You and I have to give up on perfectionism, if we are going to get through this life feeling accomplished – and love and train our dogs as they deserve. “Done is better than perfect” is a very wise saying. If you think you have to get something perfect in order to feel accomplished, welcome to the club! If you think that there’s no way to achieve perfection, so why even bother, welcome to the club! Now that I’ve welcomed you to the club, I suggest we both get out. Immediately. Let’s get something done instead.
Our dogs are not going to be perfect. Our training methods are not going to be perfect. Every move we make every day is not going to be perfect. Hell, I’d be happy if I could achieve a 1% perfection rate. At least that would mean I was moving past my shame at not being perfect, my guilt at not working harder, and just getting something done!
I have a tendency to let guilt and shame run my life and make my decisions. To be more accurate, they freeze me in my tracks and keep me from doing anything. I’ve started to think about how shame impacts my life with my dogs now, as they become more and more central to who I want to be and where I want to go with my life.
I think that as a dog trainer and dog owner, I have this unreasonable expectation of perfection. Even if I know better than to expect it of myself, I assume others expect it of me. I should not only know how to fix my dogs’ issues but also have already done so. They should be perfect little pups, saving people from drowning in wells and sniffing out danger at every turn, while always being loving and behaving like little angels. But… my dogs are not perfect. I find that I am caught between a rock and a hard place: perfectionism and shame. I want perfection. Perfect dogs. Perfect training sessions. Perfect life. Perfect body. Perfect expressions of creativity. But I know I can’t live up to those expectations, so I feel shame – and that shame can freeze me in my tracks.
Our sweet boy Max is the perfect example of how I need to let go of the expectation of perfection, take action, and just keep working towards our goals. We raised Max from a puppy. He was a naturally shy, sensitive puppy who we did not socialize and train as much as we should have. Perfection: out the window! Instead, he’s a resource guarding fool around other dogs, and he gets his nose bent out of shape at the funniest things.
Max as a puppy
I feel guilty about Max all the damn time. Never mind that he is a generally great dog. Never mind that he has a comfortable, fun life with us. Never mind that we’ve worked hard at management techniques that have led him to be much more secure and trusting. I feel like a failure as a person for not doing a better job of helping him with his fears. We’ve done a lot for him, but it’s never enough. It’s never perfect.
Of course, intellectually, I know that’s ridiculous. I know what I’m doing. I know how to help him and how much I’ve already helped him. If it’s a dog that’s not my dog, I can jump in and start working without a second thought. But it seems like there is so much on the line with my own dogs. Like there’s some extra stake in the game – an increased expectation that I will wave my magical training wand and make him the dog he is not. I think I am too close to be objective and my dogs are too wrapped up in the ridiculous expectations I have for myself. Time to take a step back and get some perspective.
I spent most of the day yesterday reading The Education of Will: A Mutual Memoir of a Woman and Her Dog by Patricia McConnell. If you’ve never read anything by Patricia McConnell, I highly recommend her books and her blog. There’s several listed on my Useful Resources page. They will change the way you connect with your dogs and look at them. Life changing. Seriously.
Her thoughts on guilt, shame, and perfectionism were like holding up a mirror to myself.
Perfection is unattainable – no dog is perfect, and of course, no person is either. Yet, like many, I often fight the belief that I should be free of mistakes, and I suffer from shame when I come up short… We all feel shame about some things in our lives, and most of us bury it as deeply as we can because it is so painful to experience. Getting rid of guilt is difficult (admitting “I did a bad thing”), but getting rid of shame (“I am a bad person”) is even harder. The power that it has over us derives from our tendency to keep it hidden.
I think that hiding the fear of not being perfect, not having the perfect dog, not having the perfect life is how I keep giving power to my shame. I don’t voice it. I don’t acknowledge it. And so it continues to control my life. I know how to set goals in dog training (and my life), break down goals into small, achievable steps, and I know how to track my progress. Doing it now is better than waiting to do it only when I can do it perfectly. That day’s never going to come. Might as well get something done now.
Living with the guilt of not doing something, frozen by the fear caused by perfectionism, shamed at the way I freeze is no way to live. I’m not writing this because I claim to have answers, but because I hope that I can give a voice to something we all might feel to some extent (or at least I hope it’s not just me!). It’s time to break the ice of perfectionism and fear and live the life that we have imagined, train the dogs the way we imagine, take the risks we imagine so that we can meet those goals. Let’s do this!
Your turn: How is perfectionism and fear holding you back from meeting your goals? How are you learning to set that aside to get your life moving in the direction you imagine?