Last week, I decided to add a new thing to my ever-growing to-do list: a ta-da list. I heard about the concept first from my life coach training class, but in that class, it was really just another name for a to-do list. The idea was that you cross things off your to-do list and say, “ta-da!” and that therefore you feel better about your to-dos.

I’m not arguing with that premise, but it wasn’t really working for me. Sure, it’s nice to cross something off, but that list has so, so, so many more things on it. And breaking my to-dos down into smaller lists was sort of helpful, but not helpful enough. So what I did was start ending my day — the official end of my “work” day, which sometimes happens right before I go to sleep — by writing a list of what I’d done during the day. And the list didn’t just include work-type things, it included anything that I felt good about doing.

What a satisfying habit!

I forgot to do it last night, but I definitely want to make it part of my regular routine, because it really felt great to look back on my days and see that even if I didn’t get nearly enough “work” done — (Did I really spend three days working on a client contract, the first piece of paperwork I need to start working with clients? Why, yes, I did. Could I really not have just copied any one of the numerous generic forms that exist online? Why, no, I couldn’t.) — I’d accomplished plenty of good learning, healthy choices, and happiness boosts.

As I walked Sophie this morning, I was thinking about the day ahead and the days behind and really appreciating the sociability of all of them. Today’s plan includes my accountability meeting with Greg; yesterday was the monthly writer’s group; Saturday, lunch with my dad and stepmom; Friday, writing in downtown Sanford with my writing accountability buddy; Thursday, an absolutely delightful day with my friend Lynda, including dinner in the evening with two other friends. Spending time with family and friends = major happiness booster, probably one of the biggest.

At least three times in the past week, I took Sophie down to the waterfront in downtown Sanford in the middle of the afternoon and walked along the lake, down to the boats, and then back again. Our morning walk is really nice, too — in the mornings, we walk about a mile and a half, to the local park with the peacocks and ducks and pond with a fountain and then back home again — but I really love the waterfront walk. Partially it’s the sunshine and palm trees, the water view, the boats, the marina, the wildlife — but it’s also a sociable walk. There are always other people around and many of them are friendly. Lots of hellos, and nods, and feeling part of a healthy world. (This is, of course, nothing to do with me, and everything in the world to do with me walking a really adorable dog.) Happiness boosts — movement, nature, community — it’s a trifecta of happiness boosters!

Every day of the past week, I read some of a fun book, some of an educational book. The educational books included, “Outsmart Your Brain: Why Learning is Hard and You You Can Make It Easier,” “The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead,” and “Better Than Before: What I Learned About Making and Breaking Habits.” The fun books were mostly rereads, including the entire Julie Kriss’ Road Kings series. (<-affiliate links) I’m not sure I’ve decided what the term is for the happiness boost from reading — is it learning? Entering a flow state? Being engaged in something? Using your brain? I don’t know why it’s satisfying — I’ll have to think about that some more! — but it definitely is.

One thing I’ve been working on that has not been giving me a happiness boost has been my website design. Ugh, indecision. But yesterday morning I realized I really ought to be having more fun with it. Why is it not fun? There’s a bunch of learning that I don’t really want to do along the way, that’s part of why I haven’t been having fun, but I really should be letting myself enjoy the process more. I should be playing with it, treating it as a delightful chance to be creative and have fun with color and shapes. So that’s a goal for this week — more fun with the design of things, both the website, the written materials I’m working on, and some of the marketing stuff I’ve been doing.  My three rules for change are 1) Keep it simple, and 2) Make it easy, and 3) Find the fun. I think I need to think about those rules in relation to my whole life, not just making change. They’re excellent rules, IMO.

Just abut time for my accountability meeting, so one last thing:

 

Greg started a coffee company last year: Busker’s Brew, because he is a person who cares passionately about good coffee. I myself am not a person who cares passionately about good coffee, but once a week, he and I have been meeting for an entrepreneurial accountability meeting, and he provides the coffee. It is, in fact, excellent coffee, so if you, dear reader, are interested in coffee and not using one of those Keurig coffee makers, you should check it out. Support small businesses! And entrepreneurs!

Our accountability meetings are great. We’re not efficient about them — they always run well over an hour, which in my corporate days would have maddened me. But it’s conversation and goal-setting and discussion of online businesses and sharing info about marketing and classes and so on. Also watching dogs play, mostly in my backyard in the sunshine. Riker and Sophie are ridiculously cute together. If I ever figure out how to post video to my web site, I’ll share one of them romping while Greg talks about keywords and search engine optimization techniques in the background. I was listening, really I was. But I was also filming dogs being cute.

And I just did some quick research and the answer is no, I’m never going to post videos on my website because I use shared hosting and I don’t have the bandwidth. So I’ve posted it to Instagram instead, and if you’re interested, you can either click the post when it shows up in the blog’s sidebar, or try this link: rambunctious dogs having fun.

