Our communication skills are effected by our perspective. When delivering onsite communication seminars or dealing with difficult people workshops and keynote presentations, one of the first things we always discuss is perspective, and how it affects out communication skills and communication success.
So, I live in Guadalajara, Mexico, and I was at our family’s weekend lake place. My mother asked me if I’d like to go to the new malecon they built in the village—to give the dog a good run. In Mexico, malecon is the term given to a concrete walkway, built along a beach.
I told her I didn’t want to because I had just done all the laundry and washed the dog, and we were all so clean–I didn’t want to get the dog dirty. She told me, “Well, don’t walk your dog through the mud! It’s a malecon…that’s why they make them…you can walk down the beach and enjoy the village without going through the mud, you know.”
“No,” I told her, “That dog will find a mud puddle and make a bee-line for it. Trust me.” I have a 1-year old Springer Spaniel who uses Marley and Me as his playbook in life.
She said fine, and didn’t make a big deal about it (which is uncharacteristic of her….).
Later on, as I was packing the car and loading up, Obama (that’s the dog’s name, don’t read into it) decided to join me on the street. I looked over, and there he was.
My mother’s neighborhood has cobblestone streets, and it’s the rainy season, and even though it hadn’t rained in about 24 hours, there was still one mud puddle at the end of the street, and as the universe would have it, Obama went right over to it, ignored my yelling and screaming like a maniac, and lay down right in the middle of it.
Not only was I furious that the previously clean dog was lying like a pig in the mud, but what really got my ego going was the fact that I could see the satisfaction in his eyes, laughing at me as he lay there–beaming with pride, enjoying the most glorious mud puddle god had ever created.
So my mother, of course laughed at me.
Then she threw the hose out into the street, where I hosed Obama down (which to him, of course, was his wonderful reward for finding the mud puddle of destiny), took the clean blanket out of the trunk, placed it in the back seat, put the dog in the car, and got in, fuming.
Then, after I calmed down, while driving down the cobblestone street, I saw the truth in the situation.
I had turned down an opportunity to enjoy a beautiful day walking on the beach with those I love because I was afraid of what eventually happened anyway.
You can look at it from many different ways, and say I manifested it, or whatever, but the bottom line is I lost out. And my dog, bless his heart, was just being a dog, and enjoying day whether I wanted to or not.
So who was I going to be mad at, the dog for being a dog? He’s a dog—that’s what dogs do. From his perspective, it was a great day…he got to roll in a glorious mud puddle, and then play in the water with me. That’s what he knew.
Perspective is everything.
Let dogs be dogs. Don’t get mad at dogs for being dogs. We all have dogs of some sort in our lives—-thing that are there to bring us joy, and then we get frustrated when these things don’t behave in a way that is always convenient to us at the moment.
We curse our blessings.
To my dog, it only takes a mud puddle and a public hose-down to make his day.
Who’s got the right perspective?
Change the way you look at things, and the things you look at really do change. I will never look at a mud puddle again without remembering and feeling the joy my dog got out of it.
Are you overlooking mud puddles of joy in your life?
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