Joyful Living by Anna Vilchis
The Power of Joy
During lockdown, I finally began to enjoy my beautiful home. For the first time ever since I got my place, I’d been able to spend quality time at home and be here longer than for just sleeping and showering before heading out in the morning to yet another hectic day in London. However, there was one little problem, without my daily commute to and from work, as well as, all my other usual commitments that kept my schedule busy and overflowing at peak hours, I found myself quickly gaining 5 kilos in weight by just sitting on my own ass every single day working on my laptop. So I decided to do something very radical and get myself a puppy. Yes, I did say a puppy. That would encourage me to go walking every day, I said to myself, even though I didn’t know anything about dogs, or what it entails to look after a dog, let alone train one. I had never done this before and my flat, what would happen to my beautiful pristine flat and my OCD? Yes, I said to myself, I’ll be forced to get off my own backside and get out to get some fresh air and most needed exercise and can manage the extra cleaning, no problem. However, it was not only that that I was facing; all my life I’ve had a phobia of dogs to the extent that I wouldn’t even go to visit friends if I knew they had a dog. This phobia had been running all my life. It had affected the quality of my life, many of my life experiences and had impacted many of my relationships to say the least. To the extent that I would cross the street and pretend I hadn’t seen you if there was a dog anywhere near you. I would rather stay at home if I knew there would be dogs at a party, and even once, my left arm had to be fully reconstructed because of multiple fractures due to me falling because of running away from dogs at a camping trip in Valle de Bravo, Mexico when I was 11 years old.
Anyway, I could write a whole book about all my misfortunes because of my phobia of dogs, and all animals for that matter, but this story isn’t about phobia. This story is about how by overcoming that same phobia, by simply just making a decision to face my own fears, and go for it, and in the process give up all my fears and reasons as to why getting a dog was a bad idea, I found so much more joy and love than ever thought possible, and wasn’t even imaginable to me until I did that. And to think that I desperately tried to talk myself out of doing it so many times; firstly, by getting lots of plants for the flat to look after. That would keep me occupied and off my back, I thought to myself, watering them regularly will keep me busy and help me clear my mind, so I took on gardening and began learning how to grow my own plants and flowers at home, which I found very relaxing and rewarding in its own right. Indeed, I even grew a beautiful white rose in the process, which I never ever imagined I could ever do myself until I did it and that was so rewarding and beautiful.
However, despite all this newly found enjoyment of nature at home during lockdown, I still found myself obsessed with the idea of getting a dog, no matter how much I tried to talk myself out of it. So I spoke to my sister, as I always do when I have a dilemma, and she told me: “don’t do it, you’ll be cleaning pee and poo for the rest of your life if you do! Is that what you want?”. So once again, I decided she was probably right, especially given I have extreme OCD and the pure thought of seeing either pee or poop anywhere in my beautifully clean flat was enough to put me off the idea forever.
So by my birthday in May and almost two months into lockdown had started, and after I first got the idea of getting a dog, I decided to get some goldfish instead. That would take my mind off the idea of getting a dog, I thought to myself again, and would keep me entertained for hours no end, without the hassle of having to clean poop and pee every day. But whilst watching my goldfish can be very relaxing and even hypnotizing indeed, not only did I still have a lot of shit to clean after them - gosh these goldfish can certainly pooh - and to keep the tanks nice and clean it takes a lot of time and effort every single week.
Anyway, regardless of how beautiful and mesmerizing they are, I also found that they don’t actually interact back with you, and they don’t even get me out of the house to exercise like I had planned to do originally. On the contrary, I was spending my free time cleaning pooh and still gaining weight instead; and in spite of all the time I was spending cleaning after them.
So the idea of getting a puppy kept growing in me with each and every day that went by like unstoppable weed, to the extent that it became almost an obsession. I started watching lots of training videos and realised that it was something I could definitely do, if I put my mind to it. I would train it myself so that I didn’t have to see any poop or pee in my beautiful clean flat. I already knew that if I ever had a dog, I wanted it to be a Chihuahua. And not just any Chihuahua, it had to be an apple dome head, smooth coat so that it didn’t shed any hairs of course, and being so small, what harm can it possibly do? I thought to myself. I found myself swapping Tinder for online dogs’ advertising sites, swiping left and right in the puppy ads category and every single time I found the exact puppy I wanted, it was too late, they were already gone. Puppies were flying off the shelves like hot pancakes these days, as it appears that during lockdown everyone else had exactly the same idea as me, and they were all gone, just hours or even minutes after the ads had been published online.
By then, I had already started to share with everyone I knew, or I would speak to, and let them all know I was looking for a Chihuahua puppy. Finding my dream puppy Chihuahua wasn’t an easy endeavour though.