I’m still working on ALL the things, including learning ALL the things. I’ve concluded that I have to prioritize, because it is just not possible to do everything at once, but I haven’t decided on my priorities yet. I intended to create a course first, then write a book, then open up to working one on one with clients, but it’s looking as if that’s backwards, just because of the technology challenges of the course development. I can’t even embed a video on my website, ha. But I’m researching course creation apps and platforms. And mailing list software, and web design tools, and all the things.

Meanwhile, I’m currently taking three courses: The Yale course on happiness called The Science of Well-Being, via Coursera; the Health and Nutrition Life Coach Certification via Transformation Academy; and another course from them called The Online Course Revolution. Last week I did one called Bingeworthy, How to Make Addictive Online Courses, on xperiencify.com, as well as the first two.

The Health and Nutrition Certification class is by far the slowest certification class for me, in part because some of it is repetitive of things I’ve already done, which makes it hard to pay attention (although repetition aids learning, so I should still pay attention!) and in part because some of it is… just not me. I absolutely anticipate writing about food and mood and movement in my Choosing Happiness materials, but none of it will be about losing weight or going to the gym. I’ll finish the course eventually, but I’m aiming for the Master Wellness Coach certification to go along with my Master Life Coach certification and I think that’s probably going to take a while. I’m really just not capable of binging it, but according to xperiencify, only 3% of people who start an online course actually finish it, so I’m ahead of the curve anyway.

I was working on a revised bio last week, mostly for the Choosing Happiness website, which is still a work in progress, but this was part of it: Wendy Sharp is a writer, editor, publisher, designer, counseling school dropout, certified master life coach, certified happiness coach, certified wellness coach, overly fond of continuing education and certifications, and an excellent cook. Under the pen name Sarah Wynde, she is the author of Practicing Happiness: a Memoir of Van Life, as well as multiple fiction titles. 

Obviously, I don’t have that wellness certification yet, so I won’t be posting it anywhere officially, but it made me laugh. It might not last, of course.

Speaking of being an excellent cook, though, I did the weirdest thing for breakfast this morning and it was delicious. I’d been sick for the past few days and my stomach was still feeling doubtful, so I decided I’d just have eggs for breakfast. A nice simple omelette, no veggies. Or maybe just a little onion. Or maybe just a little onion and this arugula chimichurri that I made the other day with arugula, parsley, garlic, and red onion. Then I remembered that I had tomatoes. Tomatoes are kind of a pain in an omelette, IMO, because they’re too wet, so I like to cook them first, then add the cooked tomatoes to the omelette. So I cooked the tomatoes with the red onion, and eventually added some of the chimichurri, but I was feeling lazy, so instead of taking them out of the pan, cooking the egg and then adding the tomatoes to the egg, I just poured the beaten eggs on top. I sprinkled the egg with feta and some grated parmesan, and then, because I wanted the cheese to melt and I wasn’t going to try to flip the omelette, I covered it and left it alone for a couple minutes. Oh, and I threw in some fresh basil and oregano while cooking the tomatoes, because why not?

Voila!

It turned out so pretty. I have no idea why the egg puffed up the way it did, that was quite unexpected. It tore a little when coming out of the pan, and obviously I sprinkled it with micro greens, but it was such an aesthetically pleasing breakfast. Also, very tasty, but I expected that. The pretty was a surprise.

Yum, breakfast. Now I’m hungry.

 

I should do a little portfolio of my certification badges — this one makes five. This one, in fact, really just means that I’ve gotten the other four: Life Coach, Happiness Coach, Goal Setting Coach, and Life Purpose Coach. I took a little bit of a pause after I finished this one — a few days without watching any videos! — but I’m working on the sleep class now, and then will start the Wellness Coach certifications, too. Am I an over-achiever or am I just procrastinating on actually starting the business part of this idea? A little of both. There’s actually a bunch of classes on the business part of being a coach and I’ll probably try to take those, too, while simultaneously working on learning how to make videos for the course I want to create, and build a website, and do all the other things I’m trying to do.

Last week, I met with a friend who’s going to be my business accountability buddy and we gave ourselves goals for the week. I was feeling reasonably good about meeting my goals, until we met again this morning and I realized I’d missed one of them entirely, and made mistakes on two of the others. Sigh. But I did finish the Master Life Coaching certification, so at least there’s that.

Meanwhile, it rained for two solid days straight this weekend. It wasn’t a particularly cold rain or a particularly torrential rain, but Sophie has now decided that she agrees with me: she would prefer that the sky did not drip water on her. Last winter when it rained every day for days on end, we just went out in the rain anyway — I stood under the trees in Stewart Park and threw the ball for her and got wet and tried to practice happiness, looking for beauty and listening to the rhythm of the dripping in the leaves — but this weekend, we mostly stayed inside. Our regular morning walk, but we didn’t play ball. Not at all!

