender? Are they offending anyone? No. They're only trying to get by another person. In this instance, rather than saying sorry, we should say "excuse me." Believe me, it is a hard switch; I still say sorry in an instance such as this.

A time to say sorry would be when we genuinely hurt someone's feelings, or when we hurt someone -- aka commit an offense against them. Normally this is done out of anger or malice, and we know when we have hurt someone. It normally ends up being a whole ordeal. That is an appropriate time to say sorry. But other than that, saying sorry isn't really needed. Asserting oneself is hard. I still struggle with it myself, but believe me -- when you're aware of how much you say sorry, it is a step in the right direction.