E77: 안드레아 해리슨(Andrea Harrison) - "동기부여, 정신 관리, & 실패 대처법"

Yeah, there are tons of tips, and I think we'll probably cover lots of the more specific tools. But one of the things I encourage people who have that sense of, meh, you know, I just don't know what to do, is to do a really good self-check. And that means thinking about your head, your heart, and your gut, and listening to what those three things tell you. So your head, you're going to look and make sure that you have a plan in place, and that you're trying to actually honor your plan. That you have some goals set that are both process goals and outcome goals, that you're meeting both of those needs. And that you're taking small enough steps to really continue to move forward. We get these big, big goals sometimes, and when we don't see that we're progressing towards them, it's really easy to give up and think, oh, you know, I'm never going to fill in the blank, right? Finish this routine, learn this behavior, whatever it is. So if we can make sure that we're also meeting the small steps, oh, my dog is getting straighter as it comes in, or, you know, doing a better sit, or whatever it is, hitting the contact more often in agility, then we know that our head is in the game, and we actually can help ourselves motivate ourselves to do it right, and to keep going. But we also need to balance that with making sure we're challenging ourselves, because if all we're doing is repetitive things that we already know how to do, we're going to get bored, and we're going to stop doing it. So the head is a really important piece of trying to find this motivation. And then you want to think about your heart. You know, are these the right goals for you? Should you be playing the game you're playing? Is there another game you might enjoy more or be more motivated about? You know, how is your relationship with your dog? Are you feeling that connection and that support? Or is that starting to erode a little bit, and you need to actually stop doing some of the competitive training and work on the relationship goals that you have and you want to have with your dog, right? It's important that we sometimes look back and see how far we've come, and we look forward to see how far we could go. But in those heart-centered moments, you want to stop and make sure that you're in the present, right? What can you be grateful for right now in this moment in time? And that's really hard when we're frustrated and feeling a lack of motivation. But it can really turn our thinking around to consider where our incentive is to keep getting up every day, right?

We talk sometimes in other things beyond dog training about a reason to get up out of bed. And when we're talking about dog training, we have to think of what's the reason we're getting up to train the dog. And if our head and our heart can't find those reasons, you know, talk to your gut and really think about how are you feeling, you know, how can you help yourself and your teammate feel better about it? The gut's sort of the last check on this self-check for when we feel blah, but it's an important piece of it if we can't figure it out through looking at our head or our heart. Probably one of the key reasons so many people struggle with motivation is simply about time, right? Like after a long day at work, they're totally drained, they get home, and it can be really hard not to say, eh, I'll do it tomorrow. I know I've certainly done it. I'm definitely a queen of procrastination some days. So what strategies are there for kind of sticking to your guns, even when maybe all you really want is to go to bed or just sit in front of the TV and just kind of edge out? You know, that's such an important question. And again, it sort of depends on the person, right? Because some of us, we think, okay, I'm going to train the dogs after I've had dinner and instead of watching TV. But if you're sitting on the couch watching TV and that's really rewarding for you, why on earth would you leave it to go train? You might do better to train your dogs in the morning before you leave for work, get up 15 minutes early. Or first thing when you come in the door and they've got tons of energy and are going bananas. Or right before dinner, because then dinner can be the reward for doing your training. You have to look at how you work the best and split what you want, right? Look at your end goal and split it down into tiny, tiny steps. Because if five minutes of training twice a week will get you where you want to go, because say your goal is six months out or three months out, which I more often recommend. But if your goal is three months out, you can start with really little steps for right now and get yourself there. If your goal is you're competing next weekend, you know, I have a number of students who came to me because they wouldn't train at all. Their goal would be to go to the show and do well in 10 days. And they would do nothing for those 10 days. And then they'd be so frustrated because, of course, they hadn't trained and nothing really went right. They'd never actually taught the behavior they expected the dog to show them.

