Every morning, I have a routine and the first task is to walk my dog. Each morning, Rosie and I head out and every time my walk generates interesting thoughts and ideas as I listen to my playlist, and let Rosie do her thing. One of these walks made me focus on Rosie. One thing I found interesting is that every day I walk Rosie, but sometimes she walks me. While I am focused on completing my walking goal at a certain pace, Rosie is focused on a completely different goal. She wants to stop walking, smell different things, go to the bathroom, or stop and listen to a barking dog. After all, that's what dogs do, right? But here's the point.
I walk the dog, but sometimes the dog walks me.
Does that ever happen to you? Sometimes you are on your way to complete your task and then all of a sudden, something distracts you and prevents you from completing your task or reaching your goal. No matter what we are doing, we all are walking our metaphorical inner dog who has a different plan than we do. The minute we hone in on our goal, our inner dog wants to stop and smell a fire hydrant.
What is our DOG?
Well there are a few things that make up our inner dog that keeps us from reaching our goal. Do any of these apply to you?
Distractions
Have you every been leading a group or class, and some one comes up with a somewhat innocent but highly distracting need or unrelated or unnecessary topic of conversation? Their issue or topic doesn't need you and their problems doesn't need to be solved by you, but you help anyway and when you look up, you've lost 30 minutes of focused work time in order to deal with it. Your dog is walking you toward distractions that take you off your path.
Off-Task Actions
Have you ever gotten on your phone to look for a very important email or file and 15 minutes later find yourself lost on Facebook? Have you ever caught yourself doing a task that really isn't important right now? You just did it because you liked the activity. Distractions are everywhere and they are specifically designed to get our inner dog to walk us off the path of focused productivity.
Grievances
Have you ever watched your dog get so worked up about another dog barking at them? They are never going to meet the dog because a leash and a fence separate them, but nonetheless they bark and yipe at one another anyway and more importantly slow down your walk and pace. That is what negative Facebook complaints and angry people can do to your walk. They can stop you dead in your tracks if you're not careful. Let's get real. You can't prevent grievances, but you can decide that you will not allow their grievances to pull you and your emotions off the path of getting the job done.
Who's Walking Who?
At the end of the day, you and your inner dog are on a walk and on your path there are distractions, off-task actions, and grievances. They are there every morning awaiting Rosie and me. Rosie will always want to stop, but I have the same two choices every single day. I can either walk the DOG and not allow the distractions, off-task activities, or grievances to stop me, or I can choose the easier path of least resistance and let the DOG stop me. The choice is always yours but so are the consequences. I choose to walk the dog. Will you too?
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