You’re perfect, with some room for improvement. What does this mean?
It means that right now you are perfect in every way, and there’s no other way you can be at this moment. Everything that has happened in your life either by direct experience or from the stories, beliefs and experiences of others that they have shared with you makes you exactly who you are today.
There is absolutely nothing you can do to make you any different than you are right this moment. Accept it!
If you were to go back and re-experience them, you would still end up with the same result. Why is that? Well, we can only do the best based on what we have in our current knowledge and awareness.
You may immediately think well I wouldn’t do that again talking about some past relationship. Or perhaps you might believe that you wouldn’t move to a new job or a town because it turned out to be a disaster.
But, that is now based on your current awareness and all the new knowledge as well as experience you’ve had since that decision. At the time, you are not aware of any of this. You may have some illusion that you should have known, or that the signs were present. Hindsight is a beautiful thing!
When we start connecting the dots along with our new experiences, we start kicking ourselves for thinking it was a wrong decision.
You cannot connect the dots forward. This newfound knowledge was not available to you at the time.
Yes, you can live a pessimist life and believe everything is going to turn out a certain way and that you lack any control over this fate. In that case, you still end up doing the best you possibly could have in that situation at that moment.
So why does this make you perfect now? Because you cannot be anything else, there is no possible way you could have turned out any different.
This part of ‘you’re perfect’ is so difficult to grasp. In particularly because the mind will try to convince you of all sorts of wrong decisions, bad turns and situations you could have done better. You will beat yourself up; you may believe that any stupid fool could have seen what was coming.
So, could you have done better?
You’re driving late one evening in January, it’s cold, all you want to do is get home. Say you’ve had a long day, and you’re tired. You hit a patch of ice and at that moment, you do the best you possibly can to get through the situation safely as possible. However, you end up turning the wrong direction making the wrong decision and hitting the wall which results in some serious injuries.
Three years later in a similar situation, you avoid the serious injury as you have more knowledge about dealing with situations like this. Now, you can either keep knocking yourself for the mistake you made three years ago, or you can move on and enjoy the lesson that gave you.
Could you have avoided the first incident? Unlikely, even with all the hindsight like leaving work early or getting a better night sleep is all based on newfound knowledge. You didn’t have the tools or the knowledge to react differently.
You see, you’re perfect. However, there is always room for improvement.
Most of all we need to stop beating ourselves up for past mistakes. We need to accept them and fully embrace them for the knowledge and lesson they give us.
Next time you get annoyed at yourself for making a mistake, consider whether you could’ve done better without the new knowledge you’ve just gained.