So with those guys, we sit and we talk about direction, intensity and persistence, right? Directions that can you get up off the couch and go and do what you should be doing, right? And intensities, you know, do you do it long enough and hard enough and with a plan? So the weekend warriors can sometimes forget the intensity piece, right? And then persistence is just are you willing to stick with it for the three or four or five months or weeks or whatever it is? And blocks for our motivation can happen anywhere. So when you are feeling those sort of blocks and that lack of time management and that just stress, you know, you can actually start to look back at your record keeping or start keeping records if you haven't. Check a video from six months ago. See your progress. You probably aren't doing as badly as you thought you were in the first place, right? So sometimes that recognition itself can be a little bit motivating. So what about those inevitable times when things just don't go according to plan? So, you know, maybe you're training and something goes wrong or, you know, kind of what have you. We've all been there. How can folks avoid letting that kind of send them into a rut or lead to them abandoning their plan entirely and spending a lot of time kind of living in a place of negative self-talk and beating themselves up about it? I can show you a hundred articles that tell us, you know, 18 types of negative self-talk, 32 types of negative self-talk. If you're feeling that way, acknowledge it, admit it, but don't get hung up on it. The more you think about, oh gosh, what kind of negative self-talk is it and how can I beat it? Sometimes it can become a bit of a self-fulfilling thing. So when you feel yourself beating yourself up needlessly, you know, acknowledge it, admit it, and then start thinking again about your motivation. Because this is one of the real roots of sometimes negative self-talk. Is your motivation intrinsic? Is it something you're doing for yourself and your dog? Is it extrinsic or external? Is it something you're doing for somebody else like, you know, your coach or your partner who's giving you all this money for dog sports or whatever? Or is it affiliative in nature? And it's actually about making relationships, right? It's that social aspect of motivation where we're doing it for the relationship with our dog club or, you know, the judges group if we're a judge or whatever it is. And so to acknowledge your negative self-talk is fine and an important step, but then focus on the positive.

Focus on figuring out why you're doing what you're doing, why you're starting to feel negative, and how you can address it head on. You know, again, planning. And sometimes planning a break can be a really good way to beat this negative thinking. Okay, you know what? I'm in a really bad headspace and I'm not going to train for two or three days or a week. Our dogs won't roll over and die if we don't train them for a few days. And most of our dogs actually can benefit from a gap. We certainly can as learners. And there's some good evidence that they can too. So it's quite all right when you're getting yourself into one of those negative things. Look to your outer circle and find some positive things. Again, look back at the video of you doing well. Go and look at your ribbon wall. You know, I talk about setting up an inspiration or confidence corner of some sort so that you have somewhere where you can go and literally touch the things that are good that help you stay grounded in this game. So when you're finding that that happens, that can be really, really helpful. What about like in the actual moment? So someone is in the middle of training session with their dog and something goes, let's not say wrong necessarily, but definitely not according to plan. That never happens, does it? I don't know what you're talking about. Don't we wish? I think it happened today actually to me, but that's a whole separate story. I think you want to make sure that you can see the whole picture. So many of us work from a place where we're either looking at the big picture more or the little tiny details more. And I can't predict what kind of view you take or any individual takes of their training unless I'm talking to them. But if you are a detail oriented person and things are going wrong, stop, take a breath, right? Do one of the grounding exercises, breathe in, breathe out, do count breathing, right? One, two, three in, one, two, three, four out. Whatever it takes, just focus and then think about the big picture. Okay, so the tux out isn't perfect right now. The finish isn't perfect right now. Why am I doing this big picture thing? I'm doing this big picture thing in order to, there's little steps in order to get the big picture of putting together a show, right? Or whatever it is. So you need to be really careful that you give yourself credit for what kind of skills you're best at and then how you break that down into what you need. So if you've got the little details at hand, think big picture. If you can see the big picture, you know you want a podium at nationals in three months,

