Module One - Becoming A Choice Agent: Stop Drifting. Start Authoring.
A Heroine's Adventure Beta Product
This is The Lab, aka the inner circle shaping the future of The Heroine’s Adventure. As a Lab member, you get early access to every course, workbook, and tool I create before anyone else sees it. Your feedback (or silent lurking, no judgment) helps shape what’s next. You’ll also get behind-the-scenes insights from someone who built and sold a 7-figure business from scratch. I’ll show you the real systems, strategies, and decisions behind this adventure so you can use them in yours.
Adventure Quest™ - Forging Your Heroine’s Compass
MODULE 1: The Story Structure Secret - From Endless Shift to Active Choice
Why some women stay stuck in Act 1 forever—and how you break free
Where You've Been, Where You're Going
You've done the foundational work that most people skip entirely. You've mapped your ordinary world and gotten honest about what needs changing. You've excavated the limiting backstories that were quietly running your life and rewritten them with the truth of who you actually are. You've forged your Heroine's Compass—that essential internal guidance system of values, beliefs, and promises to yourself. You've stepped into the protagonist role, claiming your rightful place as the main character of your own story.
That was Chapter 1 of your heroine's journey: Recognizing Yourself as a Heroine.
But here's what happens next in every great story... You're now entering Chapter 2: Encountering a Pivotal Shift.
The heroine (you) who has just claimed her identity and clarified her compass? She doesn't get to rest. Life immediately begins presenting her with marvelously yummy opportunities to use what she's learned. The universe listens to all those magical signals she's broadcasting (the ones that shout, "I'm ready. Bring it on!") and begins offering her choices that will test whether she's truly ready to author her own transformation, or if she's going to slip back into passenger mode.
This is where most women get stuck. They do the inner work beautifully. They know who they are, they've healed their stories, and they've defined their values. But when the moment comes to actually choose their next move, they freeze. They wait patiently but passively for signs. They ask everyone else what they should do. They get paralyzed by the weight of authoring their own story.
You're about to learn why this happens, and how to move past it forever.
The Story Structure Secret That Changes Everything
I will shout it from the rooftops that transformation follows the exact same structure as every compelling story ever told.
In story structure, there's a reason protagonists don't just magically transform in Chapter 1. Real change requires what storytellers call "the three-act structure":
Act 1: The Setup (This is your ordinary world. It's the place where you start.)
Act 2: The Confrontation (This is where the real work happens, like tests, choices, growth)
Act 3: The Resolution (This is your transformed life. It's the place where you end up. The place may not have changed, but you have.)
Most people think transformation looks like this: Problem → Solution → New Life.
But that's not how stories work. And it's definitely not how real change works. Real change, both in stories and in life, happens in micro or macro growth spurts charged by the effort the character (or you) brings to this repeating pattern:
Shift → Choice → Consequence.
The shift might happen because of you, or to you. But the choice? That's entirely up to you. And the consequence flows directly from that choice.
Here's the brutal truth: Women who stay stuck year after year, experiencing the same problems, aren't unlucky. They aren't victims of circumstance. They're stuck in endless Act 1 because they never make the choices that move them into Act 2.
They feel the shift. They recognize the call. They know something needs to change. But they skip the crucial middle step (that conscious, scary choice) and wonder why nothing ever actually transforms.
Making that choice, or those choices, that continue your growth, don't have to be isolating, paralyzing, or terrifying. Not if you learn how to make informed, logical choices and have back-up plans and protections in place. That's what you'll learn to do in this Adventure Quest.
The Passenger vs. The Author
Let me paint you a picture of what this looks like in real life.
The Passenger experiences a shift: Her company announces layoffs. Her marriage feels stale. Her kids leave for college. Her health scare forces a reckoning. The shift is real, the stakes are clear. But instead of actively choosing her response, she waits. She hopes. She adapts. She lets circumstances decide what happens next.
She tells herself she's "going with the flow" or "seeing what happens." But what's really happening is that she's forcing (or simply allowing) other people (her boss, her partner, her kids, her doctor) to write the next chapter of her story.
The Author experiences the same shift, but she recognizes it as a story beat, not a random event. She sees the shift as an opportunity to make a choice, an opportunity to dig into the excitement of having agency. She knows that what happens next depends entirely on her response.
She doesn't wait for permission, clarity, or a guarantee. She consults her Heroine's Compass, assesses her options, and chooses—actively, consciously, strategically.
The shift was the same. The choice made all the difference.
Why You've Been Choosing for Everyone Except Yourself
If you're reading this and thinking, "But I make choices all day long!"—you're right. You choose what to make for dinner, which school activities to support, how to handle work conflicts, and when to visit your parents.
But the question is: When was the last time you made a choice that was purely for your own growth, happiness, or adventure?
Most midlife women have become expert choice-makers for everyone else's life while going completely numb to their own. Without noticing that it's happened, you've been the supporting character in your children's adventures, your partner's career, your parents' aging, and your friends' dramas.
You've been so busy ensuring everyone else gets to be the protagonist of their story that you forgot you're supposed to be the protagonist of yours.
And the cruelest irony? When you don't choose for yourself, you actually force others to choose for you. Your partner has to guess what you want. Your kids have to manage your emotions. Your boss has to decide your priorities.
