Processing Speed

Our world is moving ever faster and faster, but somehow that does not change the speed at which actual beings can process things.

The theme of slowing down has come up a lot recently (Tasha Lockey and I actually did an episode in our podcast about it, you can find it here) and I’ve been examining the concept from a lot of different angels.

The biggest thing that I have noticed is that it doesn’t really matter how fast our world moves, we are still only capable of going at the speed that we can handle (and that will actually shift and change from day to day). Our pets are no different.

And that speed is much slower than most of us want to admit.

Somehow our culture has made it shameful to be seen as “slow.” This shows up in everything from how much you can accomplish in any given day or moment, or how smart you are. But what the animals are teaching me is that when we slow down, everything actually speeds up.

Here’s the thing - when we are able to slow down and be present we can actually take in all the details around us, feel whatever is happening, and then move onward. So much of the ‘busy’ culture is built around avoiding how we feel. If we’re able to feel what we need to feel, then take action from there, it cuts out the time needed to reprocess something that wasn’t dealt with from the beginning.

I’ve been following a number of pets and their owners using the Fluent Pet buttons. In watching dozens and dozens of these videos when they pop up in my Instagram feed the thing that I noticed is the amount of time it takes a pet to push a button after they are prompted, or even move from one button to the next. As is expected, some of them (here’s looking at you Bastian!) are quick to jump between buttons and often appear to frantically smack the buttons. That’s not surprising for a terrier’s personality. But even with the hyperactive behavior that comes with a terrier attitude, there are still often long pauses between buttons when he appears to be ‘thinking.’

In the past I have found myself repeating requests of my pets quickly. “Sit! Sit down! I said SIT!”

But what if I were to give my pets more space to process the request? What if my pet is thinking about what I asked and isn’t actually ignoring me? They’re simply doing what their brain needs to do in order to decide to comply (or not) with my request? That means it’s not very fair of me to keep repeating myself, when they heard me the first time and are preparing themselves to make the decision.

I’m sure the last time someone rushed you through a decision you didn’t appreciate it much, and I am positive our pets are no different (thankfully their patience lasts a lot longer than ours does!).

I expect much of the time they simply chalk it up to us humans just not getting it, yet again.

So here’s a suggestion: The next time you ask anything of your pet, take a little more time. Once you know that they are aware of you, ask them once and then wait to see what happens. Give them more time and space to process the request and just see. There’s a 90% chance that you request isn’t life threateningly urgent, so if they take five seconds to sit down instead of .5, it won’t really make a difference. Take a breath, instead (I know I could certainly use more deep breaths in my day, I’m sure you could, too!).

And the next time you prepare to rush into responding to someone, hurrying off to the next task, or continuing with the frantic energy, see if you can take a deep breath and pause for a moment, just to be present, and see what happens. I have a feeling everything will get accomplished in it’s own time, and you’ll feel better on the way there.