make sure you're putting the little pieces into play. Often when we struggle with what's happening in the moment, it's because we're getting hung up on either small details or big picture and we're forgetting that balance. And balance is really what it's about. We have to have that sense of balance in order for us to be able to move forward. Does it matter at all if the mistake was truly a mistake? For example, say the person dropped the leash and their dog decided to go for a very unplanned swim in a nearby lake. Or if it's something, you know, maybe where the team just didn't make as much progress as the person wanted to in that training session and they're feeling a little disappointed. For some of us, it does make a big difference, right? And that goes back to that whole affiliative, intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. If you're walking with your friends in the park and your dog takes off and runs in the lake without permission, some people will be devastated by that, right? They'll be really upset because they're looking for external validation, right? Or maybe they feel like it's a great internal failure. But if friends being with them makes it worse, it's usually because of affiliative or extrinsic values. And if, you know, it slides off in another direction, that can be a really internal thing. It's going to depend. So it's a tough question for me to answer because the tools that you need to use are not the same tools that I need to use. So recognizing sort of which failure, and you know me, so you know that failure is in big air quotes, what that learning information from the error, right? What that information gives us will help us address how to best deal with it and how to move forward. So if for you, a dog going for an unexpected swim in the leash is a terrible ordeal, or somebody only being able to heal for six seconds is a terrible ordeal, right? Whatever the trauma is for you, rake it on terms of how traumatic it is and then take measures to address it, right? In the bottom line, we're all human. We are all going to make mistakes. I don't know how to tell anybody that they are going to be perfect because we are human and we are not perfect. And every trainer, every trainer, I really mean this, I can't tell you, every single trainer has a moment where they think, oh, I wish I'd handled that differently, right? And that's okay. It's all right to be human. We can't change the fact we're human. So we want to make sure that we understand where our own stress and distress comes from and that we take steps to address it. Obviously, achieving goals is super important and a big part of what you do,

but I know another kind of big topic for you is this idea of self-care. So I wanted to ask what some ways are that people can try and make sure they're working self-care into, you know, kind of their regular routine, whether that's daily or weekly or kind of what have you. You know, self-care is a really good and big topic. It's something I talk about all the time. And I think it's really important to remember, you know, that if I tell you that self-help works if you do this and it doesn't work for you, don't feel badly because it's the same tools are not going to work in the same ways for all people, right? My self-help rant in a nutshell. But some of the things that people find, and I like to talk about free self-care because lots of people tell you all kinds of ways to spend money on yourself. And honestly, in my experience, most people feel better if they spend money on themselves. Interestingly enough, even if it's money they don't have. So I really focus on sort of free self-care and how to make it work for you. One of the biggest things people can do is use the natural world. So there's actually studies done that show that if you take your shoes off and touch the earth with bare feet, or if you put your hand up and touch a tree or any of that kind of thing, but it actually, your brain starts to look happier in scanning. I'm not going to get into all the science of it, but it helps calm us and ground us and our brain looks prettier on scans. So the natural world is obviously pretty important to people generally, and especially to dog and horse people, I find it's really important because we already have an affinity for natural beings, other beings beyond being human, right? So take your time and enjoy the natural world. Maybe consider unplugging from social media or from all electronics for a little while, that even 10 minutes of just peace can be a big deal. Exercise, use music, dance if it works for you, or be really still and just listen and be thoughtful. Again, right, these things vary so much for the individual, but test them all because you're not going to know what works for you unless you've tested it. So for some people, self-help is being creative, coloring, knitting, crocheting, whatever you do. I'm not saying go and find a new hobby, although if you want to, that's fine, and that can be effective too. But if you've had something you love doing and you found it a good release, do it. Sitting in front of a television on a couch is not good self-care. It's good escapism, and there's a place for escapism for sure. But if you want to take your TV time and get an element of self-care in it,

think about doing a Sudoku for your brain or coloring the picture or doing a needle point, you know, whatever works for you. But you can take those dead times we have in the day and add a little element of self-care to it. So another example would be, you know, listening to inspirational speeches in the car on the way to work instead of listening to the local news, right? One of the things I've been exploring lately for some of my students is scent. So if you are sensitive to scent, a little drop of a sensual oil or a little rock that's impregnated with some scent in a little empty pill bottle, you know, lavender is really good for peace and calm and easing anxiety and panic. Lemon is a really good way to concentrate. Rosemary is really good to help your mind remember things, right? Cinnamon and peppermint are two other scents that students have found very effective at tying back to things that help them relax and enjoy. I don't think of scent as a self-care thing for me, but for somebody else, it could be really effective. So I would never rule out that tool if that makes sense. Sleep. You know, I talk about sleep, I think every time we talk. Sleep is like the heartbeat of how our brain learns new information. We have to sleep to lay down those new neural pathways. So when you want to take good care of yourself, make sure you're addressing your sleep needs. Whether that means going back to bed for half an hour after your dog gets you up early, oh wait, maybe that's just me, or whether that's going to bed an hour early because you can't, right? Like whatever it is for you, make sure that you're filling those sleep needs and that can be a really, really effective way to start self-care fast, right? Even if it's just lying in a quiet, dark room. That's as effective for everything except your brain does the same effect on your organs as actually being asleep. Sleep is restorative and resting quietly in the dark is restorative. So take advantage of it. Laughter. I mean, we just chuckled, right? Laughter is such an important self-help tool and it's one that's really easy to forget. We get so busy in our world training our dogs and making the money to go to shows and doing the things and worrying about the car and the stress just builds and builds and builds and builds and builds. That we can go days without laughing and days without laughing is not good for any of us. So, you know, if that's pulling up a Monty Python clip, going to comedy, spending time playing with kids or watching some young animal video on Facebook, it doesn't matter what it is. But if you can find a way to laugh and chuckle,

