I can understand why you may think you’re not ready.

✓ There are always more courses to take.

✓ There are always more exams to pass.

✓ There’s always stuff you don’t yet know.

Having learnt all that it meant I was better able to focus on my client rather than be worrying about what to do next! Worrying whether I was good enough!

 These feelings of insufficiency are crippling and unnecessary!

Why waste so much time when you could be out there doing the thing you love?

Helping others with their problems by showing them how to solve them. Feeling satisfied with your life spending time with the thing you’re passionate about!

Having thought I wasn’t good enough, and harbouring guilty feelings about it, I doubled down on learning.

I put my head down and studied.

“I’ll never actually TEACH anyone,” I said to myself, but I do want to know more …

I can remember, back in the day, when I lived and breathed dog training. ALL the time!

I couldn’t get enough.

I competed at a high level with my dogs, got loads of rosettes, certificates, titles.

I went to every seminar available, I read all the books.

So last week I was talking about the deflation you can feel when you have this fantastic, brilliant, world-changing, idea … and you don’t know how to even start.

Check out the important first and second steps from last week, and jump into your third step here!

Now I don’t know if you’re like me, but when I started out on this path, I thought I could do it alone.

I’d got the qualifications - I worked really hard! - to get high grades so I could feel confident that I knew what I was talking about and like with so many dog training programs, I learnt loads about how to train a dog.

You aren’t stuck! You need to know - and recognise! - that you have choices in life and it’s up to you to take them, so that you can do whatever you want to do, and map out your future with courage and faith.

Isn’t that what we all yearn for? To be able to do what we love, all day long? 

I guess it’s the reason so many people look forward to retirement - so they can leave the hateful or boring day job and enjoy endless gardening, or travelling, or reading, or whatever floats your boat!

I have a confession to make.

I was interested in training dogs for years.

I competed at a high level with my dogs for years.

I even made up a couple of Champions.

Have you ever made something, looked at critically and then said, “Nah, not good enough … I just need to change this, Adjust that … re-do this bit …?

Is that you? 

If so, you can say, “I am a recovering perfectionist!”

Are you looking right now at a list with YARDS of to-do’s?

If that’s you, you’ll be familiar with the sinking feeling you get whenever you look at it! You’ll know what this scrappy bit of paper looks like and you HATE it!

It just seems to grow and grow and get messier and messier and never, never does very much get ticked off.

I was talking to someone recently who told me they had LOADS of ideas. They had even started to work out a plan to get them where they wanted to be but they would start the day all enthusiastic then come down with a crash when they realised they didn’t know what to do!

I am eternally curious. Think of the 4 year old child who drives everyone mad with endless WHYs. whywhywhy, but Mummy WHY? And somehow I never grew out of that! Whywhywhy is a constant cry of mine.

I was talking recently about the need to trust ourselves more we really do know a lot more than we think. We’re a lot further on than we think we may feel stuck and think we know nothing but how true is that? Really? Do you know nothing? have you taken no steps at all to pursue your vocation? 

If you needed money to save a loved one, you’d find it.

If you knew you knew enough, you’d skip the next three years of study and do it later once your plan is happening next time something tries to stop you by saying, “You can’t do this!” say, “I haven’t done it yet, and I’ll never know till I try.”

We mostly have the best of intentions.

We decide this is the moment we’re going to get help Then we forget the appointment. We decide that now is the time to earn money from our idea Then realise that we haven’t any money to invest to get started.

Practice makes Perfect

BUT in fact that’s a nonsense!

If you’re practising the wrong thing, it will be “Practice makes Imperfect”.

If you’re practising badly, it’ll be “Practice makes Worse”.

It’s all to do with what you’re actually DOING, rather than how much you do it!

We grow up being told what to do.

We take it for granted that our elders and betters are - not only elder, but better!

But now you’re all grown up and you can see how little they actually did know!

Doors are clanging and clattering open all the time.

But so often we miss them, because we’re not expecting them, or we’re looking at the wrong door!

Yep - you’re beautiful!

It’s official.

When you were born, did your parents not think you were beautiful?

What about all those oohs and aahs over the pram?