You think you're being selfless, but you're actually putting an impossible burden on everyone around you: the burden of writing your story for you (that's if the people around you care. If they don't care, then you're handing off your story to those who will probably write the Stephen King version).
The Choice Agent Transformation
A Choice Agent is someone who actively searches for, makes, and acts upon conscious choices that are clearly aligned with their Heroine's Compass.
She understands that opportunities don't hunt you down or accidentally find you on their way to some "lucky" person. Opportunities form around the choices you make. Choice creates change, and change creates opportunity.
A Choice Agent knows that "lucky people" aren't actually lucky—they're only people who are practiced in choosing and actively seek and make choices, even when there are no guarantees.
Every shift in your life is an invitation to author what happens next.
But, most importantly, a Choice Agent understands that choosing is not selfish—it's essential. When you become skilled at conscious choosing, you stop being a burden on others and start being an inspiration.
Your children don't need you to sacrifice for them. They need you to model how to be the author of an extraordinary life.
Your partner doesn't need you to disappear into their agenda. They need you to show up as a whole person with dreams worth supporting.
Your friends don't need you to play therapist or martyr. They need you to demonstrate what it looks like when someone writes their own story with intention and courage.
Story Structure Connection: When the Heroine Chooses
Think about every compelling heroine you've ever loved in books or movies:
Katniss Everdeen volunteers as tribute, she is choosing. She's choosing to co-opt her sister's lack of choice. She doesn't wait for someone else to save her sister.
Elizabeth Bennet chooses to refuse Mr. Collins and later challenges Mr. Darcy. She doesn't allow herself to be a supporting character in the story of her family or her husband's life. She chooses not to allow her mother or society to choose her future.
Dorothy finds herself in a massive shift she did not choose when the tornado picks up her house and flies it into Oz. But she doesn't wait in Munchkinland, hoping someone else will get her home. She chooses to follow the yellow brick road.
In every case, there's a moment when the shift has happened—the reaping, the proposal, the tornado—and the heroine must choose how to respond.
That choice moves her from Act 1 (the ordinary world) to Act 2 (the adventure). It transforms her from someone things happen to into someone who makes things happen.
That choice is what makes her the heroine instead of a victim.
And guess what? Every one of these heroines keeps on choosing throughout the story they are authoring through repeating cycles of shift, choice, and consequences.
Your Story Structure Moment
You are standing at that exact same crossroads right now.
You've done the Chapter 1 work: You know who you are. You've healed your stories. You've defined your compass. You've claimed your protagonist role.
Now Chapter 2 begins: Life will present you with shifts that require choices. Some will be big and obvious, like job changes, relationship changes, health challenges, life transitions, etc. Other choices will be smaller but equally important, like daily decisions about how to spend your time, energy, and attention.
The question isn't whether shifts will come. The question is: When they do, will you be a passenger or an author?
Will you wait for someone else to decide what your story becomes? Or will you recognize that every shift is an invitation to choose (actively, consciously, and aligned with your Heroine's Compass) what happens next?
Module 1 Reflection Exercise: The Act 1 Assessment
Part 1: Choice Legacy Reflection Think about the people who watch you most closely—your children, partner, close friends, colleagues. What story are you currently modeling about how to handle change and choice?
Write one paragraph describing the choice patterns they're learning from watching you:
Do they see someone who takes charge of her story, or someone who waits for others to decide?
Do they see someone who chooses courageously, or someone who avoids choosing?
Do they see someone who authors her life, or someone who adapts to whatever circumstances arise?
Part 2: Mapping Your Recurring Act 1 Loop. Think of a problem or situation that keeps appearing in your life year after year. Using the Shift → Choice → Consequence framework, map out what's really happening:
The Shift: What change or challenge keeps presenting itself?
The (Skipped) Choice: Where do you typically avoid making an active choice?
The Default Consequence: What happens when you let circumstances or others choose for you?
Part 3: Story Structure Recognition. Write about a time in your life when you moved successfully from Act 1 to Act 2. Document a period when you recognized a shift and made a choice that transformed your situation:
What was the shift that occurred?
What choice did you make in response?
How did that choice change your story?
What can you learn from this experience about your capacity to be an author, not a passenger?
Looking Ahead
You now understand why some women stay stuck in endless loops while others transform their lives: the difference is learning to move from shift to active choice instead of skipping that crucial middle step.
In the next module, you're going to learn to spot all the invisible choices that shape your days, because you can't choose consciously until you can see clearly where choices actually exist.
Remember: You are not a victim of circumstance. You are not a passenger in your own life. You are the heroine of your own story, and heroines are made by the choices they make when the shifts come.
Your story continues in Module 2, where you'll discover just how many doors are available to you if you know how to look for them.
The shift has happened. The choice is yours. What story will you write next?
If you are new here, you can get access to all beta products as they are being developed in The Lab.
If you prefer to get the finished products, you can visit the Questbook store and order the gorgeous, journaling workbooks for only $12.95.
Part journal, part guide, part adventure map for navigating the messy middle of life.
Each questbook takes you through a specific transformation using the secrets of story structure, because the best way to change your life is to change your story.