that is going to actually help you with self-care. I can't talk about self-care without mentioning gratitude practice, right? Whatever that means for you, gratitude is demonstrably good for us. It's good for our head, our heart, and our gut. It actually has measurable impacts on all of our well-being in every way possible. So, if you want to practice self-care, you know, make sure that you've got a little bit of time somewhere, whether it's through formal journaling or just grabbing a moment when you feel blue and thinking, oh, wait, I'm feeling blue. What can I be grateful for? I mean, there are tons of different ways to practice gratitude and I've talked about it quite a lot. So, that's probably enough for now. But, you know, positive self-talk. If you are feeling rotten, if you're getting hung up on negative self-talk, positive self-talk can be really, really good self-care. You know, I was kind of wondering how you define self-care because I was thinking about it and thinking it's kind of like reinforcement in dogs, right? Where what's reinforcing is really dependent on the dog. And so, it seems like you've talked about quite a few different forms of self-care. You know, how do you define it? And it's not all exactly the same for every person, right? It's not the same thing for everybody. And what self-care means to me for everyone is feeling better about themselves after they practice it. So, it doesn't matter what you do. If the result of what you are doing makes you feel better, I'm going to call it self-care. But if that definition doesn't work for you, I'm okay with that. My self-help, right? Right? The definition has to work for you. So, if you think, well, self-care must be this very measured thing, I'm okay with that. You go ahead and self-care yourself that way because at the end of the day, you're likely to meet my definition where you feel better about yourself. So, like, for example, one of my students, fabulous student, decided with my help that she needed a self-care program. She needed to set aside 10 minutes a day that was just for her because of where she could do it, which was her workplace and the tools she had at her disposal. She decided that for her watching 10 minutes of a TED Talk once a day was going to be her self-care. And it caught on at work like her boss saw her and said, what are you doing on your break? And she explained what she was doing and her boss said, great, I'm going to do it too. And so now at this workplace, they've got a little self-care program running that's all because of one student who said, hey, I need to start taking care of myself. So for her, that worked really, really well. Would I say watching YouTube is necessarily

great self-care for everybody? Probably not. But for her and what she needed and where she was, it worked beautifully. So for her, that's self-care, right? For other people, TED Talk might be educational, might be important, but they're not going to feel better about themselves at the end of it. So therefore, it's simply educational, right? Whereas going and hugging a tree for 30 seconds is their self-care and that's what they need. If it doesn't work for you, it's not going to be self-care. I think that's the really big takeaway for this. If it is working for you, then we can call it self-care. If it isn't working for you, let's not call it self-care. Let's say, hey, that was a tool to test. It didn't work. Let's find something else. What about, I guess it's a little bit of a change of subject, but kind of for somebody who is really goal-oriented and maybe motivation is not necessarily what they struggle with, but they find instead that they're so competitive that they're unintentionally kind of pressuring their dog. You know, what kind of mental management techniques might be useful for somebody like that? People pressure their dogs? Really? Yeah, of course people pressure their dogs, right? Because we're putting pressure on ourselves and you know, that leash, it's a two-way communication tool, whether it's an actual leash or a virtual leash. And for sure, when we put pressure on ourselves, we're putting pressure on our dogs. So I would say to a whole lot of those people, hey, what's your self-care practice like? Do you have a way to let off steam that doesn't involve dog training, right? And for them, often getting physical outside of dog sports is a good way to relieve some of that pressure, find a valve to let off a bit. One thing I'm always going to say to you, if you say to me, yeah, I put a lot of pressure on myself or my dog or and my dog, I will say to you, for every negative thing you identify in a training session or a show, you must tell me two good things. For some people, I'm going to say you must tell me three good things because what I call that two for one really makes you focus on the good because if you are not that it stops you being self-critical, but if you are self-critical, you know sort of the, I guess it's sort of punishment based, but the consequence for that is going to be to have to come up with two good things, right? So if you find it hard, you are going to stop being quite so critical of yourself because you don't want to have to look for those good things. And if you think it's great and you are picking yourself apart, then it's just a nice reminder to find something good. And it's funny, eh? We talk about rewarding our dogs all the time and we forget that

