What is coaching?

Life coaching is a partnership. It accepts you where you are. It is thought-provoking and creative process that inspires you to maximize your personal and professional potential. My style of coaching is rooted in helping you connect with the inherent knowledge of your ancient wisdom, and supports you in creating that life. This coaching helps you to connect with your internal guidance system - the powerful wisdom that lives within you - as opposed to providing ideas, direction or advice.

The experience is quite a different from the professions who are expected to provide information, advice, and suggested plans of action as a matter of course - e.g. doctors, lawyers, consultants, mentors and therapists.

I have over 15 years of professional “lawyering” as a boots-on-the-ground litigator, arbitrator, mediator, and in-house counsel. Having been coached, and serving as a coach, my personal take is that coaching is a subtle and powerful magic. It doesn’t make sense. It creates a new internal landscape. I have found it more powerful, relevant, and necessary than any strategy, recommendation, careful analysis, or plan of action.

If you feel resistance to it - like I did! - as being some variation of hogwash or frivolity, I invite you to ask yourself why. “I am resistant to coaching because…?” Then question your response: “Why do I think this?” Then question that response. Go down this “why” path five times and see where you land. I’ve got a hunch you might be a little surprised.

How is coaching different from therapy?

Therapy is the field with which coaching has the most recognizable overlap. Professionals in each field often use tools and concepts from across the aisle. There are several concepts and methods used in coaching that have their origins in the field of therapy. For example, concepts originally developed by Aaron Beck in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, ACT tools (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy) from the work of Steven C. Hayes, and Dream Analysis, which has its roots in techniques developed by Carl Jung. 

That said, it’s important to be able to differentiate the two:

• Restoring v. enhancing function: A coach is to a therapist as a personal trainer is to a physician. Medical doctors and therapists are often trying to restore function - to help an unwell person become well. A personal trainer or coach, on the other hand, is there to enhance or optimize functioning.

• Partnering with the client: This lies at the core of coaching and applies both to the entire coaching relationship and to interactions within each individual coaching session. It refers to the way in which the coach works with the client to identify what the client wants to accomplish in the overall coaching engagement and within each session. The source of coaching goals and direction is always the client. 

By contrast, therapists are often responsible for developing and executing treatment plans. This doesn’t mean that therapists and other support professionals don’t partner with their clients to some extent; they do. However, the overall direction of therapy as well as the information and suggestions shared during sessions are sourced more from the therapist.  

• Focusing on the present and future: Coaching is present and future focused. This doesn’t mean that you don’t have a past or that your past doesn’t come up in the context of coaching - it does. But when it does, a coach will not spend a lot of time going back into your history or childhood. Instead, a coach will get a sense of the past event and then look at how that is affecting you in the present and/or what shift you would like to see in the future. 

How is coaching different from talking to my friends and family?

Family and friends are amazing. They are rarely truly neutral. And if you’re worried about transformation, they are definitely worried about your personal transformation. It’s hard for these beautiful people to separate who they know you to be from what you want to become. They worry about you making changes, and give advice rooted in their own beliefs. All of this is great, and you’re lucky if you have it.

With coaching, there is an important professional boundary. The objective is your personal transformation guided by your internal wisdom. A wisdom that is oftentimes disregarded and certainly undervalued in Western culture. This wisdom is so much bigger than your cognitive brain. This coaching comes from the power of space and subtraction, which I have found essential to connecting to genuine intuition with clarity, joy, and purpose.

Why would I pay for this?

Notice what happens in your body when you sit with the idea of letting go of some thoughts that have a hold on you, and imagine living the life you’ve been yearning for. What price would you put on realigning with your true purpose? On breaking free from your default life, and stepping toward the one you were born to live? You are the only surefire investment there is - believe in yourself.

How many sessions will I need?

Start with a Clarity Session. Decide what you want to shift in your life. Then trust yourself and commit to what feels best for you.

How do I know what to talk about in a coaching session?

At the start of each session we will partner to create a goal for the session. It might be something that is bothering you (big or small), thoughts or narratives that are holding you back, a pattern of behavior that you want to explore, or a decision to navigate.

How will coaching fix my life and bring me to all the “right” answers?

You’re not broken and you don’t need fixing. What you need is curated time to attune to your inner wisdom in an authentic way. Coaching provides this alchemy. Then it’s your responsibility to take it and run with it.