Ep 89: Mindset Thoughts
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[00:00:00] If you train, compete, teach, or simply love the sport of dog agility, you're in the right place. Hey there, I'm Megan Foster, creator of Fostering Excellence and Agility. Join me as we explore training, communication, handling, mindset, and all the little details that help build stronger and more confident teams both in and out of the ring.
Whether you're just getting started or working toward big competition goals, this podcast is here to support your journey with your individual teammate. Let's get started
Hey there. Welcome back to the podcast. This is episode 89, and I have some thoughts on mindset for dog agility. I am gearing up for November in my coaching program, and we are focusing on mindset in our training challenge. And so all of this is just in the front of my [00:01:00] brain as I create lessons and build on the lessons that are already available on mindset.
And I wanted to share some things that still stand out for me over 25 years into this sport, and also over 10 years of studying mindset and mental mastery. I do not claim to be an expert on mindset skills, but I have been training and competing in agility for a really long time, and I've been coached by an expert for over a decade.
So I do have valuable insight that I'm ready to share with you all
The first thing that was really valuable to me, and what I find valuable with clients, is to take a moment to own your [00:02:00] competitiveness and decide what your values are. So this is just a deep dive into how you talk about competition, how you feel about competition, how you respond when you do well or do poorly in competition, and really having a sit-down with yourself about what your values are as a dog guardian, as a dog trainer, as a competitor, and also as a model of behavior to the people around you.
Whether we want that responsibility or not, we have it, and modeling behavior for others is part of being in a community such as the one we are a part of in dog agility. So values guide the choices you [00:03:00] make during training and competition. They guide your responses to your behavior, your dog's behavior, the judge's behavior, your fellow competitors' behavior, and it allows you to draw lines in the sand of what you are willing to do and what you're not willing to do.
And when I'm teaching this to other people, I have them think about competitors that they really enjoy watching. So who do you enjoy watching interact with their dog? Who do you enjoy watching interact with other competitors? Who do you enjoy being around and interacting with yourself?
It's likely that they have the traits of the competitor that you might also like to be. So again, that modeling of behavior is important because you are seeing behavior modeled all the time, and you are modeling behavior for others [00:04:00] all of the time. So just kind of really thinking about the behavior that you want to be modeling and understanding what kind of competitor that you want to be, and just owning that you do want to be a competitor.
If you are entering trials, you want to be a competitor to some degree. And so really owning that and understanding that is a super first step in mastering your mindset.
The second most kind of valuable thing that we can do is to learn to look for evidence. I am not a soft and fluffy kind of person, and my mindset training is never meant to be soft and fluffy either. But let's be real. We can all be nicer to ourselves. So [00:05:00] often the story that we are telling ourselves about our handling, about our dog, about our teamwork, about our cue rate, about our performance might not actually be true.
And so learning to look for evidence to either confirm or deny the story you are s- telling yourself is so valuable to your mindset Because I, I would wager that if you listen to some of the stories that you have about yourself, you would never say that about someone else. And those are the ones that we really need to dig into because they are very unlikely to be serving us, and so we need to make sure that we're not just beating ourselves up when there's evidence that doesn't...
that supports a completely different [00:06:00] story, one that does serve us. So the foundations of this are getting into the habit of looking for positives. Again, this is not to be soft and fluffy. This is to rewire your brain that is very likely focused on the negative. So any time you train or compete, you need to get into the habit of saying out loud, and even better, writing them down, three positive things.
If this is brand new to you, it may be really difficult to say something positive about yourself. Start with three positives about your dog and work towards giving at least one of those positives to something that you did, right? A decision that you made that had a positive impact and turned out to be a good thing that happened during that training session, during that run.
When the positives start becoming easier for you, [00:07:00] then you are allowed to be the analytical control freak dog trainer that I know you are and start thinking a little bit farther past what went well. You can then start to talk about, "Next time I will..." The next time I will helps you to reframe a mistake into doing it correctly the way you know how.
When we make mistakes like this when we absolutely know how to do it correctly, that is just gasoline to pour on the fire that we are beating ourselves up with. I kinda mixed those analogies there, but I think you understand what I'm saying But if we get into the habit of reframing the mistake, next time I will connect with my dog out of the tunnel.