we can both reward and punish ourselves as well. And it's not a terrible punishment to have to come up with something good that you've done in a video or a training session, right? Or at a show. It shouldn't be a terrible punishment for anybody. But some people certainly would prefer not to have to do it so they will settle down being quite so self-critical. And that's kind of neat to me, right? It's an interesting sort of reverse way to use rewards. You're going to reward yourself by finding something good. Oh, I don't want to. Too bad. That's your homework. As well, people need to stop and think. They need to recognize that they are putting that pressure on themselves and give themselves a little bit of space to get out of it. So one of the breathing exercises that can work well for that is the I am breathing where you breathe in and you think I am and then you breathe out and you think whatever the word is. So I am relaxed. I am doing well. I am calm. Whatever sort of the state is you want to be in. And for people who have a lot of pressure on themselves and are being really negative, I am a good dog trainer works really well or we are a good team works really well too. I have got a student using that now and she is finding it really effective to just be a little bit of a pressure valve because when you have that pressure building up you need to let off a little bit of that pressure and that can make a really big important difference to the way that you are thinking about the training session or the show that has happened. So what about somebody who instead their struggle is ring nerves? Yeah, we don't talk about ring nerves ever here at FDSA. I do ring nerves probably more than anything else because and the reason for that is we are all we all put pressure on ourselves but we don't all realize it. We all realize we're nervous because being nervous makes us feel edgy or unwell. So we have this sense when we're nervous that we aren't going to be successful. I mean that's what nerves are, right? The ultimate flight or fight response. So when you are nervous you go right back to that head hurt and gut thing. Where do you feel your nerves? And then you can also look at the social emotional and physical impact those nerves are having on you. It's sort of a six-pronged approach to figuring out where the nerves are because if you just tell me you're nervous and you can't say I get so nervous that my palms are sweaty and I can't think straight and I don't want to be around my friends, right? Which hits on all of them and most people don't do it quite like that. But if that happens to you and you have all of them then we have to come up with a tool for every single element of what's happening

instead of just saying you know if you do this breathing exercise at the in-gate you will be fine, right? And that's what takes me right back to my self-help rant too because if somebody says you will not be nervous if you do this and you do whatever it is they say and then you still feel nervous you feel like you're some kind of failure and you aren't a failure you're just being a human being and you're just expressing your nerves your own way so if you are nervous you want to make sure that you acknowledge it and this is one of the things I really don't like about what I do some days because I have to make people feel a little bit uncomfortable when we're nervous we want to stick our heads in the sand pretend we're not nervous fake it till we make it re-characterize our nerves as excitement and all of those things can work and they can all be good tools but if you really want to break down where those nerves are coming from and what we can do about them long term often we need to look at them closely enough that it makes us even more uncomfortable so we actually have to set ourselves up to feel nervous somewhere so we can think about you know do we get that churning stomach and have to go to the bathroom multiple times a day again totally normal response people aren't comfortable talking about it and don't want to talk about it because they think they're different or unusual you're not the body's I mean absolute biological response to fear and stress is to need to go to the bathroom like it's just it's a given right biologically it makes sense but if you haven't thought of that and you don't know that and you don't even realize it's happening then it can make us more nervous and more anxious and more upset and it becomes more of a self-fulfilling cycle so you know nerves are a tricky one because your nerves are going to be different than my nerves my nerves are going to be different than another instructor's nerves or another student's nerves but similar tools can help with the head the heart the gut the social the emotional and the physical reality of the nerves that we're dealing with so for all the folks who are listening to this and thinking hmm I think I need to do some work on that or I'd really like to learn more about some of those things what do you have coming up in the near future classes webinars what's on the schedule yeah so coming up in October I've got one of my newer classes called No More Excuses which is motivation and planning predominantly people use it to work through really bad cases of nerves if all in your head hasn't been enough or whatever but they also use it as a tool to peak performance for a national event or to figure out a training plan for a new puppy

