Home > Life Coaching
How I Life-Coach My Clients

Contents of this page:
As a result of both my personal and counseling/coaching experiences, I've come up with what I think are general principles and practices that can be used by most people in their attempts to understand themselves, their world, and to improve the quality--and most likely the quantity/length--of their lives.

I have a Master of Education (MEd) in Counseling, and I still provide psychotherapy to some clients---when necessary. But my preferred method of helping people is to life-coach them.

Brief Sketch of My Coaching Process

Assessment: a big picture of where you're at now.
Vision-building: what you want, and what you don't.
Detailed planning: specific, small steps.
Goal-setting, criteria definition: when & where to take steps, and how to recognize success.
Recognition & support: track & celebrate successes, and sustain momentum.
Repetition: apply your new skills to other areas of your life.

I'm also in the process of creating self-paced courses that you can use, with a little help from someone like me, that can be more convenient and less expensive than having one-on-one life-coaching for each life area. (The best combination might be to have me help you with one area, and then you work on other areas with the self-paced materials... with minor coaching from me in troublesome spots.)

An Agreement for Our Mutual Success

I'm a fair person. I love to set up win/win agreements. In the case of coaching, I sit down with my clients during a free initial consultation and help them to do a brief assessment of their situation and goals. If we both think it will benefit both of us to work together, then we can make more specific written agreements about how we want to proceed. I am open to varying my fees according to your resources, because I love to do this work. In other words, my main motivation is not to make money but to help. However, I'm not independently wealthy and have to pay my living expenses.

To set up a free initial consultation,
please send me email. (I don't like to publish my phone number on the internet, due to telemarketing exposure.)

Want More Info Before Making an Appointment?

I've created this web page for several purposes. One of the most fun is that I've been able to present and explain myself to others. I really enjoy coming up with ideas and perspectives, and then sharing them with other people. So in order to learn more about me and my ideas, click on any or all of the following links. (All pages have links to even more pages.)

Life Coaching vs. Counseling

I love to see people identify and get what they want, in a quick and efficient manner. During this process, problems can also be identified. Everyone has them, and I truly believe that everyone--at one time or another in their life--needs psychotherapy. However, I'm slowly moving from that paradigm, and heading toward life-coaching. Why? Because, in very generalized terms, life-coaching is more about trying new actions and building new habits, and not focusing on resolving internal issues. There is definitely a time for counseling/psychotherapy, but often it can be "brief therapy"--which more resembles life-coaching.

If a client presents with a problem which I believe requires more in-depth work, we can discuss what approach to take. I might provide counseling/psychotherapy, or I may refer that person to another therapist. Personally, I get more satisfaction from helping people via coaching than via psychotherapy for two reasons. 1) I prefer to keep a wide perspective, like helping more clients to focus on the sustainability of "spaceship Earth". And sometimes I don't have the patience to help people struggle through weeks/months of deep inner work. On the other hand, if a client works hard and makes steady progress, I usually enjoy it. 2) I feel an urgency to work on planetary sustainability, so I'm choosing to focus on coaching a larger number of people "widely", rather than counseling a small number of people "deeply".