Time to change things up
It's easy to find yourself in a rut of one kind or another. It could be too much routine, a dead-end job, or an impasse in a relationship.

There isn't a one-size fits all approach to getting out
Different ruts call for different responses. Sometimes the stakes are high and you feel a sense of urgency. Other times you need to sit and stew before you know what to do.  Take some specific action to get out of the trap of your rut. Grab control.

By following the basic guidelines below, you are sure to jump out of your rut:

• Don't be blasé about being in a rut

Or, you will get stuck for too long and waste your time being unhappy, negative, bored or too critical. Don't get too comfortable rooting around in your rut. Fight back by taking action - small calculated steps to move you forward. Start that project!

• Do more of what you like to do

Get your groove back and increase your confidence and strengthen your motivation to do something different about your life.

• Get more exercise

Without a doubt, this is the single most helpful thing you can do for yourself. You feel and look better, have more energy and certainly improve your mood. Usually it spills over into making healthier food choices and sleeping better.

• Do something different

Open up your mind by exposing yourself to new or different ideas or activities. Go to a lecture, see a play, a dance, a comedy show, go to a gallery, hear some music or meditate.

• Purge

Get rid of things. Clean up. Sort the messes and the clutter.

Let me know if any of these ideas work for you or if you have any of your own to share.

Coach Minda

f you feel in a rut, I'd love to work with you.
Contact me: 514-791-4506 or email minda.miloff@sympatico.ca

During a break from dance class I asked a sweaty woman in high heels if I could blog her story. She agreed if no names were used.

Her account
My husband, with not a heartbeat for dancing, went along with a non-pressured plan to take a few private ballroom lessons.

Eventually, we would be able to dance together. But for now we have our own teachers. And mine is so good.

After returning from my class one night I suggested we practice the basic cha cha steps he told me he is learning. You know, the rock step and then chassé to the left, cha-cha-cha.

We took our positions and I hummed out a tune. I waited for him to take the lead. He shuffled forward and back but not doing any cha cha steps.
I said in a good-natured way, "Oh, don't worry, I'll show you how to do it." 

As I proceeded to demonstrate the first step, he said,  "that's not how I have been taught to do it. I want to do it the way I was taught, otherwise I am going to be confused."

We tried again. To support him feeling sheepish that he didn't remember the steps, I said for a second time,  "I'll show you how, it's very easy and I'm sure it will all come back to you."

More feet shuffling. He did a front and back rock step, but again without the cha cha. This time I was impatient and said,   "Let me just show you, it's really not too hard and I know how to do it. You do the rock step and then cha cha cha to the left."

Frustrated, he said, "let's do this later because I'm getting tense and forgetting everything."

We were upset with one another. He was upset about my insistence and I was upset that he got so upset. I thought he could just as easily be laughing about it.

Next day at the studio, I asked them, "why is my husband being taught the cha cha but not with the cha cha step."

Oh, they said, after looking at the special black book,  "he's not learning the cha cha. He is learning salsa!  

The moral of this story according to Coach Minda:
It seems at times a miracle that we understand one another at all. We presume what we say is heard as we intend. But our varying reference points mean that understanding what we have been told, or what we have heard, leaves a lot of room for misunderstanding -- make that misunderstandings. 

There are days when you are doing the cha cha and you think your partner is too. But he or she is actually doing the salsa.

Some days we are just out of sync and step!

Dance on,
Coach Minda

Single or in a couple, if you want to find a deeper connection with someone or improve your current partnership, call Coach Minda: 514-791-4506

In the book, "The Three Marriages", David Whyte, poet-author explains how we exhaust ourselves trying to separate and balance three core relationships in our life. The three marriages are to:

• Our partner and family (people we have close relationships with)
  
• Our work
• Our self
  
  

These are not in his opinion separate commitments, but different expressions of how we each belong in the world. And in trying to maintain these three marriages as distinct, we create unnecessary competition and rivalry between our various needs and desires with the potential in the end, for neglecting one or the other.

Instead of thinking about our life in terms of work-life balance, he asks us to knit these relationships together and to see how the core commitments to each are connected and integrated.

He is a poet first and his book isn't written as a self-help "how-to" one. It takes a few reads I think. His underlying thesis is helpful in framing many of the challenges we face in our three marriages.

It is safe to say we enter into the first marriage with a lot of preconceived ideas of how it will work and how good it will be.  As our mutual imperfections bubble and rise to the surface we discover how difficult it is.

As I begin to coach couples, I feel a few of David Whyte's ideas might be helpful.

We need to:

• Not be afraid of conversations that highlight the different wants and desires between partners in the three marriages
  

• Respect and honor the desires each partner holds in the three marriages
• Recognize how our core relationships are a living and breathing entity that if neglected, stifle all three marriages
  
• Not expect any of the three marriages to deliver all our happiness
  
  

Marriage-on,
Coach Minda