“Honor the space between no longer and not yet.” This quote is going up everywhere this week - on the blog, on Facebook and Instagram, on the client newsletter I’ve yet to send out. It’s something I need constant reminding of, that achieving progress is more important that achieving perfection.
I met a goal this week - Charlotte and I have been talking about creating a podcast for ages - so much so that we even started working on one, a chat about goal setting for our own dogs and for clients, way back in January 2020. A goal and resolution-oriented topic seemed appropriate for the new year. What we would have talked about then, had we successfully made and produced it, would have been very different than the podcast we made now, in August (July, at the time) of the same year. The world we lived in back in January seems foreign and distant to today’s life.
We made a point, especially given the meta-application of the topic, of talking not about goals but about setbacks to those goals in our conversation. About how people get overwhelmed with the goals they make, stumble and stop moving forward at all, or hesitate to recognize small progress as the achievement it can be. As we went through the podcast again, cutting out the truly egregious tangents (at one point the question was raised about the difference between a cardigan and a sweater - I don’t remember if we ended up leaving that part in), I realized how very susceptible I am to the latter pitfall. Our conversation was a valuable one, I think. I enjoyed having it and I’m proud of the content we put out. But we stumble in parts, we sound nervous until we hit our stride, the audio is unfiltered and includes dogs playing in the background. It is not yet perfect.
At a different point in my own development, I would have used that as a reason not to release the podcast. At the very least, not to actively announce to my social media world that it existed. Maybe after three or four were out there, maybe after we learned more about audio and editing. Maybe once we sounded more comfortable. I would have continued looking for perfection before daring to mention to the world something I created existed, imperfectly.
My son was like that, when he was little (still is, in more subtle ways). We’d catch him, walking into his room, practicing standing, taking hesitant steps, before noticing us and falling back down - pretending he hadn’t yet been walking. It was only when he could stand confidently that he would practice in front of us, once he knew he could take a few steps on his own.
Perfection, though, is fleeting. It’s not a state we can remain in, and what we one looked at and thought was perfect, as we learn and grow we can see the flaws, see where we have improved over time. Progress is what’s worth celebrated. We no longer procrastinated releasing our first episode of our podcast. It is no longer an idea in our heads, but a real, tangible thing that you can pull off of Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and other platforms I’m probably not aware of (as well as right at the top of this entry!). It is not yet what I hope it to be. But the space I am in now - it’s one worth celebrating, worth sharing with the world.
A few weeks ago, Mouse had her first opportunity to come face to face with her "friend”, Beo. Mouse, as has so often been mentioned here, is dog reactive. As much as she would happily go home with the first family of humans who offered her a piece of their lunch, she has struggled politely interacting with members of her own species. It’s not atypical of the breed, and is something that in many ways I’m grateful for - I wouldn’t be a dog trainer if Mouse had been an easy dog. She has walked with Beo for years, but never been encouraged to interact with him. A few weeks ago, we did that - a short session, with muzzles on for safety, just allowing them to occasionally sniff each other as they passed. She had some body language that was more bully than I would have liked, and we didn’t progress further than casual sniffing. She is not yet where I hope she can be. But she has - we have - come so far.
What "no longer” do you have to celebrate today? Where do your goals go from here? Check out our (in progress) podcast below for more conversation on goal setting and recovering from your setbacks.
