1% Better
Belle quite happy with being scratched with the vacuum nozzle.
If worked on your goal and got 1% better every day, you would be 37% better by the end of the year.
I suppose I haven’t formally assessed any of my goals, but I have a sneaking suspicion I’m not 37% better than I was a year ago on most of my goals.
James Clear talks about this in his book Atomic Habits. (Full disclosure - this is an Amazon associates link that I will make a tiny amount from if you choose to purchase via this link) What struck me about this concept is so often we want to be AT our goal and spend most of our time thinking about how we’re not there yet.
It’s so easy to fall into this trap with our pets. We have a dream in mind, the reason we decided to get a pet in the first place - be it doing agility or fancy tricks with the dog, riding peacefully down the wooded trail with the horse, or curled up on the couch with the cat. And somehow the distance between where we are and that dream never seems to change.
Our attempts to reach the goal skip right over the 1% and try to get as close to our goal as possible in one giant step. The result is frustration from the pet and the human.
One of the most profound lessons about this topic I learned from Belle. We we attempting to teach her to accept the grooming vacuum, and in the first session skipped WAY too far over the 1% expectation. Next time I went to practice with the vac, she was having NONE of it. Oops.
So I stepped back to just 1%. What was ONE thing that she could do and find acceptable within the scope of that task? That one thing was learning that the nozzle of the grooming vac felt good! So that’s all we did for that session: she got a really good curry with the nozzle of the vac, without the rest of the vac attached or anywhere near. The next 1% step became attaching just the hose and grooming with the nozzle. Every time we added only 1% she continued to improve steadily and slowly.
Instead of focusing on the end goal the trick becomes how can we only look for the 1% better? What is the next best smallest step possible that we can take with our pets that will get us closer to the goal?
When we focus on the smallest step possible we will achieve that 1% better consistently and with ease. That might be as simple as 5 minutes of training with the dog. Adding in 10 minutes of ground work with the horse. Working on building the cat’s confidence by spending more time together while the cat eats. Whatever it is, before we know it we’ll be doing all sorts of advanced tricks with the dog, strolling along the stream with the horse, and snuggling in the evening with the cat.
Keeping our focus on the small changes we are making on a daily basis instead of comparing ourselves to the end goal allows us to make measurable changes faster, without all of the frustration, bitterness, and angst.
How can you make a 1% improvement towards your goal with your pets on a daily basis?