Two whole days, with no ChuckIt, no throwing for me, no running for her. She accepted this willingly enough — she really did seem to agree with me that going outside was not pleasant — but wow, was she happy to run around today. Major, major, major zoomies in the sunshine. I know in my head that it’s a good idea not to be too committed to a schedule with a dog — routines set expectations and expectations create behaviors. Flexibility makes life easier for both of us. But we’ve fallen into a schedule anyway. The past few days it was disrupted, though, and Sophie provided remarkably amenable to adapting it, except that once the sun was shining again, she really wanted to be outside all afternoon. I should have just brought my laptop outside, but instead I decided it was a holiday for most people, so it could be a holiday for us, too. Mostly a holiday for us, too, I did a little bit of working/thinking, but not much.

One of the things I thought about was the way that we label emotions — good/bad, positive/negative. February always seems like a hard month to me. Someday soon — and I could look it up, but I’m not going to — it will be four years since I last spoke to my son. Four years. What a horrible anniversary. When I think about it, I feel sad. But I don’t think that sadness is “bad” and I don’t even think it’s “negative.”

I do think it’s unpleasant. If I was picking my emotions like clothes from a closet, I wouldn’t choose to wear sadness. And yet, I’d rather wear sadness than try to numb it or hide from it or distract myself from it, because all of those ways of handling it make it stick around. Make it turn into some kind of gooey slime, oozing up from the depths. Instead, I just sorta say, oh, yes, there you are, sadness. Totally deserved, what a sad experience this is. And then I move on, and go back to playing ball and appreciating the sunshine, and not doing the work I need to do, but mostly being happy. I think when we label our emotions good and bad, it makes it seem like the bad ones need to be avoided, but life is richer and more vivid when we acknowledge and experience the full spectrum. My happiness is happier because it is so hard-earned. Which doesn’t mean that I wouldn’t change things if I could, but 100% happiness would be a very pastel & shallow kind of happiness, I think.

The tag line on my new business is currently “personal coaching for people who want to feel better,” which is part of why I spent so much time thinking about good & bad, positive & negative, as they relate to emotions. “Better” could mean so many things, after all. I’m definitely over-thinking the concept, but I liked the directness, before I started my over-thinking. I still like the directness, actually.

Speaking of said business… I have a logo. I have a million variations of that logo, too (<–hyperbole), but this is what it’s going to be. Now to get that logo on a website!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I started the day determined to either do my taxes or build/re-do my websites, one or the other. Four hours later, I’ve rearranged the furniture in my bedroom, dusted, and started a load of laundry. Ah, procrastination, how lovely it is. At least it’s been productive procrastination. My belongings are more sensibly located now and soon I’ll have clean clothing, yay.

I intended last week to be a big creation week — lots of actual making of content, not so much reading other people’s content — but it didn’t turn out that way. I’m not honestly sure why. I knew there would be points along the way where I got discouraged. It’s inevitable in any new endeavor or project, I think. Down moments are what makes room for the up moments, right? But I think it’s not really discouragement so much as still needing processing time. I had an idea when I started of exactly what I wanted to do, and then I thought I couldn’t do that specific idea, so I started looking at related ideas, but really, what I want to do is what I thought of initially. And so now I have to think about how I can do that, and what’s getting in the way of that.

How vague I’m being! Sorry. But my goal really was so specifically about depression, and about wanting to help people who are fighting that specific battle, and life coaches/happiness coaches/wellness coaches are ethically not supposed to work with people who have a “mental illness.” I put it in quotes, because to me, depression is a symptom. And maybe it’s a symptom of a mental illness, but maybe it’s also a symptom of not getting enough sleep and not getting outside enough and not eating enough vegetables. That would be the whole point! But obviously, I am not going to do anything that is unethical. And on the other hand, how can it actually be unethical to be an accountability partner/cheerleader/strategist for someone who wants to become happier? Unethical, certainly, to make promises, but I wasn’t planning on making promises. I’m not even willing to guarantee my own happiness, much less anyone else’s. Ugh. Indecision kills dreams. I need to stop being so indecisive.

On Friday, I went to meet my writing buddy — very much looking forward to it! — but the car was dead. It looked like I hadn’t quite closed the back door, and the light might have been on, so I surmised it was a battery problem, but no one was around to give me a jump start. Christina and Greg were in Pensacola for the weekend, and no neighbors were out and about.

I was sad.

