Welcome
Welcome to Right Now! Notes. Read on to discover how doing one thing different can change your life for the better right now!

Happy Halloween! Greeting Cards
I love sending Ecards. But I’ve wasted too much time sorting through sappy, sentimental online cards. My Web site’s ECard section provides wide range of cards designed to make a difference in the lives of those we love. Stop by today to send a note of encouragement, a dream big! greeting, or a Halloween hello.

National Novel Writing Month!
I’m planning on finishing my mystery novel this November, National Novel Writing Month. If you’re a Milwaukee area resident who wants to write, join my class at Schwartz Bookshop in Shorewood this November. The details are below.

The Maze
Welcome to the fallout
Welcome to resistance
The tension is here . . .
Between who you are and who you could be
Between how it is and how it should be
I dare you to move . . .
—Switchfoot, I Dare You To Move on Learning to Breathe



During our summer vacation, my family and I took on a corn maze adventure. Our goal: navigate through the maze, find each of the numbered stops, punch our game card at each stop, then get out and eat ice cream! Easy, right? Wrong.

We got lost. Repeatedly. Or, we found the same numbered stop—#11—again and again. We’d think we found the way to stop number 12, we’d see the post in the distance, one of the kids would run to it, jumping with excitement. Then the kid—eleven-year-old Sam or five-year-old Elly—would scream: “Oh no! It’s number eleven. Again!” It was funny the first five times it happened. Then we got frustrated. My son said, “We’ll never finish.” My daughter moaned, “We’re going around in circles.” No kidding!

In the end, we got out of the maze and managed to find all of the stops. But it took us 3 miles of walking to complete the 2.5 miles of maze trail. I’ll admit my part in keeping us lost. I had a map and was convinced that I had found the perfect route from post #11 to #12. I kept saying, “I know I can find it. We just need to try harder.”

How does that saying go? If you always do what you’ve always done, you always get what you always got. I tried hard to make my route work, and we kept getting lost. After the fifth try, someone said, “How about trying a new direction?” I looked at the map again and immediately saw that going in the opposite direction could get us to the rest of the stops and out of the maze. Amazing!

The maze experience pointed out that my default response to life’s challenges (try harder) doesn’t always work. But trying something new did work. Since the maze moment, I’ve been thinking about how this idea applies to life.

We all have default responses. We learn them from our family of origin, our religious and cultural contexts, our work environments, and our primary relationships. We use these responses because:
• We’ve always done it that way!
• The responses worked in the past and should still work now.
• We don’t know what else to do.
• We get affirmation from our tribe (family, colleagues, religious community) when we use these default responses.
• Doing what we’ve always done allows us to avoid the fear that comes with doing something new.

Our default responses can get us stuck. (Just picture me lost inside that maze saying, “But I know if I try harder I can make this route work!”) We do what we do and we keep coming up against the same old stuff: hurts, disappointments, failures, losses, and rejection. Some days it feels like we are going around in circles and nothing we do gets us closer to our goal.

In her book, Change Your Life and Everyone In It, therapist Michele Weiner-Davis says that sometimes, “the solution is the problem.” She suggests these questions as a tool for discovering one’s default responses:
1. What problem situation keeps coming up over and over in my life?
2. What is my usual way of handling this situation?
3. How would people around me say I usually deal with this situation? (pp. 140-1)

Her solution? Do ANYTHING different from what you have been doing.
Change:
• Any step in the sequence of actions surrounding the problem.
• The what, when, where, or who of dealing with the problem. (pp. 146-157)

As the girl who believes in just trying harder, I have spent many unproductive hours in front of my computer trying to write an article or a book chapter. I keep learning that I get more done when I change any part of my routine: find a new place to write, take an exercise break, write with pen and paper instead of the computer, NAP, write the chapters out of order, do art, or connect with strangers. Guess what? When I do anything different, I get better results. Ideas fly. I write. And in the end, I am not worn out from trying too hard.

Now it’s your turn. Do something different today. Anything. See if it changes your life for the better—right now!

I dare you to move!
Rochelle
your right now! coach

Inspire!
Please pass on this issue of Right Now! Notes to anyone who needs to be inspired to do one thing different right now!

Right Now! Notes is a free
monthly e-mail newsletter designed to
consider how we can integrate spirituality
and creativity into our daily lives. It is written and
produced by Rochelle Melander, personal and
professional coach. If you have any questions
or comments, please send them to:
rochelle@rightnowcoach.com.
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