This morning is about patience and slow work, it’s about new learning and what feels like endless change. This is about we just got started, and expecting to be further along already. It’s about stress and deep breathing, counting to 10, trying again. We don’t get it right the first time, me and Sophie–she pulls at the leash, and I say No instead of telling her what I’d rather she be doing. I think she should already know how I expect her to behave, I take it personally when she doesn’t act that way. I slow down, squeeze new tears of frustration, stop, start again.
Now the wireless isn’t working and so I’m blogging from the phone.
This morning is about faith and work, about willpower and how positive reinforcement is slower and deeper than aversive training– not that dogs don’t learn from aversive training, they do, but they don’t learn what we want them to learn, what I want her to be able to learn. They learn fear and resentment. I am teaching myself a new way to think. And sometimes I’m jealous or envious: I had to learn through fear, not with treats and strokes... And if I learned that way, so can you. Deep breath. Start again. It’s about letting go of the old ways of getting respect, about trying something different. About being afraid that if I set boundaries, she’ll hate me, and then where will I be?
I guess I want to be out front with the work, the difficulties. I get so frustrated with the online peer pressure that exists to just talk about the good stuff: look how happy and blessed and easy my life is!–there’s this side, too.
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This is the prompt: to to take 10 mins, and tell the truth about how you’re feeling in this exact moment. All if it. Tear it up, after, if you want to, but let yourself write it.
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There are gorgeous thick full white clouds outside my window. They help. And maybe some puppy pets before breakfast.
Thank you for your deep breaths, how you are staying true to your decisions and dreams, even and especially when they seem to have been terrible ideas. Thank you for your words.
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