I felt like I had so many possible options, though. Downtown Sanford is only a couple miles away, so I could have walked, but I would have been far more reluctant to make the walk back in the dark. I obviously could have called an Uber or Lyft, too, and that might have been a good choice, except that I spent long enough messing around trying to figure out why the car wasn’t working and what I could do about it that our writing time would have been over by the time I arrived, anyway.

And then, of course, there was also the question of what to do about the car: call some kind of roadside assistance? Eh, I was in my driveway, so not in urgent need. Wait for Christina to get home? Definitely an option. It’s not like I use the car every day, so waiting three or four days to try a jumpstart would not dramatically affect my life. Hover outside until one of my neighbors came home? Someone would have shown up eventually, I’m sure.

But it was remarkable how unstressed I felt about it. Sad, yes. Bummed that I was missing my fun writing date, which I had been looking forward to. Annoyed, a little, that I was going to have to solve a problem that was so uninteresting to me. But not at all worried. I knew that if the car was truly dead — somehow completely non-functional, for now and forever — I would be just fine.

It was a really nice realization. Five months or so ago, when I was catastrophizing, not having any transportation felt terrifying. I would never have sold my van if I’d realized Suzanne was so untrustworthy, and I felt trapped and powerless. Now, despite not having a job, despite needing to earn more money, despite being indecisive and unsure of what my future will bring, I still feel safe. It’s really quite lovely. I do so like being happy. 🙂

As it happened, I bought this clever device from Amazon (at the BBE’s suggestion.) It arrived by 8AM the next morning and the car was running again that afternoon. Technology is lovely sometimes.

And now I have spent far too much time writing this blog post and pondering my own internal state of being, so onward. I think maybe taxes. Or, you know, a shower, and then a snack and then some playtime with Sophie, and then maybe taxes…

Happy Monday!

 

And #3 done. This was by far my favorite of the classes I’ve taken so far, largely because it was the one where I had to work the hardest. Although that sounds wrong. It’s more that the exercises really required me to think, because I wasn’t coming into it with the background of already having done the work. And that also sounds wrong. It’s not that I don’t know my goals, because I do, but the approach was more challenging and more concrete than I anticipated it would be. It was good work to do, but I needed a lot more time to think about the exercises and my answers to the exercises than I expected.

I think I short-change thinking time when I’m planning. I know that’s been a constant issue with writing stories for me — I sit down, expecting the words to come pouring forth, and then I stare at the computer and have no idea what the words should be or what happens next in the story. In this current project, I did anticipate that it would take some serious time — I think I said January for learning, February and March for content creation, April and May to start marketing, June before I could hope to be earning any money — but I think I anticipated that the creation time would be straightforward, that I knew what I wanted to do and how I wanted to do it, and that therefore it would be easy. Perhaps not so much. Well, definitely not so much. But progress, not perfection; mistakes are opportunities to learn; the journey is what matters. Right?

Moving on, I had a lovely time at Epcot last week. We went on multiple rides, including the incredibly nostalgic (to me) “Journey Into Imagination” ride, aka the Figment ride. I think it was literally 25 years since I’d been on it, but I knew exactly where the ride stopped moving back then, and exactly when three-year-old R started screaming to get off. I’m sure he doesn’t remember, but it feels like such a metaphor for parenting for me. I worked so hard, but in the end, it was out of my control.

On Friday, I met up with a new writing friend in downtown Sanford. I met her through the writing group, and this was the third week in a row where we met at a coffee shop on early Friday evening to write together. I worked on Cici for a while, decided I hated it, then moved on to my tea shop story, and solved some problems that I’d been stuck on. I didn’t actually get a lot of words written, but it was really satisfying to be writing, to feel comfortable with a writing buddy, to be sitting outside in the early evening, to be enjoying Sanford at 5PM on a Friday evening, when the live music at the bars has already started and so many people are wandering the streets, and appreciating Florida. I really love the atmosphere there as twilight falls.

On Saturday morning, I started to try to schedule online writing time with my friend Lynda — and then I very spontaneously invited myself to her house to write instead. She lives an hour away, so a completely reasonable drive to get to spend time with a friend. Why haven’t I done it before? I’ve been here for three months! I think maybe because I was worrying about Sophie, either leaving her alone in my house for hours, or bringing her and having her be restless and unsettled. But I brought her and she was largely very good. A little restless, but mostly willing to sit and be peaceful while Lynda and I chatted. I can’t believe that I took no pictures while I was there, but apparently I didn’t! We didn’t get a lot of writing done, possibly unsurprisingly, but had a lovely time hanging out, talking business and life and writing.

Sunday started out gray and rainy and chilly — okay, nothing like Arcata’s version of the above — but enough that I started my day by making a quick run to the new Publix (seven minutes drive away, just opened up, yay!) and buying the BOGO pot roast. It felt like such good pot roast sort of weather. I then spent the day puttering around with the delightful smell of simmering meat emanating from the stove. It was delightful — and actually it tasted delicious, too — but I eat meat and potatoes so rarely these days that I think I spent all of yesterday (Monday) in a bit of a food coma as a result. At least Monday felt like a wasted day.