I first found a lovely little pup available in Wales, so I decided, I’d make a trip out of it and unfortunately, the lady changed her mind and cancelled. She had decided she’ll give it to her granddaughter instead, so I kept on looking.
I then found one called Mr Kippling up in the Lake District, and thought to myself, that isn’t very far from London either, I could easily drive up north to pick him up at the weekend no problem, but that lady changed her mind too and I had to cancel my travelling plans once again.
Then, I put an ad online saying that I was looking for a Chihuahua puppy and got a response from somebody who said they were in Paisley. I used to live in Glasgow, which is near Paisley in Scotland and I thought to myself, I could even go there and visit all my old friends up there and make a proper trip out of it, when he offered to send it directly to me instead, so that I didn’t have to drive that far. Wahey! I thought to myself, that’s even better. I don’t even need to take any time off work to do it, or spend any excess money on getting her. And I completely fell for it. He was sending me all these cute little videos of Maggie and told me that his wife had an allergy, which meant that they weren’t able to keep her after all. So he could send it to me via a pet courier service to my own doorstep, if I only sent him £300 towards to cost of delivering here to my own home, which I thought was a risky but fabulous idea and after much deliberation, I decided to trust him and online banking, and I sent him the money electronically via PayPal naively thinking that would protect me. Only Maggie never arrived like he promised and there was absolutely nothing I could do about it. I was devastated, and feeling completely powerless following this scam when even the police weren’t able to do anything about it, but that wasn’t going to stop me or shatter my dreams of becoming a puppy mummy. In fact, that made me even more determined to find the perfect Chihuahua I was looking for. I said to myself, Maggie was just not the one for me.
So I kept on looking. After a couple of further misses, including paying a £100 deposit for a chocolate Chi puppy in Rainman, Essex, when I thought my search was finally over. However, instead of being excited and happy that I had finally found one, I started to have nightmares instead, during the long waiting month, and started imagining that that dog would actually destroy my flat. I wasn’t feeling happy at all with my choice, but how could I go back on my word? He’d even promised to refund me if I changed my mind, so I started having second thoughts. I was thinking it was the fear of dogs playing up with my mind, so I kept looking to distract myself and watching more training videos throughout the night, but the nightmares didn’t stop. You see, he’d sent me a video of the litter and the one I had picked had been biting his siblings in it, so I was imagining it biting me and that was scaring the shit out of me. So when he called me on Friday to let me know that the vet had given them the all-clear and I could collect him a week later, eg the following Friday, I completely freaked out and decided to keep looking.
That was also not the dog I was meant to get, I said to myself. If it’s meant to be, I won’t find any other dog. And, to my very own surprise, I did. And oh my God, did I find one! Only this time it was so easy, I couldn’t even believe it myself. How could I? You see, all my life I have had it that nothing ever comes easy to me, that life is a struggle and normally that’s exactly what I get.
That Saturday, out of the blue, Karen, a lady I had messaged two months earlier about another puppy, texted me to say that I could come by and see one of her litters the very next day if I got there by 3pm. Only this was in Slough and I was supposed to go up to Hamstead to see another puppy at 4pm, so I thought to myself, if I hurry up, I could potentially manage to fit in both. So, I decided to go to Slough first and when I got there and saw Buddy for the very first time, my heart completely melted and I fell in love with him instantly. This time, there was absolutely no doubt in my mind from that moment that this was the one I’d been looking for all along. That was the day I met Buddy. My Buddy! I paid a deposit and decided to cancel my next appointment and call the gentleman in Rainman to also cancel the chocolate puppy I had paid a deposit for. But he refused to pay me back my money, even though that had been the agreement we had when I had reserved that one. I never got that money back either, and in the end, it didn’t really matter because I had found the perfect Chihuahua for me, that I had been looking for all along. He was even more beautiful than I could have ever imagined him to be and I couldn’t get him off my mind from that moment on.
This time, I never had any nightmares about him coming home with me. I was so excited, I was prepared to face all my fears. Even though, when I was coming home from meeting him and I saw two small dogs coming my way towards me, on my side of the curb, and I still crossed over to the other side of the street automatically in order to avoid them, like I always did before. Only this time, I thought to myself, gosh if I’m going to have a dog, I’m really going to have to overcome this phobia once and for all, and face this fear head-on. Because now that I am a dog owner, I’m really going to have to also be okay around other dogs. And to my own surprise, I found that it wasn’t a problem at all once I made that decision, especially as now I was super motivated to do so. So I spent the whole of June watching training videos, so that I would be ready for when Buddy was ready to finally come home with me on June 30th 2020.
When that day finally came, I woke up so excited. I drove to Ladbroke Grove to pick up Angie, as she was going to help me until I knew what I was doing. The journey to Slough that day was an adventure, but little did I know that that day was the start of an incredible adventure I could have missed had I not given up all my fears.
