5 steps to repentance: how right your wrongs and start the new year strong
The path to healing and transformation — interpersonally, organizationally, culturally, you name it — doesn’t just lie in forgiveness, as many are quick to say.
In her new book, “On Repentance and Repair: Making Amends in an Unapologetic World,” Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg says repentance is a separate track, and in her view, it’s even more essential than pardoning others’ wrongs.
Ruttenberg’s thought-provoking perspective is based on the writings of Moses Maimonides, a 12th-century philosopher and scholar of Jewish law who laid out a five-step path of repentance. It’s a course that’s rooted in Judaism, but the concepts, as Ruttenberg lays them out, are largely secular. I was struck by their relevance to us all.
According to this line of wisdom, forgiveness is a victim’s personal process and prerogative.
Repentance is a perpetrator’s course. It’s how a wrongdoer (which to be clear, is all of us from time to time) can display genuine respect and appreciation for the victim and damage done. Walking the road of repentance can prevent future harm, generate healing and connection, and affect tremendous self-growth.
Here are the five steps in that process.
Maybe there’s a step or two each of us can take today.
1. Naming and owning the harm
This is the confession step. It’s where the perpetrator calls out the error and takes accountability to the person/people involved (or to a larger group, if more people were privy). According to Ruttenberg, “I’m sorry” isn’t actually a part of this step. Excuses, justifications, gaslighting and even the apology itself are all put to the side here.
The focus is purely on validating the victim’s experience. This requires understanding the harm and naming it specifically.
An example in the book: “It wasn’t OK that I told that joke in the staff meeting. I didn’t realize it at the time, but now I understand it was pretty transphobic.”
2. Beginning to change
This is about preventing the same harm again in the future.
In this step, the perpetrator aims to get to the root cause of the error and take steps to change — to become the kind of person who would not inflict that same harm again.
This step is part reflection, part action. The action might involve starting therapy, going to rehab or a number of other possibilities.
“It might mean actively seeking out fresh perspectives to help shape a new understanding of a complex situation … or educating oneself rigorously on an issue about which one had been ignorant or held toxic opinions.”
Ruttenberg offers a handful of examples, but the precise action steps depend on each unique situation and what honest reflection reveals may shift our perspectives and truly yield inner change.
This step takes time and often runs alongside some of the others.
3. Restitution and accepting consequences
This is an attempt to help the victim heal — to meet their needs and aid their ability to move forward.
It ideally involves consulting with the victim, but if that’s not an option, Ruttenberg says that more generalized action steps are OK.
Unlike the previous step (trying to change and grow inwardly), this one requires focusing on the other party’s feelings and needs. It involves repayment or reparation of some kind; it’s about making it up to the victim as much as possible.
4. Apologizing and making different choices
Finally, in Step 4, we say, “I’m sorry.” But it’s not quite that simple.
“It requires vulnerability and empathetic listening; it demands a sincere offering of regret and sorrow for one’s actions,” Ruttenberg says.
In other words, a real apology puts the victim’s needs front and center and shows no small amount of humility.
“It may feel guilt-inducing to own one’s mistake, selfishness, lack of impulse control, or cluelessness. And yet, the repentant person has already been on a profound journey by the time they arrive at this point.”
All previous steps make this fourth one feel somewhat more natural.
5. Making different choices
Ruttenberg says that if one has genuinely followed all the steps, this part happens almost automatically. She says this process changes us, and that’s the goal: Learn, transform and then don’t fall into the same trap again.
She frames this work as an amazing opportunity. We all mess up. We’re all perpetrators and wrongdoers sometimes. No one gets everything right.
She argues that when we cause harm, we’re out of alignment with our integrity and values. These steps give us a path for when that inevitably happens – a clear way to dig in, take ownership, learn and grow.
It’s a humbling road, but maybe if we can start small — just take Step 1 and one of our “smaller” transgressions — we can get a sense for where it might lead. All we have to lose is some pride.
