Are your beliefs more powerful than reality?

What if I told you the best way to get your dog to behave the way you want is to let them eat 62 oz of beluga caviar on chickpea crackers 27 min before sunrise every day? Not 63 oz. and for goodness sakes not 61oz, but the precise and exact amount of 62 oz a day. Oh, and don’t forget the glass plate and distilled water only 19 minutes after their last swallow, okay?

What would you say? Would you believe me?

My question is: do your beliefs get you any closer to the truth?

The more and more I’ve studied about beliefs the more they concern me. Have you ever met anyone that is a complete fanatic about their beliefs? It’s all they can talk about. Why beliefs concern me is, if you really think about it, beliefs are thoughts that are out of someone’s personal experience. They believe because they have never experienced, and that’s a dangerous rigid slope. Beliefs can make you stiff and create an inability to be open to listening to the any kind of guidance or suggestions from the outside.

That’s the thing about beliefs, you have a choice to believe them or not. They aren’t based in fact. Facts exist regardless if someone is there to believe them. The capital of Ukraine is Kiev. Fact! The third president of the United States was Thomas Jefferson. Fact! No beliefs needed.

A quote by Travis Walton I saw recently that I thought summed up beliefs perfectly was this, I’ve come to realize that the biggest problem anywhere today in the world is that people’s perceptions of reality are compulsively filtered through the screening mesh of what they want, and don’t want, to be true. 

My mission at The Dog’s Side is to stay full steam ahead on a quest for truth which has nothing to do with my beliefs, my assumptions, or what I need to be true. As Jean-Jacques Rousseau said,“My goal is to tell the truth, not to convince you.”

So many industry professionals from all business professions, not just dogs, frequently share their beliefs, and often wonder how much have they actually experienced?

Ever since I was a kid, I feel I learned by listening to my gut and asking myself, “How do I know you are right?” And just recently as I’ve studied more and more about this topic, I realized I didn’t know if they were right and the best thing was to go out and try it for myself. So that's what I've always done. I felt it would be better if I actually did it, came to my own conclusion, then formed an opinion from my experience.

This weeks live Facebook show is discussing Dog Psychology and Dog Training. Why do dogs sit, down, stay, follow, and why do humans ask them to do it? This topic is something I have been trying to understand for over a decade, from the humans and from nature.

I go live at 12pm pst every other Wednesday.

HERE is the link to my Facebook to view them live as they happen.

Head Rubs and Belly Scratches

Gary