Christoffer Endresen: [00:00:00] And welcome to the Champions Journey. We're now at episode number five, and this episode is going to be a bit different than the previous episodes. In the previous episodes, I've had the pleasure of interviewing different athletes or handlers about their journey. In this episode, I'm actually providing some tools that you can use for your journey in order to hopefully deal with.
Hard times or something that you can use to appreciate your current situation. Because there's one concept that basically all, let's say, lines or categories agree on, and I'm thinking about science, psychology, theology, uh, of course like another word for that is religion, philosophy. Biology, et cetera, and that is gratitude.
If there's [00:01:00] one thing that they agree on, is that gratitude is good for you. And I wanted to express my gratitude to you, the listener, off this podcast because I received so much great feedback, wonderful feedback from people both online and in person about. How well received this podcast has been and the stories they've heard, how that has helped them to gain a different perspective.
I like everyone else, experienced doubt, worry, uncertainty when stepping outside of my comfort zone and launching this podcast was definitely one of those times where I felt all these emotions and thoughts, but the amount of feedback and the type of feedback. Received has just been more than what I expected.
And the worry expectation is a very interesting word as agility handlers, you might unconsciously expect a lot from yourself [00:02:00] or from your dog. And expectations can be a good thing because it raises your standards. Or we can also call it raise the bar. But what happens when you tear the bar, so to speak, or when you or your dog don't reach the bar.
Not only am I outside of my comfort zone, but also are my guests. I reached out to a lot of people for future podcasts, but also for the other podcasts that you have already listened to. I know for sure that every time that I ask someone to join this podcast. I'm pushing them outside of their comfort zone, and I know that that might create some feelings of uncertainty or unpleasant feelings.
Because it's uncomfortable to hear one's own voice, and it might be scary to share their own journey with this audience, and our head will do its best to protect us and [00:03:00] find all kinds of scenario that might happen or what other people might say. And these scenarios that are being projected to us are often negative when I find myself outside of my comfort zone.
And experience stress and uncertainty. Then what I've learned through the years and what I've become better at is shifting my focus towards gratitude. It's important to note that I'm becoming better at it. I'm by no means perfect at it. It doesn't mean that that shift happens in milliseconds at times, it can go days or weeks.
Before I recall that gratitude is a great tool to shift my state of mind, and I really want to share this with you. I wrote about it in the last pages of my book. There was an untouched topic, and I actually want to spend some time talking [00:04:00] about the topic in this episode. One thing that I need to be honest about is that sitting down and writing three to 10 things that I'm grateful for has not been easy for me.
After doing that for a couple of days, what I tend to experience is that I start to run outta things to write, or that I just write something for writing's sake. And to be honest, that has made me feel bad. I certainly know that I am more to be grateful for, but what tend to happen is that I have this inner dialogue that says that what an ungrateful, spoiled person you are, and then this inner dialogue continues.
But then what I've learned, instead of feeling bad for not being grateful or not finding things to be grateful for, I've actually acknowledged that. [00:05:00] That I'm kind of an ungrateful person and that I have a tendency to take things for granted. And I also think that this is very human take things for granted.
So what I've done is that I've changed the question instead of thinking, what am I grateful for? The first question becomes, what do I take for granted? Suddenly when I shift to that question, my brain tends to come with a huge list of things that I take for granted. And I remember the first time I did it, it was like almost everything that I put my eyes on, fell into that category, fell into that list, and then the list was no longer a problem, and then I took it to the next level.
There's a technique, especially from stoic [00:06:00] philosophy called negative visualization. What it means is that if you start with the first question, what do I take for granted? And you start to write things that come to your mind. Then the next step is using negative visualization. That means that you start to picture how your life would look like if you didn't have that thing or that opportunity or that person or dog in your life.
And the purpose of doing that negative visualization is to help you boost gratitude. So I wanted to give you an experience and then we can look at some applications where you can apply this. So we can take something very simple. Let's say, what are the things that we take for granted that could be something so easy as clean tap water?[00:07:00]
How would your life look like if you didn't have clean water? Let's say that the water from the, the sink wasn't clean, it wasn't, wasn't clear, it was more brown. That's not a good experience because then you wouldn't have the same utility of that tap water. We could also take it to the next level, imagining that you didn't have a tap at all.
You didn't have a well that was close by, that you actually had to walk or drive for a long distance just to get water. And amazingly enough, if you're listening to this, there's a high likelihood that you have access to clear drinkable tap water in your house. And there are so many people in this world that don't have that luxury, and visualizing what that would mean, not having that, that helps you [00:08:00] to actually appreciate the thing that's right in front of you.
Because you consider that to be normal for a lot of people in the world, this is not normal. That is luxury. That is magic for some people in this world, and by using negative visualization, you get then to appreciate it, then taking a glass, going to the tap and take some cold, fresh, clean water and drinking it and enjoying it.
It becomes so much more pleasurable, and this can then be applied to a whole bunch of things, right? It could be a car, it could be you listening to this, because imagine if you didn't have internet, that would be horrible. You wouldn't have access to all the resources, the knowledge, the recipes, whatever you wanna use, uh, online courses, et cetera.
