Say it plainly: I was wrong

Here's the practice that makes the rest possible. When you've gotten something wrong, name it out loud, flat and clean: I was wrong about that. No "but." No long preamble about why it was understandable. Just the plain fact, set down where everyone including you can see it. Watch how much lighter the next minute gets once you stop defending a position you already know is bad.

Marcus put the cost of the alternative bluntly: "He who does wrong does wrong against himself. He who acts unjustly acts unjustly to himself, because he makes himself bad" (Meditations 9.4, Long). He's talking about clinging to the wrong thing — the dodging, the cover, the half-apology that protects your image and quietly corrodes you. Owning the error squarely is the only move that doesn't make you worse on the way through.

Try it small first. The driver who took the long route and admits it. The clerk who rang it up wrong and says so before the customer has to. The medic who calls their own miss. Plain ownership is faster than the cover-up, and it leaves nothing rotting underneath.