Is this you?
You want more out of life–more purpose and fulfillment—more abundance—more life balance—more clarity—more peace?—more time for what’s most important. You sense you have untapped potential. You know you want to move forward, but you don’t know exactly where or how.
Or maybe you have a pretty clear vision of what you want to create, accomplish, and have in your life. You have a thousand great ideas, but somehow they don’t ever gel into an action plan that feels right and do-able. So you stay stuck, sensing the possibilities, feeling the longing, but never able to concretely move towards their manifestation.
You long for an opportunity to give yourself some attention, to find your true self, and to live more authentically from your core values? You find yourself asking, “Who am I and what do I really want anyway?” Perhaps you’ve been so busy following other people’s rules and taking care of everyone but yourself that you can’t even remember the dreams you had for yourself.
If you see yourself in any of these scenarios, Life Coaching can help.
What are the Benefits of Life Coaching?
Life coaching is an investment in your own happiness and fulfillment as a human being. It can help you to:
• Assess where you are now in your life—what’s working and not working
• Examine the various domains of your life (for instance, relationships, work, social contribution, spiritual development, self-care, etc.) to determine if some are getting more than a fair share of your time and attention while other important domains languish
• Surface your longings and dreams to build a clear and compelling vision for your future
• Find greater meaning and satisfaction by identifying your key values and designing a value-based plan for positive change
• Develop realistic, actionable steps to make the changes you desire in your life
• Find the certainty and self confidence needed to move forward with your plans
• Stay motivated and on track with your action plan
• Manage stress and reduce feelings of being overwhelmed
• Identify and focus on what is most important among the multitude of opportunities and challenges facing you
• Find greater work/life balance
What exactly is Life Coaching and what can you expect?
“Life coaching is a professional relationship that supports people in achieving extraordinary results in their lives,” according to the International Coach Federation of which I am a member.
Life Coaching is a series of collaborative and focused conversations about you and what you want to achieve in your life. The ultimate goal and agenda are yours. We will start by exploring your current situation and what you would like to change or expand in order to achieve the life that you want. We may start with broad questions such as:
• Where are you now in your life?
• What’s working? What’s not?
• Where do you find the deepest meaning and fulfillment in life?
• Where would you like to be in 5 years?
• What strengths and resources can you harness to move you forward?
From this phase of initial exploration, a more concrete vision of your path forward begins to emerge. Together we will explore and evaluate specific options for moving you in the direction of your dreams. We will identify your relevant strengths and resources and find creative ways to employ them to achieve your goals. If you find some gaps in your readiness, we may develop a learning and action plan to fill those gaps.
Within this broad framework, you will set the session-by-session agenda. You will identify exactly how you would like to use our time together in each session. It is my job to keep us focused on your session objective while holding your larger ultimate goal and life vision as our guiding compass. In each session, you will discern what action steps you feel ready to make to move forward. Sometimes they will be baby steps and sometimes great leaps. In either event, I will hold your commitment in sacred trust and support you as you move forward into concrete action.
As your Life Coach, my goal is to support you in your growth towards a life that is in alignment with your values, goals and dreams. I will help you to clarify where you are now and where you want to be. Through a process of collaborative exploration, I will help you to identify your strengths and resources and develop a realistic and achievable action plan for manifesting your dreams. Most importantly, you will learn to more fully access your inner wisdom to design the life that you truly, truly want.
How is life coaching different from psychotherapy or consulting?
While the three processes are related, they have a different set of underlying assumptions and focus. Psychotherapy generally is inner-focused and problem-centered. It often assumes that there is something within the client’s psyche that needs to be healed.
Consulting generally focuses on external, situational issues. It presumes that the consultant has expert knowledge that will be transmitted in a teaching or advising format to the client. The client’s inner experience is generally not seen as an important part of the equation.
In contrast, Life Coaching sees you as a healthy individual who is the expert on your own life. It focuses on where you are now, where you want to go, and how to get there. It assumes that you possess strengths, skills, and values that can be harnessed to design and achieve the life you want. As a life coach I will support you as your co-explorer and thinking partner as you clarify your goals and build a sound plan to achieve the life you desire.
How do I use Focusing in Life Coaching?
Coaching relies on powerful questioning to enable you to define your path forward followed by goal setting and concrete action planning to carry you along that path to your destination. While many coaches work primarily at the purely cognitive level, I find that when my clients add Focusing to the usual coaching methods, they make faster, surer decisions that their whole self is fully behind and they are then able to get unstuck and move forward to achieve their goals.
Focusing is a gentle but powerful body-oriented process for making deep and lasting change in your life. It is a natural process for listening deeply to yourself and getting in touch with your own inner wisdom. You can learn more about Focusing here. Focusing is extremely helpful in coming to a deep understanding about what you truly want and in finding your right next steps forward. And for those times in coaching when a client sets an intention and develops an action plan, but just can’t seem to get going on it, Focusing can reveal and dissolve the inner barriers to moving forward.
One of my clients had this to say about Focusing-oriented coaching:
“Coaching, combined or complimented with Focusing, was, honestly, more effective in identifying my true values, fears and desires than any other approach I’ve ever attempted, including counselling, reading self-help books, conducting self-assessments and listening circles. Both the mind work of coaching with the physical work of focusing prompted a much more rich and authentic process than anything I’ve done in the past.” –Nicole C.
