The 1 Big Secret To An Imperfect Relationship With Your Family and Yourself
This article is about the secret to creating a longing and lasting imperfect relationship with not just your family, but also yourself. The biggest mindset shift you can make to appreciate the potential in yourself.
I bet it must be nice being perfect.
Having the perfect relationships.
The perfect job, the perfect partner, the ability to know that all your habits and nuances are just perfect and everyone will absolutely agree with that.
Now, it must be hard for every other person in the world to live up to that standard.
But more importantly, to connect and make memories.
You may be getting to the point that I’m leaning into sarcasm!
A joke that many of us who are completely and utterly imperfect will understand!
Why Am I So Weird?
I don’t know.
And quite frankly, I couldn’t care less.
All I know is that the reason I love my family, my friends and myself is because of how weird we all are.
We have our stories, our ups and downs, our moments of happiness, joy, sadness, anger and disgust.
But what we have most is that weird, strange connection that keeps us together.
“People call these things “imperfections,” but they’re not. That’s the good stuff. And then we get to choose who we let into our weird little worlds. You’re not perfect, sport.” – Robin Williams (Good Will Hunting)
It’s that story we have when we ‘almost died’, that time we almost broke up, to the moment we realised we have all that we want in this one special place.
An article in the New York Times reflects on some research that shows that the more ‘new experiences’ we have in our imperfect relationship, the bigger the boost in marital happiness.
This is what we would call the most special relationship of all, the ‘Imperfect Relationship’.
A term I believe, we should all normalise.
What Is The Imperfect Relationship?
Human nature.
Flaws.
Insecurities.
Vulnerability.
Most importantly, depth.
Without depth, it’s monotonous and boring. A lack of uniqueness and connection. This is why an imperfect relationship is special, it provides opportunity to learn and to grow as individuals and as a family. It allows us to live in a different dimension to what others perceive and only you can truly understand.
But only if you can accept this…
The Imperfect Relationship With Yourself
As I always say, “you must learn to love yourself before you can fully love others”.
As an individual, we also have an imperfect relationship with ourself. This is not saying you have to be single to do this… it’s more that if you want to be able to give your ‘absolute all’ to someone else, you must work on yourself and love yourself first.
Acceptance of flaws is really, really hard.
Since we were born, ‘flaws’ have been demonised. We have been told that if we are to become a better, more lovable person, we are to remove these flaws and banish them into the underworld.
Here is why I’m saying you shouldn’t.
The biggest improvement we can make in our lives is when we learn to accept our flaws, insecurities and vulnerabilities, and progress to recognising them as our ‘depth’.
You’re not just one imperfection, but many tiny, small imperfections that make you succinctly different from everyone else.
If you can love and ‘own’ your own imperfections, I can guarantee others will too.
The Imperfect Relationship With Others
When we can learn to love ourself, then we can really learn to love others.
If we can accept our own imperfections, we will have no problem accepting other people’s imperfections.
Because like I said before, it is the ‘depth’ of someone.
It is the way they close their eyes when they eat ice cream, when they snort with laughter and how they won’t remember what they did yesterday but will remember your most embarrassing memory moment by moment… not to mention bring it up regularly.
There are many things that a relationship needs, I wrote a previous blog about this, The 3 Principles of A Meaningful and Purposeful Relationship.
When you can accept their imperfections, make fun of them and love them, you can truly and unconditionally love them too.
What You Can Do
It’s not one big thing you can do, it’s a whole bunch of small things.
It’s embracing yourself when you mess up, it’s laughing with your kids when they fall over and showing them it’s going to be okay, it’s not allowing yourself to talk to yourself in a negative way.
Just small steps in the right direction.
We need to turn around that mindset of ‘perfection’, reframe it and learn to love the ‘imperfect relationship’.
Life is full of mystery and strange concepts, but we can always learn to create depth in our relationships by appreciating how imperfect you really are.
Until next time,
