When April Shprintz trained her dog Cowboy on how not to be afraid of trash bags, she realized how to deal with our deepest fears. She offers an important holiday lesson that can help you step into the Thanksgiving Week with a more powerful version of yourself.
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A Special Holiday Lesson From Cowboy
A Mindset Lesson From Cowboy
I am so glad you’re here. If you’re reading from the United States, this week is Thanksgiving week. At some point, you will be sitting around a table with people that, hopefully, you love and like, or maybe you’re there because you’re there, but you will be thinking about the things that you’re thankful and grateful for. If you’re anywhere else in the world, I hope that sitting around a table with people you care about and thinking of all that you’re grateful for is something that you do regularly because it is a wonderful experience that will change your life day-to-day.
This week, when I am sitting around a table with people who mean the world to me, one of the things and/or people and/or beings that I am going to be the most grateful for, and I always am, is my little guy, Cowboy. He’s an eight-pound Shih Tzu. You guys have heard of him. He teaches me mindset lessons all the time, and he reminded me of one.
One of the things I learned when I went to training with him was how to help him overcome fears. It’s interesting because it’s such a great metaphor, or process even, for exactly what we should do. I was taking out the trash and putting in a new trash bag. This little guy was right by my foot. Do you know how you shake the bag and it’s loud? He jumped back. I was like, “Gosh.”
I didn’t want him to be afraid of trash bags, so I went to him. I had some treats in my hand. We were training. I would shake the bag and give him a treat, and then I would lay it on the ground. I would get him to walk on the bag and give him a treat. All of a sudden, he’s no longer afraid of the bag anymore. He has been around it. He has gotten good things when that loud noise happens. He has seen that he can walk on it, and nothing bad happens to him.
99% of the things we were afraid of never happened. We can show ourselves how much we are capable of by running towards those fears. Share on XWe did a tiny little bit of aversion therapy, if you want to call it something like that, or you can think about the fact that the thing that he was afraid of, I helped him walk towards it. I helped him experience it instead of avoiding it. By doing that, he has one less fear. That little guy is pretty fearless. We do this all the time if there’s something he’s afraid of.
Go Towards The Things You Are Afraid Of
How powerful would it be if we committed to doing that for ourselves? Go towards the thing that scares you. Do what makes you afraid so that you know that there’s nothing at all that you have to be afraid of. I recommend this for a few reasons. Number one, I have done this my entire life. I have gone towards things I was afraid of. What I didn’t want was to ever be limited because I was scared. That seemed like such a waste, especially when 99% of the things we’re afraid of never happen. We can show ourselves how much we’re capable of by running towards those fears.
Another reason is how could I help other people work on their fears if I’m not working on mine? I’ve got to walk the walk. The last reason is that everything I want in life is usually right across the line from that fear. There’s a quote that says, “Everything you want is on the other side of fear.” In my experience, that has been so incredibly true.
Sometimes, I have let fear stop me, stall me, or slow me down because I didn’t trust that it wouldn’t be this big, scary thing, but never once in my entire life has what I feared been as bad in the experience of it as when I was thinking about what it might be like. I know I’ve said this to you before, but this is true when I was fired on in the Military when I was in Kosovo. This is true when I jumped out of an airplane from 18,000 feet. This was true when I spoke on the largest stages to the biggest audiences. It was never as scary to do it as it was to think about it.
What I’d love you to do this week, while you’re making sure to be grateful and thankful for all the things that are wonderful in your life, is think of one thing. Think of one fear you can step into this week to make yourself more powerful. Who wouldn’t want to be the most powerful version of themselves? Here’s to your success.
