"WHETHER YOU THINK YOU CAN, OR YOU THINK YOU CAN'T -
YOU'RE RIGHT."
-HENRY FORD
The more joy you feel, the more joy you are able to spread. And our goal can be summed up in one word – finding joy. Okay two words and I expect to laugh and be flawed with you on the way.
It is a pleasure to discuss the nature of goals with you, a privilege to consider your advancement and opportunity.
This is a sanctuary; a place of challenge. Let’s dig in.
Fields Of Interest
Happy to speak with anyone regarding enrichment, and am endeared to the unorthodox so be welcome to contact with anything; here are areas of special interest.
- Professionals – who wish to further define or enhance and inspect their own professionalism. There comes a time when you look around and start to flirt with the P word for yourself. Where are you on your journey? Let’s build! But this is not an exclusive category, define yourself.
- Performers/Performance Anxiety – Individuals whose frequent requirements include performance and/or being in front of people or who have performance anxiety of any kind. It is possible to combine this with actual theater coaching if you wish.
- Small business challenges and growth – I have owned a small business for 20 years, starting from zero capital and becoming a seven-figure/year entity. Logistics, outlook, trouble-shooting, inner- and outer- management.
- Any Artist; any artist bemused by their economic outlook.
- Chronic Pain Sufferers – Individuals with chronic pain and individuals struggling to support loved ones struggling with chronic pain.
- At-Risk Population – With years of work teaching teens in an at-risk setting, there is a particular interest in those who may have the heart of a lion but the influences of a hyena, individuals who look around themselves and are beginning to feel equipped for more.
- Those who feel to much or too little demand.
- Those whose mental or spiritual gas tank feels at a low ebb.
- Covid doldrums.
- More.
LETS TALK
What is the roles of systems in a healthy outlook for you? When to invite routine, when to break the mold?
Iron will, or a more pliable center of gravity? What is the path to a win, and how do you define a victory?
Curiosity, spiritual exuberance. How do we continually discover ourselves?
The benefits of life coaching are what you make of them. What is your passion?
My Story
A touring street performer, then a third-shift worker, these were my twenty-nothing years. An impressive three-time college dropout, I majored in directionless-ness. The prevailing school of thought was resentment and my lot, to be unlucky. Also, debt.
Took the better part of a decade to realize, truly realize… no help was coming. A path of misfortune was all she wrote, unless I forged a different path. No one else was coming with a magic doorway. No trust fund would come to fruition, no one lurked around the corner with a winning lottery ticket. And that realization, was the key. The realization that it was up to me, was the most significant variable in the equation. It wasn’t too late. It’s not too late.
Others can advise, others can influence, but the individual has to do the work. Make a plan, take step one.
The wonderful thing about coaching is that it is adaptable: it could be a discussion about an essential path, a check-in about healthy habits, it could be affirmation, it could be a meeting for strategic tweaks. Or something unique to you.
Balance of Opportunity
Access to fulfillment and enrichment raises questions about “opportunity”. Are you in possession of opportunity?
Some would say no, they or others are “stuck” for one reason or another. Others might say there’s too much opportunity—if you follow the pastimes of the majority of people in this country.
Just go on any social media format and you’ll have thirty ads, voices, “shorts”, pictures, salespersons telling you what to do, what to buy, what you’re missing and how much you could be doing. It is a golden age for snake-oil salesmen, exactly because most of us don’t know it.
You may even feel the typical pressure social media and apps tend to inspire, exactly because these salespersons seem so fulfilled, and there you are eating chips, watching them.
And even if the chips you’re eating are the healthiest of kale chips, in a mere matter of moments you can rest assured someone will come along with kale chips plus. And then, an article on the lack of conflict-free kale, and then someone calls you a millennial or a boomer because of your relation to this product and on and on it goes, a carousel of a feedback loop of the nonessential.
Ironically one of the keys to fulfillment is limiting these voices (or bolstering your constitution in the face of them) in the interest of developing your own Voice. Growth from quietude and breath. To be deliberate, in who and what you choose for fellowship.
Coaching Qualifications
A.) Enthusiasm
People are a never-ending stream of wonder, and how we relate to one another—what a wonderful inspiration! Strategy and tactics, micro or macro, in the interest in seeing anyone enhance their sense of solution and joy, these are amazing things! And in an arena where the word “Can’t” does not exist—there are only different speeds and definitions for fulfillment.
B.) Joy
Each year for twenty years I have made more money than the one before. I own several properties, personally designed or built over nights and weekends. I enjoy life coaching as a professional hobby, have the privilege of leading a fantastic business team, travel extensively (before and after covid, anyway), and work pretty much every day because it is an easy source of enrichment and challenge.
How did life turn around from those humbling twenty-nothing years? Through incredible talent! Of course not. Through learning to “grind”? In part, yes, hard work is valuable, but more important is to enjoy what you do. We all know people who would be superbly pleasant even if they spent shifts shoveling sewage. And we all know people who could make a lush job or circumstance entirely miserable in short order.
Inner joy. The secret is joy. Name another purpose for your breath, and we can set Joy one level higher. For example if you propose your purpose to be your children, your children are your light and joy.
C.) Reading
Napoleon said, “Show me a family of readers, and I will show you the people who move the world.” (One imagines the sentiment sounding more poetic in French.) His views on imperialism, not so much, but the man could turn a phrase. Wonderful, too, the phrase stresses community rather than individual. Show me a family of readers…
I enjoy Freud (as literature), Nietzsche, Proust, Bronte, Tolstoy, Shakespeare and so many more because they are constant comprehensive challenges. The bible (as literature) and seminal literary works such as the Aeneid, Beowulf, The Divine Comedy, The Canterbury Tales etc., these supply not pretension nor access to erudite academic circles (I’m not aware of those circles anyway), but a more loving understanding of where western civilization came from (for good or ill), and the camaraderie of those writers who through the ages took the greatest poetic leaps from line to line, page to page. These influences, frankly, have led to significant improvements in business and interpersonal acumen, albeit in a society which seems to value intellect a little less each year. But that, too, is an opportunity.
My bookshelf is also packed with works on leadership and organization, business and finance, education and drive. Combined with 25 years of teaching and working in professional theater, there is a wonderful mingling of seemingly boring self-improvement techniques and theatrical savvy, and a wealth of experience navigating the day-to-day anxieties of performance and self-appraisal with results.
So there, a piece of my story. What is yours?
And may I ask you a question? Who is writing it?
Who is writing your story? Is it you, or is it done for you? You, or is your arc determined by governments, sales entities, and others? You, or something else?
If it is you, then I suggest further that it is you who determines when one chapter draws to a close, another begins. You who chooses which arc matters to you. You who chooses where you find fellowship. You who decides a determined path towards greater or lesser anxiety in the year of our lord 2022. You who picks a path. You who does the work and makes the work fun. A coach just provides a yoohoo.
Sorry. Couldn’t help myself.
Yes, I can help myself. Your turn. – Craig Nelson
RATES & AVAILABILITY
55 minute sessions are currently available (in-person only) days, nights and weekends.
Rate is $140/hr. If you cannot afford the services of a life coach (or if half-rate is more manageable), please apply anyway.
Location: I have offices in West Hatfield, MA and in Leverett, MA.
COVID POLICY: Mask required. Transparent masks preferred and a new clear mask will be provided.