Well, somewhat wasted. This morning when I was writing morning words, I started out beating myself up for how little I’d accomplished yesterday, and then I stopped and wrote a list of my accomplishments: laundry done, folded and put away; hair cut; healthy vegetables cooked and eaten; dog walked and played with; goal setting course completed; three books speed read for research (one on marketing, two on food). I need to not beat myself up in general, but I definitely didn’t deserve the abuse I was heaping on my head for yesterday. It’s just that I never sat down at my computer and worked on writing, course creation, or web design. And those are things that I’d really like to accomplish. The goals that I have not yet succeeded in achieving! Soon, though. In my list of aphorisms, I should include something about persistence or perseverance. Because it’s always just one step at a time, one word at a time, and giving up is really the only way to fail. I don’t intend to fail. So. Onward!

 

After three largely unproductive days…

(Goal for Monday: write a blog post. End of day Monday: not done. Goal for Tuesday: write a blog post. End of day Tuesday: not done. Goal for Wednesday: um, yeah…)

… I started out this morning by deciding that I would at least do some of my goal settings certification class before I got too busy with my day. Within the first five minutes, the instructor said the above line: “Indecision kills dreams.”

I immediately stopped the video and moved into my word processing program, because it felt quite directed at me.

Yes, my indecisiveness is absolutely getting in my way. I’ve been learning a lot, no question about that, but I’m not sure I’m actually making any progress toward my goals, because I’m not actually creating anything. Learning without creation feels like stagnation.

On the other hand, thinking takes time. My three days of complete unproductive-ness were precipitated by this goal-setting course. The exercises in the course are actually taking me a lot of time to go through. The current one I’m working on is called 30-60-365. You start by setting your long-term goal — 365 — which is where you want to be a year from now. Then you work backwards to create a 30 day goal, ie where you want to be at the end of the month, and a 60 day goal, ie where you want to be at the end of the month after that. At 60 days, you reassess. You figure out where you’re at, what still needs to be done, what more needs to be done, and what your next steps are, and you set a new 30-60-365.

As soon as I started trying to set my 30 day goals, I felt totally over my head. So much to do. And sensible starting places – website, coaching documents, contracts, coaching plan, marketing materials, all the obvious things – require me to make some decisions.

The branding class I’ve been doing talks about creating your brand as an experience, deciding what experience your ideal customers or clients are looking for, and then thinking about how to give it to them. But it’s not your own ideal experience — it’s the experience you think your ideal client wants to have. So obviously, before you can do that you have to figure out who your ideal client is and what they’re looking for.

But also, of course, what they’re looking for has to fit in with what I can, or am willing, to give said ideal client. I’ve been watching a ton of life-coaching stuff and you know, I am just not going to become the person with perfect make-up and high heels anytime soon. Not that I think a life-coach needs to have that sort of style, but there’s a lot of very polished, very pink products in the life-coaching marketplace, and that is just not me.

Sigh.

Indecision kills dreams, I remind myself.

Tomorrow I am going to Epcot for the Arts Festival, and on Friday, I am going to make some decisions.

A business name, definitely, and a sense of the style of my brand experience.

The most successful people are the ones who make the most mistakes. That’s a line from my goal setting course, too. 

(For some reason, this blog post didn’t post last Wednesday and I didn’t notice until today. Oops. I don’t think that says bad things about my productivity — I was just doing things other than looking at my blog — but it doesn’t say great things about my efficiency!) 

 

Tada!

Certification number two, and I am already hard at work on certification number three. This one was fun, though.

The course was structured as a series of layers, basically things that get in the way of people’s happiness. The outside layers were external influences, stuff like your desires and limiting beliefs, working down to the interior layers. Personally, I think it makes a lot more sense to start with the interior layers. Sure, your limiting beliefs might get in the way of your personal actualization, but your moods — the most interior of the layers — are where happiness begins. For me, anyway. Maybe the designers of the course consider them the heart, the center, but I see these layers of happiness as more like the nutrition pyramid, with moods as a foundation, building up. Changing your desires isn’t going to make you happy unless you’ve learned to give yourself a happiness baseline in your moods, I think. 

My second favorite of the layers — or maybe the one I considered second most important, after mood — was labeled Ego and Identity. That concept is one that I really understood first from reading Well-Designed Life: 10 Lessons in Brain Science & Design Thinking for a Mindful, Healthy, & Purposeful Life by Kyra Bobinet.  It’s resonated with me ever since I realized that part of my identity was “Not An Artist” and that that piece of my identity was as much a choice as “Writer” or “Editor.” And that I could change it if I wanted to.

