When we tell ourselves that things should be a certain way we help ourselves and handicap ourselves in the same moment.

If we envision that it should be a certain way, then we have a goal to strive for. We have a yardstick to measure our efforts. We have a motivator to keep us working until it is as we expect it to be.

But an ideal is not a reality. It could be someone else’s idea of best results. Or it could be a (skillful) mashup of what we or others have seen or done. Suppose you are a neophyte potter and you really want to make some beautiful mugs. What should they look like? Are they sturdy, or delicate? Do they have a handle to be grasped in a fist, or pinched in two fine fingers? Do they have a rustic fire-burned glaze, or feathery hand-painted flowers?

What happens if you choose a combination of those, and you work many days to shape them, and they explode in the kiln?

How much energy do you expend on what you should have done? How much regret is “allowed” as you imagine how they would have turned out? Is it useful to think back and imagine different results if you would have made a different choice? And how helpful is this brand of thinking in your job, or your love life, or your choice of a new pair of pants?

Two equal answers: Very helpful, and completely useless. Perhaps even a big stumbling block. A mind killer. A demotivator. What’s the difference? How can coulda, woulda, shoulda be both?

Well, if you start from the position that there is no ideal, there is no perfect, you give yourself the flexibility to change course and redo. The explosion in the kiln gives you an opportunity. Was it the result of a mistake? Probably. Should you tell yourself that you are a useless potter and have no business near a piece of clay? No. Not even if it is objectively true.

Because coulda, woulda, shoulda feelings are what I call ‘bathing in the bathos’. They write a little script in which you would have been the hero if this or that or the other hadn’t happened to you. If you write the script that way then you remove the engine from your vehicle. The journey is done and all you can do is imagine that magic trip that might have happened if …

Try to keep coulda, woulda, and shoulda as tools and not judgements. And there is a trick I learned from an editor: If your work, hell, your life feels off and not the way it should be; then in you somewhere there is an idea of how to make it better, not perfect but somehow more true. And I learned in that same experience that if I polished the story until it was just right two weird things happened: It became ‘generic’ and lost the imperfect flavor of my unique touch. So, like certain traditional hand weavers, be ready to leave a little part imperfect or undone.

Going back over your efforts and comparing them with a different choice, especially if you have the courage to ask others how you probably goofed; that opens up new paths. Should it point toward a new ideal product? Maybe. But it could be more useful to be with the process of doing it a different way. Be ready to change your goal and your way of reaching that goal.

I have friends who are single and have felt kind of lonely for a long time. Often, they have coulda, woulda, shoulda memories of relationships that didn’t turn into lasting loves; or ended up being abusive. There is anger. And I get the feeling that their vision of Ms. or Mr. Right has tightened down into even more specific visions of what this ideal love must be in order to protect their heart.

I wouldn’t presume to be the matchmaker for anyone. But I would suggest starting by throwing out coulda woulda shoulda. Replace them with can, will, and shall. (Leave must and ought to for those sisu moments when you need to push through to a happily chosen goal.) Get out of the bathos and leave all regrets at the curb. Ask for help and tell people what you are afraid of doing.

And here’s a big one:

Embrace variety. Accept that different outcomes can be teaching moments, or pointers to new paths, course corrections, voices from your pet genii to do it differently, permission to fail, acknowledgement that you get to be human, an opportunity to bond with others in the same boat. The list goes on. Lots of good tools.

So when you are remembering that perfect hunky-svelte sexy-eyed recruiter/potential lover who was going to take you on the trip of your life to fame, fortune, and a golden retriever puppy don’t ignore the bald gnome-like jokester at your elbow who makes you giggle and has terrible taste in pop singers.

There is no supposed to. My parents were supposed to raise me well. They didn’t. But you can’t punish the past. You can take notes on what you like and don’t like. (Stay away from hate; it’s poison) Choose the ways you will try to do it more like you like. And forgive yourself when you don’t.

“You don’t always get what you want/ but when you try sometimes, you just might find/You get what you need.” Mick Jagger