The Impact of Attitude

The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude, to me, is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, the education, the money, than circumstances, than failure, than successes, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness or skill. It will make or break a company...a church...a home. The remarkable thing is we have a choice everyday regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past...we cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude. I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% of how I react to it. And so it is with you... we are in charge of our attitudes.

Opportunities are often disguised as impossible situations. But giving up has never and will never be a solution to impossible. It is taking advantage of impossible situations that make them possible. As we've all been told the road to success is littered with failure, but how we approach and recover from each failure makes or breaks an attempt. To fail and come out of an experience with nothing is a waste of time. For every blunder, kerfuffle, mistake and failure knowledge should be obtained and put to good use. People seem to think making mistakes is a bad thing, and I'm not quite sure why that is bred into our society. We say that making mistakes is okay, but there is a limited number of people who come off the course smiling regardless of a Q. Now I think we've all been in a situation where we were legitimately disappointed by a bad run, and we are all entitled to be upset. It means you care, and if you don't care about the sport then it's easy to be complacent with doing poorly. But something I've learned from my girls over the years is how to be happy with failure. With Jenna it started through her being fairly soft, you cannot say "no" (even quietly) to miss Jenna. She stops working, and she does not accept mistakes well. So as a pretty young kid, around eleven, I had to learn to make mistakes happier. They couldn't be a "bad" thing, it had to be clapping and saying "Woo!!! Okay! Let's try again!!" It wasn't always easy, but it taught me a lot about dog training and placement of proper corrections latter on when I dealt with other dogs. (Please note: corrections are not physical/verbal negatives. Just places where I take the dog back and reassess our attempt at the problem at hand) 

In agility we are all given the opportunity to embark on a journey with many fabulous companions and tackle whichever mountains we choose. If we all traveled one path, we would all be very, very boring people. One of the wonderful things about agility is the amount of diversity between handling, breeds, training styles and individuals we encounter along our own path. But so often I run into people stuck in  quick sand on their paths...they're gasping for air...sometimes literally; when I tell you to breath, I meant it!! Now quite often, this is nerves. But nerves are typically based around fear, particularly the fear of failure. Our little minds start panicking and spitting out the "What if?"s in life.

"What if my dog takes the off course tunnel?"
"What if I don't cue the turn properly?"
"What if an umbrella flies into the ring while I'm running?"
 "What if my dog wanders off chasing a butterfly?"

 All of these things have happened to me, and I lived to tell about it. No matter how bad all of those things seem before a run...in the end agility is still just a game we play with our dogs. That's what Whimzy taught me. We make a lot of weird mistakes, sometimes the same mistakes more than once,  she makes mistakes, I make mistakes. But Whimzy reminds me after every run that life simply goes on. Nerves aren't always easy to conquer, but it is easier to conquer a course with positivity fueling your run. Agility is 10% physical and 90% mental. Success is built around your attitude and what you choose to do with failure. You can cry or make up excuses, but the impact of a "can-do" attitude is what will propel you forward.

I am so proud to say I make mistakes, it means I'm still learning. I cannot wait to see what my girls teach me next :)