Realistically, I haven’t succeeded, because I haven’t chosen to spend the time necessary to get good at drawing and painting. But I’ve learned enough to be my own graphic designer and to trust my design instincts, and that’s something. Plus, I do believe that I could become an artist if that was how I wanted to spend my time. I’m not limiting myself by thinking that not being able to draw is an innate part of my identity rather than a choice to not work at developing the skill.

Anyway, in the happiness course, Ego and Identity were about looking at ways that your identity gets in the way of your happiness. Even things like, “I’m an introvert, I need a lot of alone time.” Do I really? Or am I just used to having a lot of alone time from working at home for so many years and I choose to think of it as a positive instead of a negative? I don’t know the answer to that, but it’s an interesting question to consider.

I’m on to the next course now, one about Goal Setting. It’s going to be so useful for me. The first exercise was initially annoying — you have to identify 50 goals. It seemed so silly, because I have a clear goal that I’m working on right now. Then I realized that actually, I’m working on a lot of goals at once, maybe even 50 of them, and maybe I’d be feeling better, getting more done, or at least making better choices about my time if I really got clarity about what my goals were and which ones were the most important to me and fit best with both my values and my ambitions. Does it matter if I get multiple coaching certifications? Should I really be spending hours thinking about color palettes and icons for a website? Is working with Sophie — not playing with her or walking her, but working with her with the goal of passing the CGA obedience tests — actually useful or fun? I suspect that the goal setting course might be going to take me a while, and yet it feels quite useful. I do keep reminding myself that my goal for January was learning. I am definitely succeeding in that. But at some point, I also want to start creating. Soon.

Beyond my time spent learning, this week included some hanging out at a local cafe with a fellow writer; a few training trips with Sophie including an hour spent at a park in Oviedo; the farmer’s market, of course; and one evening spent listening to live music at a bar, which was fun and nostalgic.  (I honestly could not remember the last time I hung out at an actual bar, but it was definitely a long, long time ago — maybe sometime in 2010 on a business trip?) Meanwhile, I eat my vegetables, try really hard to sleep through the night, and aim for 7000 steps a day. And play ball with Sophie, of course! I really wanted to share a little movie of her here, but my internet is being annoying so it’s not happening. Ah, well, imagine you see a cute dog chasing a ball. 🙂 

 

The kind of training I like is called Concept Training. It teaches dogs life skills — things like optimism, patience, impulse-control, and flexibility — rather than to obey simple commands. Instead of walking in circles while yanking your dog’s collar or forcing her butt down anytime she refuses to sit promptly, you play training games that teach dogs the skills they need to make their own smart choices. Instead of training behaviors, ie Sit, you train things like Focus — which does, in fact, also wind up with a Sit behavior usually, but the goal is to teach the dog to pay attention to you, which is both more complicated and just about infinitely more useful than a simple Sit.

Here’s a link to a great article on the subject: Concept Training Concepts. 

And here’s another to the people who, I believe, named the idea: Absolute Dogs If you follow that link, you’ll see that concept training also believes dogs are unique individuals with their own personalities and that you train to the dog, not to one-size-fits-all.

Concept training is not positive reinforcement training, although there’s plenty of positive reinforcement within it. Also, there’s some confusion in the world about what exactly concept training is. Karen Pryor Academy, which is where Sophie and I started our training journey back when she was a puppy, uses the term concept training to refer to teaching dogs things like targeting and release cues, that you can then use to build complicated behaviors, such as opening doors. The “concepts” for them are really just partial behaviors, rather than traits or characteristics. I didn’t hate Karen Pryor training — it was fine — but I also didn’t care enough to do much of it. It’s basically clicker training, and it’s really focused on tricks, imo. Things like heel, which honestly, I just don’t care enough about to work on.

Concept training, on the other hand, is what I used to teach Sophie to wait for me before crossing a street. When we go out for a walk, I only use a leash if there are other people or cars who might be made nervous about an off-leash dog. Literally, I put her leash on when I’m worried that a driver might see her and feel like they need to slam on the brakes. I am not worried that Sophie will run out into the street in front of a car, even though she’s off-leash, because she knows that we watch for cars, and she does it herself. I will sometimes tell her to wait, but generally, I don’t have to, because she isn’t obeying my commands, she’s exercising her own judgement, which, after a year of training like this, is really pretty good.

A therapy dog, IMO, needs optimism. She needs to walk into new places with new smells and new noises and lots of chaos and feel safe and interested, not concerned. She needs to believe that the strange people reaching out to her won’t hurt her. She needs to be confident that the strange smells around her don’t indicate anything bad. Sophie already has that kind of optimism and trust in the world, although more experiences would build on it.

