So the day has come.  The day of love.  Where we celebrate the people and things that matter most to us.  Lately I’ve been finding myself infatuated with this amazing guy.  He’s sweet, warm, extremely good looking, cuddly, silly, smart, and he protects me and makes me feel safe.  I seriously can’t imagine my life without him.  He. Completes. Me.

Introducing…The Love of My Life.  Coach.

So what does this have to do with relationships?  Or business?

Before I got Coach, I was never a dog person.  Like I was the kind of “not dog person” that would be annoyed with my friends and their dogs, annoyed with the shedding, the slobbering, the begging, the barking, the in-your-personal-spaceness.  And when me and my ex (I will call him Batman for the rest of this post) were moving in together and he was all like “we should totally get a dog!” I was all like, “ehhhh…I don’t know about that.”  And this broke Batman’s heart.

So…a couple weeks pass by and I’m at a BBQ and my friend shows up with two great danes.  And I was all like “OMG!  What ARE those things?!?!”  They were amazing.  Huge. Stunning. Sweet.  Soft. Not sheddy.  And I immediately texted Batman and said “Ok…I’m ready for a dog.  But it has to be a great dane.”

Of course he thought I was crazy and we spent the next six months or so, researching the breed, babysitting them any chance we could get, searching for great dane rescues, etc.  We wanted to make sure we were really ready, and that we knew what we were getting ourselves into.  October, my birthday month, rolled around and we decided to get me a Birthday Dog.  So we started visiting all our local rescues and I had very specific criteria for how I wanted our hypothetical dog to be and how I wanted to feel when I met him/her.  I wanted it to, like, really see us and recognize us as its parents right away, wanted it t be well behaved and somewhat trained, wanted it to want to be around us, and wanted minimal to no shedding.

So we pull up at the rescue and they bring out “Morgan,” a beautiful fawn dane.  As soon as he came out, I just knew he was our dog.  I just had that feeling.  We took him to a field to run around and he showed NOT ONE sign of any of my criteria.  He didn’t pay any attention to us, wouldn’t come when called, wouldn’t let us get close to him, and he shed like a MUTHA!  But it didn’t matter.  He was our dog.  So we threw him in the Buick and started driving back home with a bit of panic and a lot of excitement in our hearts.  He is the best decision I’ve ever made.  He makes me so unbelievably happy.

So in thinking of this, a couple things come to mind.  The first one is that no matter how much planning and thinking you do about something, you’re never going to feel “ready.”  There is nothing that can ever prepare you to be ready for big changes, big dreams, big dogs.  So don’t wait to feel ready before you make the jump to have what you want.  Just do it.

The second thing is that in business and relationships, it is so easy to want things to be a certain way, or the way we envisioned it in our head, or we want someone to measure up against some predetermined list we created.  And when we lock ourselves into those boundaries, we aren’t open to amazing things happening.  If I had been adamant on our hypothetical dog having all the qualities on my list, I never would have found Coach.  So it’s not about the list, or things having to be perfect.  Sometimes nothing lines up the way you thought it would but it just FEELS right.  When it FEELS right, it usually IS right.  So go with the feeling and ditch the list.

I’m so happy I did.  And as I sit here writing this, Coach is cuddling up next to me, head nuzzled on my chest.  He’s just let out a big sigh and stared directly into my eyes.  I am feeling so much love.  I am so thankful for him and for all the wonderful people in my life.

Happy Valentine’s Day ya’ll.  I hope you are giving and receiving love and feeling grateful for the people (furry and otherwise) in your life.

Make sure you leave a comment and tell me about the Loves of Your Life!

P.s. Photo by this cool dude…http://futuregrandpa.com