Buddy
You see, if I hadn’t faced all my fears and all the blocks that presented to me along the way, I would have robbed myself of all this joy and love I’ve experienced since bringing Buddy home that day. He has become the single proudest achievement of all my life, after buying my own flat (that was another completely different phobia I had to overcome back then too) and I couldn’t be happier! Just watching him walk, run, play, eat and sleep feels me with a joy unlike any I’ve ever felt before. So much so, that I even let him walk all over me, quite literally. He’s taken over my bed and loves to walk on top of me. It is the single most pleasurable experience. It's like having a personal masseur at home. I’m so proud of him, I want him to come with me absolutely everywhere and for everyone to meet him and fall in love with him, like I am. And yes, you guessed it, I’ve even overcome my fears of being around other dogs too, even the very big ones because Buddy just loves to say hello to absolutely every single do we encounter, no matter how big or small, and he absolutely loves the biggest ones! So I’ve learnt to love them too. And it makes me so happy to see him happy!
The point I’m making is that I robbed myself of all this joy and love by giving into my own fears for almost 5 decades. Everyone who knows me will have a tale of what a drama queen I was running away every time I saw a dog before. And now, when I see others being scared of dogs, and even of Buddy, I understand them completely because I was that girl too once upon a time, not that long ago. But I want to encourage them to face those same fears, because absolutely everything we want in life, is on the other side of our fears. Jim Rohn used to say “people are not living their dreams because they are choosing to live their worst nightmares”. I can totally relate to that and that was me for so long, so much so, that I didn’t realise how much I was creating my own nightmares myself by focusing on them all the time, rather than on what I actually really want, which has always been love. True, unconditional, innocent and empowering love. And I’ve given myself that gift by overcoming my own fears and limitations. To the extent that this last Christmas, when the second lockdown was announced as Tier 5, I decided to do it all over again and go for a second puppy. This time it was a girl: Coco. Coco wasn’t as hard to find as Buddy had been, as this time, I knew what I was doing and exactly what I was looking for. It was absolutely effortless. I must admit, when I first thought of getting a second puppy, I was really only looking for a buddy for Buddy. Someone to keep him company and play with him whilst I am working, as he kept looking at me with those beautiful puppy eyes wondering when I was going to be free to play with him again, distracting me and I gave into that. However, when I met Coco, I really didn’t think more love was even possible, but she is another one who melted my heart completely and now the three of us have become completely inseparable. And now, I can’t even imagine my life without them ever again.
Coco
I must admit, training a puppy isn’t easy, however, the rewards are hugely unmeasurable. So the time spent on it, is not only worth both your time and effort, but they’ll spend the rest of their lives completely devoted to making you happy and pleasing you for many years yet to come, once they know how to. Because it is a learning process that goes both ways.
Coco and Buddy have both taught me many valuable lessons, amongst them they’ve given me back the gift of wonder as beauty and pleasure can both be found in the simplest of things when you look for it with wondering eyes, as for the very first time. They keep me present in the moment, yet keep me on my toes giving me unforgettable moments that will last me a lifetime. I’ve also learnt to get what I want, I have sometimes to give a little. It’s not all about me now. And in order for me to get what I want, I also have to give them what they want, so it becomes a dance that goes back and forth beautifully, even if not always in perfect harmony. It is lots of fun also because I now do things that I would have never ever done, or even considered doing, so I’m having so many new experiences and my walks through London have never been as joyful as they are now, by simply just enjoying every single moment.
Coco & Buddy
What lockdown has given me, and taught me, is that joy can be found in the simplest of things and that there is absolutely nothing to fear. Fear can really only stop you if you let it. Absolutely everything you want is possible. Now, I live in the moment fully present and enjoy living a life full of love, joy, and wonder. And this is the greatest gift anyone can ever receive besides living!
One of my passions in life is to help people overcome their own fears, so if there is anything I can do for you, please do reach out and get in touch. Let’s see how we can work together in getting you what you want and having those dreams of your’s become a reality, crushing through any fears that might be stopping you from having what you truly want in your life.
So the real question is, what are your worst fears? What if everything you ever wanted was available to you by simply giving them up? Would you give them up and face your fears? And what is stopping you from getting what you truly want in life?
Biography:
Anna is an emotional intelligence coach and entrepreneur with a passion for making a difference to others. Founder of DestinySculpting - emotional intelligence made easy. She is an original Mexican Scott, half-Scottish and half-Mexican, born in Mexico City. She then lived in Glasgow where she graduated with a BA in Mass Media and Communication before moving to London to work in television. She has over 20 years’ experience working in TV and is currently writing her first book: ‘Revival: Seven Acts of Recovery’ a simple guide on how to overcome anxiety and depression, based on her own personal experiences.
You can contact Anna at DestinySculpting.com
© Anna Vilchis has asserted her moral rights as author of his work and has full copyright.
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