A therapy dog also needs focus. She needs to be able to pay attention to her person and listen to her person’s messages even when there’s a lot of stuff going on. Sophie could use some work on focus — she’s got room for improvement — but she’s off to a pretty good start.

A therapy dog also needs patience. There will be plenty of times when what’s happening won’t necessarily make sense to her, so she will need a willingness to sit quietly and wait and see what’s going to happen, while also staying alert. Sophie could definitely do that someday, but she’s probably not there quite yet.

Concept training would teach all of those skills beautifully — it’s exactly how concept training would consider the question of how to train a therapy dog! — so that’s what I thought I was getting into. It’s what I expected, just because it makes so much sense. Prong collars and corrections are so 20th century. Old-school. And therapy dogs are not really an old-school idea, IMO.

Anyway, it was so good for me to write this out/think this out — thanks for your questions and comments, both on the blog and via messages. I’ve withdrawn from the local program, but I think I’ll be spending my dog training $s on joining the absolute dogs game community. I do want to train Sophie more, because it is fun for her, rewarding for both of us, and I need to learn more in order to get better at teaching her.

But also, it’s time for me to get back to my own training. I made no progress this weekend on any of my work/business goals, and it might be time for me to actually set the goals and deadlines that I’ve talked about setting. A timetable for deciding on a business name, finishing my second certification, and maybe actually putting some of my course creation plans in writing would be a really good start to a productive day. Note that I’m not saying I’ll do all those things, just setting a deadline for getting them done. 🙂 Meanwhile, time to flip the laundry, take a shower, and maybe play some ball!

 

I had been so looking forward to therapy dog training for Sophie. In my imagination, it was a combination of the classes we enjoyed in Arcata, plus some of the approach and style from one of my favorite books on dog training, Through A Dog’s Eyes, (<–affiliate link) by Jennifer Arnold, who trains service dogs.

In reality, not so much.

I took an online personality test recently which was somehow related to branding, although I can’t find it again. As I hit Return on the final question, I confidently expected to be told that I was a people-pleaser, highly motivated to get good grades and approval from other people. Literally, I’m the kind of person who pats myself on the back when my car insurance app praises me for my good driving. Instead, the personality test told me I was a rebel who didn’t like following other people’s rules. Whoa! Everyone I’ve told this to in real life has laughed, I think in agreement with the test. And, in fact, with a little more thought… well, yes. It is perhaps more apropos than I would have guessed.

It’s relevant, because the therapy dog classes are heavily obedience-focused. Dogs must obey. I felt not great when they were passing out prong collars as class began — okay, it’s one thing to say that people can use them for a little while, another entirely to provide them. When a dog was whimpering and crying behind me, I felt more not great. It wasn’t my dog — obviously, the moment Sophie is whimpering, I’m absolutely done — but still…

And then I obsessed about it all weekend. I didn’t do any of my happiness certification training, I didn’t do any of my branding and marketing research, I didn’t write, and I wasn’t happy. I kept thinking that I needed to give the classes more of a chance. That they were for Sophie and that I should see whether she enjoys it before making any decisions.That I’d already paid for the first month and all the accoutrements, and so I should at least stick it out for a few weeks. That I need things that get me outside of my house and opportunities to meet people, and that Sophie would just make such a good therapy dog, and she also needs stimulation…

Sunday afternoon I had to force myself to go to the writer’s group in downtown Sanford that I loved in November and December. I kept telling myself that I really liked it before and it’s not like I could just do it later if I didn’t go, but I was just in such an off mood. I wanted to crawl under the covers and be grumpy. But I forced myself to go, and within the first ten minutes, someone said something that triggered the thought, “Trust your instincts.”

Trust your instincts.

Have my instincts been wrong before? Maybe, but I don’t remember a time. Have they been right before? Absolutely. Multiple times. The moments when I knew something felt wrong but I did it anyway. Sending R to summer camp once, ugh. 

This therapy dog training program feels wrong to me.

Also, trying to make my dog “obedient” is not how I want to spend my time and use my energy. I’m not convinced it makes sense, either — why does a therapy dog need to be a perfect loose-leash walker? Why is a good “heel” the priority? Why should dogs walk in circles and be forced to sit? It’s a “do what I say because I say it” attitude, when Sophie, and my relationship with Sophie, has thrived on trust and communication. 

So, yeah. I suspect that Sophie is not going to become a therapy dog, at least not through this program. I did do some more research on other dog training programs in Orlando — my whole goal was for her to have fun and stimulation, because she loved the classes we did in Arcata and was learning so much, and doing so well — but, unsurprisingly, Orlando seems to lean a lot more to the obedience, discipline, shock collar schools of thought. It is just not me. 

