The older I get, the more my list of “if onlys” grows. I turn 40 this year, and there are all kinds of situations I wish I’d handled differently. There are choices I wish I’d made another way. There are conversations I wish I would or wouldn’t have had. There are some relationships that I wish I would have pursued more and others I wish I had avoided. There are things I wish I would have tried and others I wish I hadn’t.

But most of my regrets come in the area of parenting. There are so many times I walk away from a situation and think, “I wish I would have handled that differently.” And because of my perfectionist nature, I start thinking about what a bad dad I am and how much better other parents are. Why can’t I be like them? Why can’t I handle everything well?

The reality is that there is so much emotion mixed up with parenting, isn’t there? The stakes seem so high. I want to make sure my three boys navigate their way through life with less scars and fewer regrets than their dad. And when it comes to disciplining their behavior, it feels like I have to “nip it in the bud” because I’m always thinking about the worst-case scenario.

Just the other day, my oldest son was lying around playing video games. His room was a mess, and the trashcan in the kitchen needed to be emptied. And in my head, I didn’t think, “Help him learn the consequences of these decisions.” Instead, I thought, “Oh my gosh, if I don’t do something about this now, this kid is going to be a total slacker who can’t take care of himself. He’ll be living in my basement when he’s 40!” I know, it’s a little extreme. Like I said, the stakes are high and I want him to succeed in life. The problem is, I don’t always go about helping him do that in the best way, and I regret it later.

I want to be better at being a dad. I want to help my sons grow up into men of character. The reality I have come to terms with—because it stares me in the face every day—is that I’m not going to get this right every time. As a parent, I’m going to mess up. I’m going to handle things poorly sometimes. Hopefully those will be the times my kids look back on and make fun of me, and not the ones they bring up in a therapy session.

But for me, I can’t just stop at naming my regret. So when I overreact to something stupid, or don’t address something I should have, I try to learn from the “if only” moments. I try to make a different choice the next time something happens. I try to take a step back and look at the actual situation instead of the one I fear.

Now, I know I’ll mess up again. I probably will have a repeat of this “if only” just because I’m a slow learner. But hopefully at some point, the “If onlys” will start to decrease. I’m never going to get it right all of the time, but hopefully I’ll start getting it right most of the time. I’ll always have regrets—it’s just how I’m wired. But when it comes to my kids, I want to have the “if onlys” less and just enjoy the process, even when I’m not at my best.