In addition to that, for some people that would [00:09:00] greatly impact their work situation because there's a lot of people working from home. So just imagine if internet broke down today, what would happen with civilization, and that will help you to appreciate the opportunities that you have, uh, accessible with your phone, your computer, et cetera.
Just before I started to record this podcast, the electricity in our house just shut down and suddenly a lot of things in the house didn't work. I couldn't record this podcast episode. I was halfway through the podcast episode, and then everything shut down. The lights, the internet, the pc, everything, and I had to start all over again.
But that experience in itself really made me stop and think, wow. I should really appreciate having electricity straight into the house more because it is [00:10:00] truly magical thing. And what you see is that by doing a couple rounds for this, this starts to shift your perspective. You start to see things differently.
One of my favorite quotes is that when you change the way you look at a thing, the thing you look at change, uh, that's from Wayne Dwyer, uh, by the way, so. That was a big philosophical content. Before we start to look more deeper into how this could be applied to agility, my recommendation is that you try to do it.
I don't wouldn't say to say that you have to do this daily, but if you do that as a weekly practice, that will be a game changer. For you, there'll be progress and you can even apply it to a trial setting before, during, and after. So the daily slash weekly exercise could be [00:11:00] something so simple as just asking yourself, what are the things that I take for granted?
And then just let your mind write down all the things that come on a piece of paper. Now take two or three of those things. Then have it on the separate list, and then start with the first one. And imagine how life would look like, how life would be without that thing, or that person, or that situation or that opportunity.
And once you've visualized how life would be without that. Then start to appreciate the fact that you actually have it in your life, and what you will experience is a stronger feeling of gratitude. Once you've done the first one, you continue to the second one. Once that is done, [00:12:00] you continue to the third, you probably use five to 10 minutes on this.
The person coming out of that exercise has a different perspective and a different view and a different state of mind when it comes to trials. You can use this exercise either before or after a trial, but you can watch a video, hopefully you have a video of your run, and then you can ask yourself the question, what are the things that I take for granted?
I see my dog doing in this video or this I to see the things that I do in this video and then write it down. What we tend to do when we watch the video is that our mind is so focused on the things that we're doing wrong or should have done better. If we then change the question to ask ourselves, what are the things that I take for granted?
What are the [00:13:00] skills that we are doing as a team, my dog or myself? And list them down. Now what you could do is using negative visualization and envision that run where you actually imagine that you didn't have those skills or that your dog didn't have those skills. How would that run be different? And what you will see that once you rewatch the run is that you actually start to appreciate the different things that you're doing, the different things that your dog is doing, and list that up as successes.
And of course you should not ignore the things that can be improved, but those should go on a different list. Those are things that you need to practice. Those are things that you need to train, and that is feedback. I. One of the things that I've done, that I've learned is that it's not only to [00:14:00] list down the things that you're grateful for, but also expressing it because there are done several studies showing that a person who is expressing one's gratitude to another person could also be a dog, may find it more meaningful and impactful.
Than writing it down on a list without expressing it. I, I will link in the show notes some of these studies and what I've done in the past, and it's probably one of my favorite exercises, is to write a letter of gratitude. To write a letter of gratitude to different people that had, have had a huge impact in my life.
And I've written this not only to to human beings, but also to dogs that have had a [00:15:00] huge impact in my life. And one of that dog was easy and I would do my best not to get emotional because Easy doesn't live anymore. And I wrote that letter of gratitude, um, after she passed away and appreciating who she was as a dog and rereading that letter of gratitude has a huge impact on me, and I know that probably the hardest thing would with having dogs.
And doing agility is that knowing the fact that most likely we will outlive every dog that we've, we have at the current moment and they mean so much. [00:16:00] And knowing that, and also having experienced that, makes me appreciate the dogs that we have even more. And there's a fantastic quote on this I got from Tony Robbins.
I have no idea where he got it from, um, or how he learned it, but when you replace your expectations with appreciation, your life will change.
And if we as dog trainers, as dog owners. As human beings can practice this, because what we take for granted is just our list of expectations. Things that we expect to show up every single day without putting in the effort. And if we can change those expectations with appreciation [00:17:00] and actually express that appreciation, then that will have a huge impact.
On the people in your life and the dogs in your life, and also how you look at life. And with that in mind, I'm thinking about how my life would look like without dogs, without agility, without my partner, without. The opportunities and travels that we get and the, and the people that we get to meet and the people that I get to talk to, and hopefully an impact that this podcast might have on helping people to build a growth mindset.
Thinking about that, how life would look like without that, that helps me appreciate life as it is right now to a [00:18:00] huge degree. At the same time that I'm appreciating it, I'm also working towards becoming better, becoming more, and expanding. And I wanted to end this episode by thanking you, the listeners who downloaded, who subscribed to this podcast, both on either Spotify, apple, or website or on YouTube.
Thank you. I thank you from the bottom of my heart. I hope that you continue. I hope that this was valuable and I really, really recommend. For you to sit down and do these exercises and just see that shift in your mindset. My name is Christopher Anderson. This is the Champion's Journey, and this was a different episode than what we're used to.
But I hope that it was [00:19:00] worth the listening. I wish you best of luck at your next trial, and then we'll come back with a new episode with no other than Max Sprints next week. And Max also talks about this topic, gratitude, and I think that that is an episode that you will enjoy hopefully more than this one.
Bye.
