A regretitation is an apology concretized into physical action or physical item. It is intended to restore relationships and community. It is a concretized restorative action.
If someone harms another by running over their mailbox, a regretitation may be showing up the next day to restore their mailbox. A regretitation may be showing up with a new mailbox altogether. Or both.
Regretitation is a restorative leadership practice.
Brandon L. Blankenship is an assistant professor, continuing legal education presenter, and business educator. He and his wife Donnalee live on their hobby farm south of Birmingham, Alabama.
A person is made up of three parts. The mind, the heart, and the body. The mind represents thinking which is unseen. The heart in the body represents the affections that are unseen. The body represents the appetites that are unseen.
A life mastered by the appetites ends in morbid obesity, addiction, incarceration, and loneliness. This is not a good life.
A life mastered by thinking seems right but — in the end — is foolish.
A good life is aligning thinking and appetites to serve the affections.
Brandon L. Blankenship is an assistant professor, continuing legal education presenter, and business educator. He and his wife Donnalee live on their hobby farm south of Birmingham, Alabama.
Brandon L. Blankenship is an assistant professor, continuing legal education presenter, and business educator. He and his wife Donnalee live on their hobby farm south of Birmingham, Alabama.
Recently, I changed my primary care physician because my doctor announced his retirement. When I went for my first appointment, a smiley young man in the front office handed me a clipboard full of documents and asked me to fill them out and sign.
On about page seven, I was asked to sign to acknowledge that I had read the privacy policy and the financial responsibility policy. I flipped through all the pages on the clipboard and could not find either. When I asked the smiley young man for copies of the policies, he dug around in a bottom drawer and, with some effort, found some crumpled papers and handed them to me.
The fact that they were not readily available makes me think that a lot of people aren’t asking for them. That most people sign off stating they have read the policies when they have never had a copy of them to read.
When I went to the dentist, she had a fully electronic system (no clipboard). Her smiley person at the front desk asked me to sign on a fancy electronic box to affirm that I had read her policies and agreed to them. Problem was, I hadn’t. When I did ask for them they were promptly printed and handed to me. When I sat down to read them the smiley person at the front desk said, “you’re gonna read those?” somewhat incredulously.
Then when I went to get a vaccine, same experience – except this time I was signing off on manufacturer disclosures and known side effects.
Hey doctors! Stop asking me to lie.
At best, it is an unethical practice to ask patients to affirm that they have read something that you have not given them to read. I suspect that in cases of financial disputes, you are also asking your staff to lie. When a patient says they never saw your financial policy in response to not paying your bill, isn’t your smiley person at the front desk going to say, “Well I gave it to them and they signed off on it.” Beyond an unethical practice, this seems like it might be crossing over into an illegal practice as well. Fraudulent inducement perhaps?
Wouldn’t the best practice simply be to give every patient a copy of every policy that applies to them BEFORE you ask them to sign off on it? For most people, you could email it before their office visit so that they can read it early and not have to suffer the incredulity of your smiley office staff when they read it in the office.
Wouldn’t the best practice be to stop asking your patients to lie?
Brandon L. Blankenship is an assistant professor, continuing legal education presenter, and business educator. He and his wife Donnalee live on their hobby farm south of Birmingham, Alabama.
In the 2006 movie The Ultimate Gift, which is based on a best selling novel by Jim Stovall, a deceased grandfather (played by James Garner) posthumously presents his grandson with a series of tests designed to develop or test the grandson’s character.
One of the tests is a check for $100 million that the grandson has to spend on others.
Immediately, in my mind I started dividing up how the money could best be spent. A few million here would make a difference, another few million there.
The grandson got on the other side of the money. Rather than looking at it as an amount to spend, he saw it as an amount to leverage and invest. He put together a plan to build a $350 million dollar hospital that included housing so that families of sick children could live at the hospital and keep their family together. By investing the $100 million he had control over, he was able to convince other investors to invest hundreds of millions of additional dollars.
Also, at the end of my dividing up and spending the $100 million the money would have been spent and gone forever. It would have done some good, but it would have been unsustainable.
The grandson’s plan actually became revenue generating to the extent that families could afford, health insurance would pay, and so on. His plan was sustainable and would most likely outlive its original investment and investors.
It was just a movie, the money wasn’t real, but I discovered that when I think about money, my thinking is on the wrong side of $100 million.
Brandon L. Blankenship is an assistant professor, continuing legal education presenter, and business educator. He and his wife Donnalee live on their hobby farm south of Birmingham, Alabama.
Right outside the window where I have worked for the past months is a birdfeeder. The birdfeeder stays full of a wide variety of bird seed and draws a wide variety of birds. I’ve noticed that some types of birds – provided there is no imminent threat (like a neighborhood cat) – just plop down and eat. They don’t seem to care who eats next to them or how many are eating. These are the abundance birds.
Another type of bird, however, spends a good bit of its time and energy chasing away other birds. They do eat, but it is more of a hurried snack between flights to fend off others. These are the scarcity birds. While the abundance birds enjoy a relaxed meal, the scarcity birds dash in, grab a bite, and then rush off in their high anxiety flight to keep other birds away.
I’ve noticed a lot of people are like this too. The scarcity people get what they can get when they can get it cause it’s going to get gone. They spend as much or more energy keeping other people away as they do getting for themselves. Whatever they do get, they keep it tightly fisted.
The abundance of people don’t worry about keeping others out. These people tend to have an open hand.
Mother Teresa shares a story about taking a parcel of rice to a poor family in Calcutta who had been starving for many days. On receiving the parcel of rice, the starving mother divided the parcel in half and took it to her neighbor. Open hand.
in Man’s Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl shares stories about men in concentration camps who shared their last piece of bread. Open hand.
It doesn’t seem to have anything to do with how much bread (or birdseed) there is. The scarcity birds and the abundance birds in fact receive the same amount of birdseed. It seems to have everything to do with attitude. It seems to have everything to do with whether you are the type of person who sees the world through the lens of scarcity or the type of person who sees the world through the lens of abundance.
Brandon L. Blankenship is an assistant professor, continuing legal education presenter, and business educator. He and his wife Donnalee live on their hobby farm south of Birmingham, Alabama.
