Welcome
Welcome to Right Now! Notes. This issue is designed to help you achieve your wild and crazy goals!

Friends Who Make You Sing
Carry with you maps and string, flashlights
Friends who make you sing
And stars to help you find your place
Music, hope and amazing grace
—Mary Chapin Carpenter, Your Life Story

Over dinner the other night, my friend told me about her wild and crazy goal: to do a one-day solo bike ride. She’d plotted the route: 70 miles from her house to another city. She’s got a training schedule, and every few days I get an e-mail telling me how it’s going. So far she’s on schedule to make her goal! I know she will succeed. She’s done it before. She’ll do it this time, too.

As I drove home from dinner, my friend’s goal story got me thinking, “I need a wild and crazy goal!”

A recent study on social contagion and obesity found that people who had just one overweight friend—even if that friend lived across the country—were more likely to be overweight themselves. It follows that if you have one friend who sets and achieves wild and crazy goals, you will be more likely to do the same.

Do you want to change your life right now? To get started:

Connect with friends who are changing their lives. Ask your friends if they have any audacious goals. If so, invite them to connect with you regularly around these amazing goals—via in-person meetings, phone calls, and e-mail. Use your time together to share progress and encourage each other.

Join (or start) a mastermind group. For the past several years, I have met with a group of women to share goals, swap ideas, and dish out encouragement. I credit this group as a major factor in what I’ve accomplished this year—including launching the new Web site and writing more than half of my memoir. Start your own mastermind group with friends or a bunch of like-minded strangers. Or, get connected to a group of people who share your goal. From running to biking to writing—groups exist to help you achieve your wild and crazy dream!

Get a hero. Early in my first career, when I was desperate for inspiration, I scoured the library shelves. I found hope in the life and work of my favorite author from childhood, Madeleine L’Engle, who died September 6th at age 88. At seven, I’d devoured her book, A Wrinkle in Time. At every important juncture of my life since, I’ve read that book. In the early nineties, I read nearly everything else she wrote and discovered in her something of the woman and writer I hoped to become. Years later, I still draw encouragement from her life and books.

In this month’s Ode magazine, Paulo Coelho gives this advice about finding a friend to help you achieve your wild and crazy goals:
Join forces with those who experiment, take risks, fall, get hurt and then take risks again. Stay away from people who affirm conventional wisdom, those who criticize people who think differently, those who’ve never taken a step without being sure they’d be respected for it and those who prefer the comfort of certainty to the tension of doubt. Ally yourself with those who aren’t afraid of vulnerability—those who watch what their neighbors are doing, not to judge but to admire them for dedication and courage.

Coelho makes a good point: let go of the people who diminish you in any way. Stop spending time with people who do not celebrate your risk-taking or ask about your goals. Don’t bother connecting to people who put down your ideas or only talk about their own. Instead, connect with people who have their own amazing dreams and are willing to support you in achieving yours.

See if having a high-achieving friend changes the way you think or act . . . for the better! I’ll bet it does.

As for me, I’m still working out the details of my great big audacious goal. I’ll let you in on it soon. In the meantime, go forth and connect . . . right now!

Rochelle,
your right now! coach

Resources
Thinking about encouraging a good friend? Visit the greeting cards section of my Web site and send a card to yourself or someone else who you love.

Paulo Coelho’s full article appears in Ode magazine His Web site is http://www.paulocoelhoblog.com

Write Now! Retreat
If writing something is your audacious goal, then sign up for the November 8-11, 2007 Write Now! Retreat. This intimate, intense writing weekend gives you three coaching sessions, four classes, and oodles of time to write for the low price of $500 ($450 if you sign up by September 30th). You can’t beat it! Contact me to get a registration form. Visit my Web site to learn more about this amazing opportunity to get your writing done right now!

Spread the Music!
Please pass on this issue of Right Now! Notes to anyone who needs to find their wild and crazy goal 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.
I would love to hear from you.

Feel free to forward your copy of
Right Now! Notes to anyone you think
might enjoy it. I do request that you keep
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This newsletter is COPYRIGHT 2007
by ROCHELLE MELANDER,
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
Do not quote without the
written permission of the author.