Unleash Your Potential

Today I heard someone say: “If you aren’t moving forward, you’re dying."

And that hit home, hard!

It sent me back to about 1 year ago when I knew I needed a change.

How I Became Reactive

So many of us know we need to change something in our lives, but for one reason or another we don’t.  We stay stuck, more comfortable here in the pain we know than in the pain it would take to change, to fix, to heal.  And I think I know why…

Question: What is your biggest frustration?

Mine is trying to learn something new and not being great at it immediately. Which is crazy because I was not always like this. I used to love learning new things, struggling with an idea or a problem, and working it out, conquering the challenge! That is why I spent 25 years of my life in school – I was good at being a student. 

But somewhere in my life that changed.

Don’t ask me where or when, like most people I didn’t notice because it happened so gradually.  Over time, one loss led to another, negatively affecting my confidence. Stress surrounding new things begets more stress, creating panic.  Then to duck those feelings I began to avoid the hard things. It felt like if I avoided change then I could maintain my ‘safety’.

I feel like this happens to so many of us, and our dogs.  One little thing occurring here or there, over time these experiences become stacked, and the cumulative weight impacts us in a massive way.  In fact, that is called trigger-stacking, and it is one variable that impacts our dog’s, and our, ability to respond vs. react to environmental challenges.

Overwhelmed and tired of being tired.

What Are My Values?

For me, hard things are usually technical. New piece of technology, nope.  New idea for marketing, don't like it. Begin using social media purposefully, UGH!   But the further I went down this tunnel of avoidance I started feeling even worse… the shame, self-criticism, and anxiety became overbearing. These choices were limiting my ability to be my best self, and to help others. And that just goes against everything about me!

These are two things I believe:

1. Life is meant to force us to face the challenges of our souls, to learn, to love, and to help. It is our destiny to become the best versions of ourselves with our time here.

2. I want to help as many dogs and their people as possible. To do this I had to face some of these fears, conquer these challenges, and provide an example of success to my clients.

I knew I had to create consistency between my values and my lifestyle. This meant healing my own reactivity, learning new skills, and (the worst part for me) embracing change. The only question left was:

Am I ready to do the work?

It took me some time to answer that question, but it was ultimately a "YES!" So I found a teacher that I believed in and signed up for a year long program that would teach me how to create a blended program for my clients.  Then, there wasn’t anything to do but to do it.

See, I am going through this right now, alongside so many of my clients.  As they are learning how to listen to, understand, communicate with, guide, and heal themselves and their dog I am also learning a whole new lifestyle.  Transformation can be scary and leave us feeling vulnerable, or even angry (me, that’s me). But I think there is something else that happens too… this is where we learn that we can do the hard things, this is where we face the monster in the closet and finally prove to ourselves who we are!

That is what so many of my clients are doing, and I’m so fucking proud of them!

Over the past year I have done a lot of growing.  My coach helped me with mindset, goal-setting, learning technology, and guided me the whole way.  I also had the support of the community of other dog trainers in the program.  It took me a while to be comfortable asking for help and sharing, but it has been beautiful, ugly and uncomfortable at times, but also truly beautiful. I’ve learned that connection and community are profound, especially when healing trauma and changing our lives. And this is what I am bringing to my clients with The Modern Dog Academy.

I know you can do hard things, but are you ready to do the work?

Cheers!

Jessica