Progress Depends on Where You're Standing

I have a spreadsheet for Buddy.

Of course I do. For those that know me, this will not come as a surprise!

It started because he came to me with a fairly impressive collection of things that needed working on, and I wanted to keep track of what was happening.

Cars. Bikes. Dogs. People. Things that move. Things that make unexpected noises. Settling. Sleeping. Crate time. The general business of being Buddy. Somewhere along the way, the spreadsheet became a record of progress.

Which sounds very sensible until you are the person living with the dog!

Because when you are living inside the day-to-day, it is remarkably easy to miss how much has changed.

Buddy is three now, and when I got him I had been very clear that I didn't want a dog with problems. Naturally, I got one with many problems. He had been through several homes before coming to me and had a lot to learn. Some things were easier than others. Some things have improved enormously and if I am honest, some things remain really hard.

There are walks where I come home thinking, Why is this still so difficult?

There are other days where something happens that would once have been completely unmanageable, and I realise afterwards that I barely noticed it.

That's the problem with being the person standing in the middle of it.

I remember yesterday. My trainers remember six months ago.

They don't live with Buddy. They aren't there for the difficult morning or the walk where everything seems to go backwards or the evening when I am trying to leave the house and Buddy decides that now is the perfect time to remind me that he is, in fact, Buddy.

But they have seen him over time. They remember what he was like when they first met him. They notice patterns that are difficult for me to see because I am standing centimetres away from them. Sometimes they will point something out and I'll think, Oh. Yes.

I had forgotten that used to be much harder.

I think we do this with ourselves too. We are often trying to measure our progress while standing inside the life we are living. We remember yesterday much more clearly than we remember six months ago. We notice what is still difficult. We compare ourselves with where we thought we would be by now.

We get caught in the weeds and sometimes the weeds are all we can see.

I've seen this in therapy countless times. Someone will tell me they feel they haven't made much progress, and then, almost as an aside, mention that they finally had a conversation they had been avoiding for six months. Or that something which would once have taken them weeks to recover from now takes a day. Or that they noticed the familiar critical thought without automatically believing it.

They don't necessarily count these things because they haven't reached the endpoint.

From where they are standing, it can feel like not enough.

From where I'm standing, sometimes the picture looks very different.

That doesn't mean pretending everything is fixed. It doesn't mean turning every difficult thing into a win.

And it certainly doesn't mean that Buddy has suddenly become an uncomplicated dog. He hasn't. He will most likely always be a complication companion. There are still walks where I question every life decision that led me to adopting him.

But there are also things that are simply easier now. He reacts less to cars, bikes and people than he once did. There are moments when he can pass another dog without the whole world stopping. He can settle in ways that once felt impossible. There are mornings when I can make a coffee and come back to bed while he happily sleeps.

These things don't always feel significant when I am living them. But they are.

Perhaps that's the bit I am still learning - progress doesn't always feel like progress from the inside. Sometimes you need someone who isn't standing where you are standing to notice it.

And perhaps progress isn't something we ever quite finish either. There may not be a point where we get to say, Tick, that's done now.

Things become easier. New things come along. Circumstances change. We learn more about ourselves, or about the dog standing beside us, and we adjust.

Maybe that's what progress actually looks like sometimes. Not arriving at some final version where everything is sorted. Just becoming a little more capable of meeting whatever is there.

Buddy has taught me that in a fairly hands-on way. Sometimes I am looking at the dog I thought I would have by now. My trainers are looking at the dog who arrived nearly three years ago.

They're not looking at the same dog. Maybe neither am I.

I think there is something worth noticing in that. Where are you standing when you look at your own progress?

Is there something that feels like it should be further along by now, but might look different if you could step back far enough to see the longer story?

Because sometimes, when you're too close to something to see it clearly, having someone else say, Look how far you've actually come, is worth a lot.

Especially when you've been too busy looking at yesterday's walk to notice.

This reflection shares a personal experience and general observations about human behaviour. It is not intended as psychological advice.