The other morning I was sitting down on the edge of my bed to put on my shoes and the funniest thing happened. I had put on one sock, but when I reached for the other, I couldn’t find it - and I had just set it down!

I looked accusingly at the innocent face of my dog, who was sitting next to me. I could swear he was grinning and that he’d pulled a prank on me and hidden my sock.

In my own defense, the idea wasn’t too far-fetched. He had a habit when he was a puppy of snatching socks in order to initiate a game of chase. He’s also a pug, and people tend to ascribe jokester behavior to that breed.

Turns out, the sock had slid off the bed and was partially obscured by the dust ruffle. And Prince, indeed, was just innocently and patiently waiting for me to get a move on so he could get his breakfast (food motivation truly being part of pug life).

Then it occurred to me:

Unlike humans, dogs lack the complex thinking to play practical jokes.

And for us humans:

It’s our complex thinking that IS the joke.

We have a thought, and it then creates an emotion that drives our behavior. While such thoughts often create beneficial behaviors, they just as often create negative ones - our regrets of the past and our worries for the future being chiefly among them.

While we may beat dogs in the thinking department - they run rings around us in the emotion department.  They feel the big emotions - like joy and anticipation, anger and shame, blissful happiness and deep sorrow. But they have fewer nuanced emotions because they don’t THINK about them - or overthink them. They also live 100% in the present, with no thought to yesterday and no worry for tomorrow.

Our brains are marvelous tools and our thoughts live somewhere between our brain and our body. And they can take on a life of their own if we aren’t careful with them - using our brain to try and make sense of all of it can be a great source of misery.

Dogs? Well, they just accept what is without judgment. Which is probably why people say ‘dog’ is ‘god’ spelled backward.

Here’s the beautiful thing, though: we get to choose the thoughts we think. And creating the life we want starts with that simple choice.

This weekend, I challenge you to be more like your dog. Or, more like my dog, if you don’t have one. 😀