No one gets it right every time and when it comes to love, expecting perfection is a recipe for disaster. There’s no greater challenge than consistently loving another person. That’s because we can’t always be at our best, and they can’t either. Sharing our life with another person guarantees that we will be exposed to the other’s imperfections. How we respond to our mistakes and theirs will go a long way to determining how often we succeed in loving them for better or worse.

Regret is a good place to visit for a short retreat, but it’s a terrible location for a second home.

Looking back and seeing where we might have chosen different words or different actions can be very helpful. Fixating on how we could have done better sucks all the joy out of life. So why is it we become so enchanted with the sweet agony of defeat?

On some level, we know no one is perfect, and we assure ourselves we did the best we could, but on another level we can’t quite come to grips with those moments that revealed our fundamental humanness. Could it be that we’ve never really accepted our imperfection? And if that’s the case, how can we ever hope to accept the flaws of our significant other?

Many of us carry a subconscious expectation that we’re supposed to get it right, no matter what “it” is or whether we’ve ever encountered “it” before. That expectation is not only unrealistic, it’s destructive. The only way we can grow is to make mistakes. Oh sure, we can learn by succeeding, but success just confirms what we thought we already knew. When we fail, it gives us an opportunity for reflection.

So long as we don’t get lost in the frustration born of false expectations, we get an opportunity to gather new knowledge, gain awareness, and broaden our abilities through considering where we failed and identifying new approaches more likely to succeed.

If we want to be a good spouse, partner, friend, employee, or a good anything, we need to draw our unconscious perfectionism into conscious awareness and compassionately lay it aside. Then we need to take up a much more realistic commitment to do our best–knowing that our best in any given moment may not be any where near what we’d be capable of under ideal conditions. Our best in this moment is just that–the best we can do right now. We give our best–whatever that is–and move on.

Regret is helpful when we let it do what it’s supposed to do: show us where we went wrong. Once it’s done it’s job, though, it’s time to kick regret to the curb. Rather than wallowing in regret, we can go from asking what went wrong to asking why it went wrong. Were we too tired, too hungry, or too lonely? Were we just a novice approaching a task that required more experience? Were we intimidated? Did we allow ourselves to get too defensive? How did we get off track?

These questions can reveal actions we can take to dramatically improve our capacity, so the next time we encounter a similar circumstance our best will be much better. When we know we’re improving over time, we are more inclined to accept our humanness and continue our efforts to improve.

Loving another person consistently over a long period of time takes effort and commitment. It also requires that we love and accept ourselves. One of the surest ways to improve our ability to love others is to practice self-compassion.

A life well lived is not a life free from mistakes. It’s a life where we learn from our mistakes and grow everyday. It’s a life where we give others room and encouragement to improve as well. If we grow a little bit each day, just think of what we will accomplish over our lifetime! You don’t need to get it right; you just need to give it your best, fully expecting to learn from the experience so you can give it another shot tomorrow.

LifeWellLived was created to help you tell the stories that matter most–the stories of your loved ones’ well-lived lives. We are also dedicated to helping you live your life well, so when others gather to celebrate your life, they can say yours was a life well lived!

If you’re looking for the best way to tell your loved one’s story, check out our LifeWellLived Celebration Videos. They set your beloved photos and videos to a professional narration of your loved one’s story interspersed with family’s, friend’s, and your voices recounting treasured memories. LifeWellLived Celebration Videos are mini documentaries that quickly become family heirlooms. We’d love to create one just for you. Contact us now!