Practice loving relationships

Does practice make perfect or is it just an old worn-out proverb? Well is anything perfect to begin with? Consider the answer because the implications are far reaching.

If you’ve experienced the perfect kiss on a first date why go on a second? If a coffee shop served a perfect latte why serve any other kind of latte? If an athlete made the perfect play why attempt anymore?

Nothing’s really perfect, but with practice we familiarize ourselves with a single activity until it becomes routine muscle memory. Now we’re talking about long-term muscle memory created by certain activities.

This sort of procedural memories are like ring tones on your phone. Through repetition, many numbers are memorized and associated with certain rings.

This is consistent with activities that become automatic with practice such as learning to ride a bike, play an instrument, type, entering passwords or athletics. Once these activities are stored in our long-term memory, they become routine automatic movements.

But how do these memories make us feel different? Think about the athlete taking the buzzer-beating jump shot to win a game, the band invited to a major parade or an author winning the Nobel Prize. Would practicing these muscle memories cause someone to feel differently? How would you feel after being awarded the Nobel Prize?

In many ways our modern minds grasps this concept — until it comes to relationships.

Many people believe they must feel their way into acting differently about those they have close relationships with. If they don’t feel appreciated, others mustn’t care for them and they withhold affection in return.

What about practice makes perfect and how differently we feel when committing actions to our long-term memory? Could caring about another person be like learning how to ride a bike or speaking a foreign language?

Thinking about this reminds me of a story. A mom decided to take her youngest daughter skiing. They were having a great time doing all the things girls do together on trips. Then it happened.

It was late, but they decided to run one more slope. They were both fatigued and ready to call it a day, when the daughter noticed a lodge serving hot cocoa. She began pleading with her mom to go to the lodge. Mom informed her the cabin was nearby. The little girl began whining and begging her mom to get hot cocoa. In fact, the car ride back to their cabin consisted of her moaning and complaining.

The mom, at wit’s end, felt like disappearing from the car. They finally arrived at their cabin and mom instructed her daughter to change and shower while she prepared dinner. The daughter wouldn’t relent and continued battering her mom about going for hot cocoa. They ate dinner together and the little girl reluctantly retired to bed. Mom did dishes, cleaned up, put on some laundry for them and prepared for another day of skiing.

The questions must be asked: When did the mother show more love and affection to her daughter? Was it when they were having fun skiing and doing all those activities together or when mom prepared dinner for her daughter after the way she treated her?

Sometimes we don’t feel like acting kind or caring and when it comes to relationships we believe we must feel in order to act. If we practice a behavior toward someone, without feeling anything, we believe it’s not sincere or genuine. Do you believe the mother’s actions were any less sincere because she felt like disappearing on the car ride? Do you believe she felt like making dinner for her tired, misbehaving daughter? I wonder how the mom felt after they finished eating dinner? I would like to know how mom felt when she checked on her and tucked her in to bed.

Do you think any of the mother’s actions toward her daughter were based on how she felt about her? What if the renewed sense of love the mom felt for her little ski girl was a direct result of the actions she practiced toward her?

Practice makes perfect may be a worn out, old proverb. Nothing can be done to perfection, but the only way you ever will feel differently about someone, in the context of imperfect relationships, is to practice acting differently toward them.

There’s nothing routine about a double play in baseball, but practicing makes it routine in the player’s long-term memory. This routines based on the player’s actions, but how does a double play feel on game day?

When your actions toward others become as automatic as a double play in baseball, the feelings that follow will be as routine and sincere as a genuine mother’s love. It will create long-term memories with more feeling than mountain lodges promising free hot cocoa.