This case study demonstrates how Focusing can complement more standard coaching methods:
I was coaching an entrepreneur who was having a devil of a time getting himself organized. He wanted to eliminate the clutter in his office and develop a sustainable organizational system. He had read books on how to get organized, but – guess what – no change! No amount of determination and willpower could move him towards his goal. I asked him if he wanted to try a little experiment to see if he could gain some insight into what was going on. He was game.
I invited him to close his eyes, take a few deep breaths, and scan his body at his own pace until he felt relaxed and ready to move on. I then suggested that he imagine himself going through the steps of the organizational system he wanted to implement—see himself in detail picking up a sheet of paper, deciding what action it needed, and placing it where it belonged. When he had fully developed that imaginary scene, I asked him to notice how he was feeling in his body. I invited him to linger with the body feel of the whole situation. After pausing to sense inwards, he became aware of two parts of himself, a bossy part that was pushing him to get organized and a rebellious part that was having none of it! This surprised him greatly since previously he had only been in touch with the rational, planful side. Yet here he was face-to-face a more hidden part of himself that was resisting change. As he put it, “I don’t want to eat my spinach even when it’s me who’s telling me to do so!”
Focusing allowed him to see that the harder he pushed, the harder his inner rebel pushed back. With the direct experience of these inner dynamics, I guided him to focus on how it would feel in his body when he had achieved the goal that he had set out to attain. This body awareness allowed him to experience a positive pull forward that the inner rebel did not need to resist. Result: His motivation and excitement about the upcoming office paper purge skyrocketed. He went on to accomplish his goal, not by ruthlessly pushing himself through the project, but by allowing the positive energy of his bodily sense of how it would feel to work in his newly uncluttered workspace pull him effortlessly forward.
What about Confidentiality?
Conversations are completely confidential between the coach and coachee except in the unlikely event that a release is required for legal reasons. If an organization is paying for your coaching services, we will provide them with periodic status updates, but nothing else will be shared without your permission.
How can my experience benefit you?
I am a Certified Professional Coach and a member of the International Coach Federation. As such, I fully honor the ICF’s values and Code of Ethics. ICF members are committed to reliability, openness, acceptance and congruence and uphold the values of Integrity, Excellence, Collaboration, and Respect.
I bring a variety of helpful perspectives and years of experience to our coaching relationship. I have decades of real-life business experience as well as training and experience in psychotherapeutic avenues to change. I also am a certified Focusing professional with two decades of teaching Focusing and guiding people in their inner explorations. With a doctorate in Human Development, I have studied the stages of adult development and transformative change and am deeply committed to supporting you on your journey towards self-actualization. You can learn more about my life experiences here.
Must we meet in person?
Not at all. Coaching is equally effective whether conducted in person, by telephone, or in an online audio-visual platform. It is becoming more common to coach virtually over the phone or via online audio-visual platform. Based on my years of experience with online teaching and coaching, I have found that the online experience provides a very focused, intimate and safe environment for confidential communications. Moreover, it saves the cost and time of travel and allows the client to enjoy their coaching session in the privacy and comfort of his or her own home or office. There is nothing “remote” about so-called remote sessions. One of my clients had this to say about telephonic sessions:
“I was concerned at first that conducting the sessions over the phone wouldn’t provide the intimacy needed to be honest, but it was surprisingly comfortable, perhaps even more so since I was in my own home for each of the sessions.”--Nicole C.
What can you expect from our time together?
Here is what some of my clients have said:
“The most powerful trend that I saw in my experience with Susan was a re-recognition of who my true self is and what my core values are. Coaching really helped to tune me into my inner voices and desires in a way that I hadn’t been able to do for years, due to obligations and outside stimuli. This unpacking was invaluable, not only to my career, but to my development as a wife, mother, daughter, friend and community member.”–Nicole C.
“I always feel like I can tackle anything after our coaching sessions–they’re very motivating! I think I’ll go climb a mountain or something!”–Kathryn B.
“Your ability to reveal the inner sense within our consciousness has had a great impact on my decision making process. Thank you for your attention and time you have given me.”–Olga R.
“You have truly found your life calling and it shows. Your enthusiasm is infectious and I have greatly benefited from our conversations. You are a very effective coach and you have pushed me to greater heights that I don’t feel I would have reached on my own.”– Sarah S., Lieutenant, US Navy
“Having Susan as my coach has been an awesome and rewarding experience. Our sessions together have been thought-provoking and motivating.” –Valerie G., Project Director
“Wonderful. I feel empowered and ready to feel vulnerable. Thank you for the Focusing coaching.” –Frank O.
“You seem grounded and creative – and gifted at turning possibilities into action.” Shawn M., Faculty Member & Artist/writer
“Finally, I learned that the effect of coaching is genuine. I felt lifted internally, psychologically, and emotionally. Actually realizing that I had the opportunity to change situations under my control was enlightening and empowering.”–Maria D.
How can you schedule a life coaching appointment?
If you feel ready to proceed, you can schedule a 60-minute appointment at a time that is convenient for you using my online scheduler. If you prefer, you may email me at [email protected] or call me at 617-967-0798 for an appointment.
You may pay for sessions one at a time or purchase blocks of four appointments at a savings. This advance commitment will both help your budget and help you to honor your own commitment to self-exploration and personal growth.
No matter which you choose, you are in complete control of the process. You may stop or take a break from coaching at any time. If you have purchased a block of appointments, you may either retain your unused sessions on account or request a refund for any unused appointments.
Want to Know More Before You Decide?
If you would like to get to know me, see if we are a good match, or ask questions about how I work and whether life coaching or another process is best for you, you are welcome to schedule a free 30-minute consultation here. I look forward to meeting you and supporting you on your journey of growth.