Anyway, on this cold gray Monday morning, I am extremely over-tired — my brain was running in circles through most of the night, it felt like — so I am not going to make any decisions today. But I think it’s probably not going to be much of a productive day either, which is a pity because there is so much I could be working on. So many things to learn, so many things to do. But they’ll all still be there tomorrow. 

 

 

Ta-dah!

Yep, goal number one met. I am officially a certified life coach.

I’m not quite sure how I feel about it. It feels fake, in a way, because I haven’t worked with any real clients, i.e. people who pay me money to help them with their life. On the other hand, those years of counseling school, and the binges of self-help reading, do mean I’m pretty far ahead of the game in terms of knowing everything the class covered. Plus, I breezed through many of the exercises because they were things I’d already done. I was super amused by one exercise that had me thinking about passion and purpose in life, because I spent the last two months thinking about just those things. If I hadn’t already done that work, I wouldn’t have been taking the class!

Overall, there were not a lot of surprises for me. The biggest area that I didn’t know much about was neurolinguistic programming, aka NLP. Me being me, I immediately started doing more research, and while NLP is a hot topic, there’s not a lot of science to back it up. There’s nothing in it that’s dangerously far out there, IMO — I’d put it in Law of Attraction territory for being maybe helpful, maybe just wishful thinking — but there’s nothing that says I have to use it with my future clients. I’d really rather spend more time talking about how we can improve their sleep than working on hypnosis-type strategies for changing their thinking, although I guess those two areas could easily intersect. But it definitely won’t be my focus.

There was one cool exercise, though, where you visualize as emotion as a physical object — with a color, a texture, a location in your body — and then you start to spin it, and transform it. At the end, the emotion doesn’t feel the same. You’ve changed it. I found it surprisingly effective in the moment, and would definitely try it again or recommend it to someone who had some unpleasant emotions to work through. Again, though, not really going to be the focus of my future “signature program.” (Instagram has just been flooding me with ads and sponsored posts about coaching, so I am quickly getting up there with the jargon.) 

Apart from the life coach certification class, which was fairly intense because I was doing it quite quickly, I’ve been looking at branding and marketing and video creation. I spent hours yesterday working on logo design, because before I can really start creating content, I need to figure out what it looks like. <– And the moment I wrote that, I realized that’s a stupid idea. I don’t have to know what the cover looks like before I write the book. And I don’t have to create my website before I start putting my ideas together! Well, that’s… a thing to think about, I suppose. I do still feel like it’s an obvious first step, but maybe I’m rushing my fences. It’s enjoyable, but I definitely reached a point yesterday where I felt stressed out, and anxious, and like I was spinning my wheels, going nowhere. Fortunately, Miss Sophie Sunshine suggested that it was time to play, so I walked away from my computer and by the time I came back, I felt better. 

Last night was the first class for her therapy dog training. She didn’t get to come to that one: it was the introductory class to meet the instructors and talk about how the whole thing works, ie the goals, the process, the requirements. I am… reserving judgement, I guess. I spent $90 today on the required stuff — a harness, Therapy dog badges, paw treatment lotion, a first aid kit, wet wipes, nail clippers (she has to have her nails trimmed, which she is just going to love <–not) — so I’m committed enough to be investing.

But they allow prong collars up until the first AKC certification test (although not after) and they don’t use treats, so I am going to see how the training actually goes. I think Sophie will like it — it involves a ton of outings to a lot of different places, and a lot of learning, which ought to please her. She is a girl who likes to be busy. But if anything about the training makes her unhappy, I’ll quit. The whole point is for her to be having fun, so if it’s not fun for her, she will not become a therapy dog.

But I do think she’ll like it. It’s a lot of work, though! I knew it was 90 hours of training, plus a bunch of testing, but I didn’t really factor in driving time in my mental  estimation of what it would require. Last night’s class was an hour away, started late and ran long, so it was four hours, not the one hour I expected. I don’t expect every one of those 90 hours to require another 2 hours on either side — the training takes place in many different locations — but it’s definitely going to be keeping me busy. Also getting me out and meeting people and doing things, all of which is good. We’ll see how it goes. Along the way she’ll have to pass 3 AKC certification tests, too, including some things that I am not at all sure about, ie calmly stay with a stranger for three minutes while I leave. So maybe she’ll fail! I guess that would be we’ll fail, since I’m the one responsible for teaching her. But I have no idea how one teaches a thoroughly attached dog how to be okay with being left with a stranger, so… yeah. I repeat, we’ll see how it goes. 

Plans for the rest of today: a trip to the grocery store, some work in my Happiness Coach Certification class, a little more time watching my video class, and tonight, writing with my friend, J. I’m looking forward to the last the most, obviously! I’ve been quite happily doing all my stuff, but there’s a dragon in the back of my head, tapping her foot impatiently, and I don’t want to leave her alone for too much longer. Who knows what kind of trouble she would get into?