“They must often change, who would be constant in happiness or wisdom.”
Confucious, 500 B.C.
Dynamic Life Coaching
Dynamic Life Coaching helps you create a way of being in which change is accommodated quickly and smoothly.
It enables changes created through life coaching to be fully incorporated into the personality so they do not fail as soon as new stressors are encountered. It enables new changes to be made readily as circumstances demand.
This form of coaching brings your feelings and beliefs into harmony so that your actions are powerful and truly reflective of your best self.
The versatility of the approach derives from the fact that it works at the fundamental self-and-world defining levels of the psyche. It is totally responsive to your unique needs. That is why I refer to it as “Dynamic”.
This approach has been developed over many years and has proven to be effective with a wide range of clients. I believe a key reason for its wide success is that it is nonjudgmental and supports client development in the client’s terms rather than imposing an external assessment.
For example, ‘success’ might have totally opposite meanings for two different clients and a third meaning for myself, yet these differences do not impinge on the two coaching outcomes. This is because the work takes place within the client’s context and meaning: that is, in the client’s ‘world’.
Because we stay within their discrete ‘world’, clients are enabled to identify and assemble the resources they possess that will help them achieve their success. They are also protected from developing a false dependency on my resources because their world is quite distinct from mine.
In order to reinforce discreteness, I coach in a client-centered manner. This means that you, as the client, set the agenda, direct our process, and provide the material for our work. I will follow you, though not necessarily without question, wherever you lead.
There are powerful reasons for having you set the agenda:
1) Only you ‘know’ what your true path is intended to be. I can only help you make that path clear to yourself.
2) Fundamental change can only be sustained if it is aligned with your true self. Therefore, if sustainable change is what you desire, the direction has to come from you. It is part of my task to stay out of your way while facilitating your discovery process.
So as to maximize the effectiveness of Dynamic Life Coaching, I have incorporated insight and understanding from many sources. As a result, my coaching approach is characterized by these qualities:
- the psychological depth of psychodynamic approaches;
- the emphasis on unique-to-the-individual meaning of existential approaches;
- the total client focus of client-centered approaches;
- the optimistic view of human nature inherent in humanistic and positive psychology approaches;
- the developmental drive of structured coaching approaches;
- the subtlety of spiritual approaches;
- the emotional richness of EQ development approaches.
Fundamental theory of human nature
For my fundamental beliefs about human nature, I share the positive view of the human species espoused by the likes of Carl Rogers, Abraham Maslow, Gordon Allport and James Bugental.
In essence, this view says that the human being is naturally healthy and developmentally oriented, seeking in its best perceived way to improve itself and the lot of humanity as a whole.
The healthy human proceeds through life in a process of trial and discovery that ideally builds satisfaction and fulfillment along with wisdom. Such wisdom is the product of experience processed intellectually, emotionally and physically. We are a whole organism, not divisible into mind and body.
As a result of my beliefs, my coaching is humanistic in that it is optimistic and collaborative, seeing my client and myself as partners in a profoundly important quest. I take my lead from my clients, recognizing that only they truly know what it is they are trying to achieve and how to achieve it.
It is also existential because it is about our ways of being and the meaning we attach to actions and things. The existential emphasis reinforces the client-centered approach because it focuses on the client’s meaning and truth rather than seeking to explain the client’s actions in terms of someone else’s theories of human nature.
Finally, my approach offers a synthesis because it seeks to reinforce our sense of wholeness and integrity. It uses analysis of aspects of ourselves only in the way that we examine a jigsaw piece before finding its proper place in the overall puzzle.
We, like the jigsaw puzzle, are much more than our constituent parts. As we begin to see ourselves in our wholeness, we grow increasingly empowered, enabling us to conduct bolder and more fulfilling life experiments.
To discuss these ideas further, please use the form below to arrange a free introductory session in person or by Skype, Facetime or ‘phone call