Next time I will support that [00:08:00] backside until I see her commit. Next time I will finish my rotation before she takes off. Then when you think about that mistake, if you are thinking about how you will do it differently next time, you are actually rehearsing it correctly in your mind, which is building more reinforcement, more money in the bank for doing it correctly.
Then when you get really good at that, you can also make a list of things that you're looking for a solution to
These are the things that you want to bring back to your coach, bring back to your training community, bring back to the drawing board to talk about, "Okay, this is a problem. It's a consistent problem. I need to fix it, and I need to figure out how to fix it." This puts your evidence gathering completely in a growth [00:09:00] mindset direction rather than continuing to tell a story about your lack of progress or your lack of ability to do something.
You have control over what you pay attention to, and what you pay attention to you get more of. I really encourage students to make strength lists and highlight reels so that they can see on paper, see on video, the evidence of the story that we're trying to tell ourselves
The third big thing that I think about in mindset is about goals. The first thing that I encourage students to do, because it was absolutely game-changing for me, is to separate my goal as a dog trainer, as an agility handler, as an agility [00:10:00] competitor from the goals that I have with the actual dog that I'm competing with.
This is because the dog owes me absolutely nothing. I am their caregiver, and I want them to play this game with me. This is directly tied to my values, so this is important when you're goal setting to have those values really worked out, and you feel good about those values because your goals and how you achieve your goals will be based on those values.
So I understand that my dog owes me nothing, and that it is not their job to meet that goal with me. That is not something I can control. If I have a goal of achieving some title or qualifying for an event or making a final or winning that final or winning the world [00:11:00] championships, I cannot control if it happens with that dog, and it really becomes too much pressure when we do assume it has to happen with that specific dog So I set the goal for myself that I would like to have for the longevity of my agility career, because I...
hopefully it is longer. So far, so that is the case, that my agility career is much longer than any one career of the dog that I have. So isn't that great that I have been able to have multiple dogs to help me along the way to that big goal? This is probably why I've been in this sport for over 25 years, and it still has not lost its appeal to me, because I'm still on the conveyor belt.
I'm still working within my [00:12:00] system towards the goal that I want. And so when you set the goal for yourself, now you can build a system, build a way of life, a way of training, a way of competing that pushes you in the direction of that goal. And then you fit the dog within that system. You fit the dog into the system, and this means that you have a bit more flexibility on meeting the dog where they're at, and having just a little less pressure of they need to be doing X by this time, they need to be doing Y by this time, they need to be able to enter that event by the time they're this age.
It allows us to focus on keeping the dog going at their pace and doing things on their timeline, but nothing is wasted. Everything you do with [00:13:00] any dog that you're working with is a part of your system, is a part of what's bringing you closer to your goal
Finally, the last thing that has made a huge difference in the way that I train and the way that I compete, and just how much I can enjoy competition, is the ability to focus on what I can control. Remember, I can control my reactions, my behavior, my training, my handling, and all the choices that I make around training, competing.
This includes where and when I train, what I train, where and when I compete, what surfaces, what judges, what locations, how much travel time I allow myself. Every decision I make I have control over, [00:14:00] and this allows me to understand my power and my responsibility in my partnership versus focusing on things that I can't control: the weather, uh, the, whatever the judge decided to call, right?
Sometimes we can't control the surface. We enter the competition expecting it to be one thing, and it turns out to be a little bit different. It's not in as great shape as it should've been. We can't control that. We can only control our reactions to it and how we decide to navigate that potential problem.
But if we focus on the things completely out of our control, I can basically promise you it's a fast way to not enjoy agility. And so by kind of taking back your own power and your own responsibility for these things that you can control is actually [00:15:00] really liberating. So those are my top four mindset things.
I would love to hear what you think about any of these, or if you would like me to elaborate on any one of these topics. So you can join the Fans of FX Agility community on my site to join the conversation and let me know what you'd like to hear more about.
Thanks so much for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, I'd love for you to leave a review, share it with an agility friend, or connect with me on social media. Your support helps more handlers and teams find the podcast and be part of this community. You can also find all of my training programs, coaching, and resources at fxagility.com.
Remember, excellent agility is built one training session at a time, and every small step forward matters. Until next time, happy training
