Coaching

I think of coaching as a blend of the best qualities of a friend, therapist, mentor, sports coach and spiritual advisor.  Coaching gives you the company and compassionate reflection to bring out your own courage to live boldly.  It is a process of gaining access to more and more of yourself and your own resources—inner and outer—in order to manifest more of the life you truly want.

Why Work with a Coach?

You may find coaching fufilling and worthwhile if you:

• Long to live more in alignment with your soul’s purpose;
• Revel in creating the next challenge or expansion in your life and want an ally to help you play big;
• Want to experience (in the words of Stephen R. Covey) the self-esteem that springs from setting a goal and reaching it or making a promise and keeping it;
• Want to experience the benefits of integrity and deep responsibility for your life: being true to yourself, to what brings you fulfillment; knowing what matters most to you and building your life around that.

How I Coach

My work as a coach springs from a deep trust in the innate intelligence and vitality of my clients. I often ask, “What’s most alive?” I call myself a Courageous Living Coach because I find it takes heart, guts and will to bring to the world what’s most alive in us. So courage and finding its roots are central to my work.

I urge my clients to tap their own resourcefulness and “knowing”—about what they truly want and what’s been stopping them. Our work often sheds light on the beliefs that block their full-hearted living. Updating this deep code, they create new beliefs and practices that bring them more freedom to have what they want.

As I work I aim to build the “muscles” of wonder and curiosity, audacious creativity and courageous action—in my clients and in myself. 

I offer my clients a conversational method of assessing personal Type, known as Deep Type®. This process can bring insight, skills and an increased comfort with oneself based in knowing one's nature and learning how to manage the gifts and limitations therein.  I often draw upon my background in Shadow Work® to help a client flesh out the various inner voices that are most alive in them.

There is a language of the world    that everyone understands.    It is the language of enthusiasm,    of things accomplished with love    and purpose, and as part    of a search for something    believed in and desired. Paulo Coelho – The Alchemist

While much of my work is intuitive and spontaneous, I often ask my clients to be curious in four domains: what they want—for themselves, for their lives; their own resistance or fear of having what they want; their deep beliefs or stories about reality and the action they’re willing to take now.

Want

Curiosity in this realm brings us to the dreams, aspirations and longings that indicate what we’re most genuinely called to, what fulfills us.  When we contact this wellspring in us we often touch energy, aliveness, motivation, a sense of adventure, courage and sometimes grief.

Fear

As strongly as we are called we often resist or fear the very things that bring us fulfillment.  Without awareness and insight in this domain we drive around with our emergency brake on, creating lots of friction, wear and tear and frustration.  With insight and conscious action we can move through and/or transform our fears, freeing ourselves for more of what we want.

Beliefs

Quantum psychology and brain science continue to bear out the writings of ancient Greek and Eastern philosophers—namely that what we believe is what we see (not the other way around!).  As a coach I ask my clients to notice their deeply held beliefs and how they influence their perceptions, choices and actions.  I also ask them to consider choosing a new or revised belief, which can bring new ways of seeing and responding.

Action

It has been said that action is its own form of research—and a powerful way to break out of “analysis paralysis.”  I suggest two types of action to my clients: goal-completion and practices.  Nothing boosts self-esteem like a step in the “right” direction—the direction of your dreams.  Goals are discrete steps along that way.  A practice is usually a repeated action that is designed to create new habits or strengthen a quality or ability in the person.

I give thanks to my mentor Martha Brigham Johnson who has taught me so much about the power of curiosity in these four domains.