10 Principles for Achieving Balance Archives - Page 2 of 7

Humans can learn a lot from their four legged friends

Be the Pack Leader

How Humans Can Learn From Dogs

For centuries, we’ve been teaching dogs to do things for us. Recently, we’ve come to find that man’s best friend is capable of teaching children and adults in ways people cannot. This is how humans can learn from dogs. Working therapy dogs One group, the Pet Prescription Team (PPT) in La Habra, California, works a special team of therapy dogs at Help for Brain Injured Children, Inc. (HBIC), a non-profit school for children and young adults with moderate to severe multiple disabilities. During their sessions, certain exercises are performed, each with a different goal: Walking the dog develops motor skills;

June 25, 2019 No Comments

A woman holds her cute pug after a walk on a fall day.

10 Principles for Achieving Balance

How Dogs Can Help Our Human Relationships

As Cesar says, “Life is simple. We make it complicated.” He also says, “Communication creates partnership,” so if we’re not communicating, we can’t have a relationship, whether it’s romantic, or with friends or family. With people, the blocks to communication are all intellectual or emotional — we don’t listen to what the other person is actually saying, or we build defensive walls to protect our egos. As Cesar always says, “Humans will tell you a story. Dogs tell you the truth.” When we fall into the trap of storytelling in our relationships, we fail to communicate and so cannot have

September 1, 2018 No Comments

Cesar Millan

It All Makes Scents

Three years ago today, humans did something amazing. After a trip of nearly eleven years, the European Space Agency put a probe in orbit around a comet and placed a lander on that comet. Okay, that lander, Philae, didn’t quite end up the way it was supposed to, but it was still an impressive feat. That probe had to travel 310 million miles to get precisely to an object only 2.5 miles across — only slightly wider than Manhattan at its widest point. But that’s one of the things that humans do. We explore. Of course, we have to build

November 9, 2017 No Comments

Cesar Millan

Louder Than Words

“Are you ready?” It’s a simple enough sentence, isn’t it? But, on paper, it’s impossible to tell the intention. Is the speaker happy, angry, excited, impatient, or something else? It could be a hopeful question between two people who are about to walk down the aisle together, or a complaint from someone who’s tired of always being late because of their spouse. Listening Is Hard One human skill that many people are not the greatest at is listening. Yes, we may hear all of the words, but we don’t always hear the intention correctly. Fortunately, this is yet another area

September 29, 2017 No Comments

Be the Pack Leader

Failing In Order To Succeed

Before your dog can learn to respect you, she has to learn to trust you. To earn a dog’s trust, you have to be a confident Pack Leader and provide protection and direction — sufficient exercise, and consistent rules, all with calm-assertive energy. But before you can provide any of that to your dog there’s one other place where you need to earn trust. First, Trust Yourself That place is in yourself, and it’s true not just for dealing with your dog but dealing with life in general. If you can’t trust yourself, then no one and nothing can trust

August 4, 2017 No Comments

Cesar Millan

Bounce Back Like A Dog

One of humanity’s most powerful emotions is empathy. It’s a trait not shared by a lot of animals, although elephants, dolphins, whales, and chimpanzees seem to be capable of it. So are our dogs. However, being human and emotional, we take our empathy a step further and do something that animals do not: we feel pity for other living things, and we can feel pity for ourselves. Dogs don’t do this, but it’s not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, particularly in the case of lacking self-pity, it can be a powerful lesson to all of us. If you’ve ever

July 21, 2017 No Comments

Cesar Millan

Frustrating Dogs

I want you to think for a moment of something that frustrates you. Maybe it’s a co-worker, or being stuck in traffic. It could be a vending machine that doesn’t work or a bus that’s late. It can even be your kids or spouses — and probably frequently is! Since you’re here, I’m guessing that it’s also your dog sometimes. But what is frustration? Simply, it’s the feeling that comes when we are blocked from fulfilling a need, whether it’s a goal of arriving somewhere on time or communicating something with another person. Our dogs can experience the same feeling

June 23, 2017 No Comments

Cesar Millan

Time To Remember

It’s Memorial Day again and, if you follow fashion, it means that it’s now safe to break out the white outfit and shoes, at least according to custom from the nineteenth century. The real reason for Memorial Day, of course, is to remember those who died while serving the country. While we may celebrate the event with parades and barbecues and picnics, the occasion beneath is quite somber — something that can be too easy to forget. But we’re human, so of course we forget a lot of things, which is why on this day before Memorial Day we should

May 26, 2017 No Comments

Letting Go

Today is Mother’s Day in the U.S. It’s a commemoration that happens all over the world on different dates, although the vast majority of those happen in May, covering the entire month. In my home country of Mexico, the date is fixed on May 10. In my adopted country of the U.S., it’s always the second Sunday in May — which means that sometimes it’s the same day in both places, like it was in 2015 and will be in 2020. But there’s a more important lesson in the day than the when and why and, again, we can turn

May 12, 2017 No Comments

Cesar Millan

Who’s The Boss?

I often say that dogs can be our greatest teachers, with so many lessons for us, but only once we learn how to listen to what they’re telling us. They can teach us how to respect each other, how to accept and forgive, how to bounce back from adversity, and much more. But the most important lesson is also the one that I see people failing to learn all the time. More than anything, your dog wants you to learn how to be a good leader, but you may be letting her down. One of the biggest causes of dog

May 5, 2017 No Comments