There are two courses of action to handle the fake apology: accept the behavior or hold the person accountable. The first course of action, accept the behavior, is the path of least resistance. You know what you are going to get, and it’s up to you to decide whether you will tolerate it.

If someone keeps offering the apology and you accept it, then you are only going to get more of it. It is also important to recognize that if you accept the behavior then you don’t get to complain about it. Essentially, once we accept the behavior, we have signed up to see it again and again so complaining is a waste or your time and energy.

Accepting the behavior isn’t always a bad thing. But make it a conscious choice. My husband has apologized for getting home late from work just about every day since the day we got married. At one point I decided I could either keep getting frustrated about it or manage to it, and once I decided to manage to it things became much better.

That leads to the second option, which is to hold the other person accountable. Through observing the behavior of others, I discovered the best time to hold someone accountable is when the third apology for the same thing happens. It is usually around this time that I know the apology is “fake,” because that is evidence they might have no serious intention of changing.

The way to hold others accountable is by explaining the behavior’s effect on you. Maybe it violates a deeply held value you have, or maybe the person’s behavior is inconsistent with a value he or she holds dear.  Help the person see the message their behavior is sending. Many times, we don’t entirely understand the ways our behavior is perceived by others.

While I did end up accepting my husband’s being late, I still had the accountability conversation with him. Often, he was late because he was working hard to provide a good life for us. He didn’t understand why I would get frustrated that he was coming home late when he was his working hard was a sacrifice for the family.

It clicked for him when I explained the behaviors from our perspective. I told him, “Your always being late makes me and the children feel like we don’t matter. If you want us to believe your work is more important than we are, you are succeeding.”

These conversations are valuable for helping the other person understand the effects their behaviors have on others. These conversations are most effective when they focus on the effects of the behavior, and not about you being angry or mad. When we speak from anger, it tends to make the other person defensive. For some reason, defensiveness seems to be connected to the ears so people stop listening when they find themselves in that space.

Finally, the fake apology can be something small, or it can be a signal of disrespect or of bigger behavioral issues to come. If you have a conversation with the person offering you the apologies and they choose not to change, then you have a decision to make. You can either choose to accept the behavior or decide that it’s time to let that person have a smaller role in your life.

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The good news is that, while there is no universal blueprint for making decisions, you can make the tough decisions easier. Here are three steps you can take to make better life decisions.

1. Know Your Top 5 Values.

Knowing your top 5 values is essential for better decision-making. Finding your top 5 values is a discovery process and there are 2 meaningful ways of discovery. The first option is finding a list of values on the internet or getting a deck of values cards and starting to narrow your list down. If you find yourself having trouble in the process you can also check out CEO Sage Scott Jeffrey’s 7 Steps to Discover Your Personal Core Values.

The second option is taking time to observe yourself in your everyday life. Figure out what the values are that drive your everyday decisions. Is it family? Independence? Integrity? Loyalty? Become aware of what you hold dear and how that interacts with how you structure your life.

2. Make Decisions Using Your Values.

The best model for making values-based decisions can be found in Suzy Welch’s book “10-10-10: A Fast and Powerful Way to Get Unstuck in Love, at Work, and at Home”. Prior to discovering the 10-10-10 method, I discussed strategy and decisions based on the short-term, mid-term and long-term. People’s eyes glazed over. There was nothing “sexy” about evaluating decisions in those time frames. But Welch changed that with 10-10-10.

With your top five values in hand, the starting point for 10-10-10 is a clearly defined question – what are you trying to answer? The second step for 10-10-10 is to use your values to answer what are the positive and negative outcomes from your decision in 10 minutes (short-term), in 10 months (mid-term), and in 10 years (long-term).

The final step is to analyze the information you have gathered. Welch wrote that this part of the 10-10-10 process requires you to ask yourself: “Knowing what I now know about all of my options and their consequences, which decision will best help me create a life of my own making?”

On her book cover, as an endorsement, Glamour called 10-10-10 “the best decision-making tool ever.” Because of 10-10-10, Welch said her “life is renewed; my decisions deliberate, purposeful and confident.”

3. Timing matters.

Decision fatigue is real. After a long day of making decisions, research shows will power is depleted and the ability to make smart decisions drops drastically. It is best to make big decisions earlier in the day.

By incorporating these three steps into your daily routine and practicing them over and over, you will find that your ability to make decisions that are purposeful and powerful increases. You will also find that tough decisions aren’t so tough anymore. As you begin to understand who you are, what you like, what you don’t like and use that information to make choices, it becomes easy to see the choice that best suits you.

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1. Embrace the mystery of life.

Life is a mystery. Our lives are treks up the mountain, and somebody keeps moving the summit. We can be disappointed that we never get where we want to go, or we can embrace the twists and turns life presents us and enjoy the ride. When we embrace that life is a mystery, not a problem to be solved, we allow ourselves to enjoy an adventure that lasts a lifetime. So, sit back, relax, and enjoy.

2. Clear away interference.

Tim Gallwey, an author and former professional tennis player, developed a formula for simplifying tennis performance:

Performance = potential – interference

This formula represents Gallwey’s believe that your performance on the tennis court is equal to your potential, less the interference that limits or detracts from your ability to tap into your tennis potential. This formula applies to happiness in life also.

Life is more fun and people are happier when they are living as their best and most successful selves. When we resolve the personal and structural interferences that face us every day, it allows us to tap into more of our potential and live as our best selves.

3. Leave the past in the past.

The past calls the shots until you make peace with it. Dr. James Hollis, a Jungian psychologist and author, observed “the past calls the shots, at least until it is flushed out into the full light of consciousness.”

I call this past the energetic karmic scrap heap. It contains childhood wounds and traumas, family stories and past life contracts and vows. To be free of this scrap heap, we are required to shine light on it, inquire into it and love it regardless of what we see.

4. A happy life demands emotional maturity.

I cringe every time I see the movie Jerry McGuire and watch Tom Cruise say, “You complete me” to his girlfriend. Why? Because no one can complete you but you. When we want the people in our lives to be responsible for our happiness, we abdicate responsibility for our own lives and for our own happiness.

Emotional maturity demands we enter any relationship as a whole and unique person. Relationships are so much better when we step into them whole than when we step into them looking for someone to be those things we aren’t, can’t be, or won’t be.

5. Follow the 24-hour rule.

This 24-hour rule is about feeling what you feel when you feel it. Many of us try not to feel our emotions; we stuff them back down and deny them. When we avoid our feelings in the moment, they tend to surface at inopportune times and create unnecessary drama.

Allow yourself 24 hours to wallow, cry, drink champagne, yell, beat your fists on your chest, or dance by the light of the moon. Do whatever you have to do to feel the emotion. Then, when the 24 hours are up, you leave the hurt or pride in that moment and take the lessons learned forward with you.

Author, marketer, and entrepreneur Ryan Holliday wrote, “Remember that this moment is not your life, it’s just a moment in your life.”

Use these 5 things and take your happiness – and success – to the next level.

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