or to figure out why they are no longer interested in training right and it's a great class I really will be my third time teaching it I really love it we've gotten some really exciting work done in it and then in the following term so December 1st I'm pretty sure it's handle this that's on the schedule which is really my ultimate nerve course coming up although we look at other stuff too like why we can't memorize a course what we tend to do in that class is look at all the different symptoms of nerves and then break them down for people so that's a pretty cool class too then in the end of October I think October 25th it's on the calendar I've got a webinar called Empower Your Team and that's about again a little bit funny all the stuff is on a theme about how to be the best team you can right working with the team you have to make good choices in training competing scheduling motivating yourself using your plan using your record keeping all of those kinds of things how you can be the best team you can in the circumstances so one of the things that came up when I was talking about doing it was a spouse who isn't too happy about the money that's being spent on dog sports they don't mind the time but they mind the money so that's the kind of thing that I suspect is going to come up and sort of how to manage all the different stresses of being a dog sport person with grace and dignity so I'm looking forward to it and then I also have a really exciting thing I'm not quite ready to talk about but I'm hoping it'll be announced in the next two or three weeks so I'm really excited and really looking forward to sharing that with everybody well I'm sure everybody will have to just stay tuned and pay attention and I look forward to hearing more about it oh you'll hear all about it my last question for everyone these days what's something you've learned or been reminded of recently when it comes to dog training yeah so for sure for me it's that every dog is different every dog is unique and this came to me because my neighbor's little mini horse has been escaping their property and coming over here and our five dogs have all reacted very differently to him I know yeah he's really really cute if you see me on Instagram I've got pictures of him all over the place because he's adorable but he doesn't belong here and my dogs know he doesn't belong here and they all insist on telling me and it's so been so interesting to watch them figure out how to tell me so I had to go back to some pretty strong recall training not strong like aggressive but consistent reinforced recall training because they all had fits when the strange horse shows up on my front lawn they're all responding to the training a little bit differently and they're all reacting now to

the mini a little bit differently so Sally the old border collie mix she makes the biggest racket in the world because she knows I'm going to recall her and she's got a fabulous recall always has so she's like hey this is great excuse bring it on pony the terrier looks at the pony and comes running to me because she knows there's going to be reinforcement in there I can't even say her name fast enough for her to be at my feet saying haha there's the mini give me the trait so they're all reacting so so differently and it's been a really nice reminder for me in the last two weeks every dog is different and deserves that same respect and to be treated for who they are as we do right like the sort of heart of what I do is that we're all unique and we all have to build our own toolbox myself help rant speaks to that same deal with our dogs don't forget the dogs are all individuals so whatever each dog teaches you will teach you something for the next dog but that doesn't change the fact that that individual dog is unique and different and has its own needs so I would say that's that's a really neat question I think about that but yeah that that would be my big latest epiphany or reminder for sure I like that thank you so much for coming back on the podcast Andrea this has been great I always enjoy chatting Melissa very much and I appreciate all you do for the podcast and the students at FDSA it's a fabulous place to get to hang out so I'm grateful and grateful for you so oh thank you and thank you to all of our listeners for tuning in we'll be back next week this time with Julie Flannery to talk about healing like a freestyler if you haven't already subscribe to our podcast in iTunes or the podcast app of your choice have our next episode automatically downloaded to your phone as soon as it becomes available today's show is brought to you by the Fenzie Dog Sports Academy special thanks to Denise Fenzie for supporting this podcast music provided royalty free by benson.com the track featured here is called buddy audio editing provided by Chris Lang thanks again for tuning in and happy training yeah