Lexi is a dog, and she thinks that everyone wants to play with her all the time.

She is a dog, how could she think otherwise?

When people are just walking by, she usually doesn’t pay them too much attention.

But if they do ANYTHING more active than that: jogging, roller-skiing... even walking with walking sticks...

She thinks they want to play. With her.

Why else would they be there?

“I am here, and I always want to play.”
“They are here, and they look like they want to play too!”

So she gets unbelievably excited about the smallest things.

And sometimes people get scared, which is funny.

She makes a sound like she wants to eat your forehead, or rip your throat out, or just plain kill something. That’s how Amstaff sound when they want to play.

Here’s the cool part:

Life becomes 10 times more fun -- overnight -- when you adopt the same attitude.

Habit #7 from my book states “Take everything personally, but take nothing seriously.”

This is part of it.

Lexi takes everything personally.

Also, she loves sticks, because she is a dog.

Today, her leash snagged on a stick lying on the ground. A pretty big one. And it started dragging along with her as she walked.

So, naturally, she thought the stick was trying to play with her. So she started jumping around and attempting to kill it... while wagging her tail so hard it might as well have snapped off.

What would happen if you thought that everybody wanted to play with you?

Everyone who glances in your general direction is a best friend...

People get social anxiety partially out of a fear of being judged.

What if you just assumed that everyone did judge you -- positively?

Take everything personally. It’s way more fun.