1) How can you HELP me?
I can HELP you in many different ways, regardless of who you are, where you are in the world, what your cultural and educational backgrounds are or what you've accomplished in life until this point. Exactly how I HELP you will depend on a lot of factors, many or most of which will depend on what your goals are, how B. B. A. R. T. — that is, "Big, Bold and Radically Transformational" — they are, and how serious your commitment to the process and willingness to do the work involved are.
2) What exactly do you do?
Goals are amazing things to have. They're targets that we aim for and sometimes get closer to or further away from, as we go along. There's a difference between them, wishes and dreams, though: wishes and dreams both fall into the "Gee, wouldn't it be nice if..." column, while goals are dreams with plans for either reaching or creating them. The two big problems with getting to them is that most folks don't know why their goals matter or why they aren't happening for them, A big part of what I do is to HELP change that, because if you don't know which store you're driving to or what you're going there to buy, you are absolutely guaranteed to waste an awful lot of time and money, in the process!
3) Why do you keep capitalizing the word, "HELP"?
I do this because it's important that you and others understand that I am only willing to HELP you to reach your goals and achieve greatness in any area of your life that you want to change; I cannot (and will not) do it for you. If you are serious about chaning your life, I will go all out to help you, but I will only care as much about you and your goals, and invest as much time and energy into helping you to make them come true as you do. Never more than that.
4) Is there any difference between you and other life coaches?
YES! My process is different than those of a lot of other life coaches, because it's not only based on the years of classroom training I've received and clinical experience I've built up as a Coach, but also the 6.5 decades of life experience, including overcoming abject poverty, homelessness, isolation and starvation to living out many of my dreams of financial success and comfort, and enjoying a great relationship, healthy marriage and family and the ability to help others on a regular basis. In other words, I don't just repeat words from textbooks; I actually coach what I've lived.
5) Do you do this all by yourself, or are others involved?
Answering your question depends on a couple of things. First of all, there will always be two people involved: you and I, and I will always care about you and your goals exactly as much as you do (but never more than you do), and from Day One, everything we discuss will be considered confidential, between you and I, except in five very specific circumstances. These include 1) if you are currently seeing a psychotherapist for emotional issues and we all decide to work as a team, to help you to also overcome some of the challenges that Coaching is better suited to, or 2) if I am coaching you to overcome romantic relationship issues and you'd like to include your spouse or partner, or 3) if I am coaching you to overcome workplace relationship issues and you'd like to include your supervisor or a co-worker in one or more of your coaching sessions, or 4) if, in the course of one of our coaching sessions, you happen to discuss harming yourself, or 5) if, in the course of one of our coaching sessions, you happen to discuss harming someone else (because in both of those last two circumstances, I am required by law to reports that to the appropriate authorities.) Apart from those circumstances, 100% of our work will be just between the two of us.
4) How long will it take?
Again, that depends! The question I always ask people in response to this question is "About how much should a red car cost?" What I mean by this (to use that example) is: are we talking about a new red car or an old one? is it a rusted-out 1975 Volkswagen Rabbit with 400,000 miles on it or a 2025 Ferrari 12Clilindri Spider? What features does it have (or lack)? What can it do? How fast can it go?And how vividly can you see, smell, hear, feel or taste it? Most of these details apply to other goals, as well (in slightly different ways), so how long it takes you to get from Point A to Point B will depend on how quickly you and I can reach an understanding of what each characteristic is, what step along the way looks like, and how we decide to go about getting there. (For example, it took one client almost a year to be sure of which relationship he absolutely, positively wanted to commit to, and another one only six months to transform himself from a part-time hobbyist to a full-time Division 1 athletic coach, but in both cases, my job was about HELPing with their commitment to the process and co-creating the environment that made their successes easier.
5) Is this the same as psychotherapy?
No. Although my coaching process and psychotherapy both utilize some of the same tools and exercises used by clinical psychologists, the goals and processes of the two are radically different. In Psychology, the primary goal is to diagnose an illness of mental and/or emotional health (which is an actual medical diagnosis), and once that medical diagnosis has been established, then to come up with and rigidly follow a treatment plan to (hopefully) help heal that infirmity. This extensive process typically involves devoting many months of exploring the patient's background, family history, relationship histories and work history, in order to first identify the underlying condition and begin to look at the patterns, as a means of treating the illness, until the patient is able to live a normal life again. Because of the nature of both the diagnostic and treatment processes, there is no way of predicting how long the therapy will take (or, for that matter, whether or not it will ever lead to a permanent cure). Also, perhaps most importantly, in Psychology, the doctor or other therapist is THE EXPERT and the patient is "the subject" and within that relationship, the EXPERT is always the more powerful of the two.
Coaching, on the other hand, begins with the understanding that the Coach is an expert in Coaching, the Coachee (the one being coached) is an expert in their lives, and that by working together AS A TEAM OF EQUALS towards a common goal (or goals), progress can be achieved in months, instead of years! Also, Coaching is about training you to develop tools and processes that, with a little help, you can adapt and apply to other areas of your life, pretty easily, whereas therapy is about you always needing someone else to get healthy again. So, similar tools but radically different mindsets.
6) Is this covered by insurance?
Unfortunately, no (at least not usually). Because Coaching is not based upon the belief that you are "sick" or "broken" and need to be "healed" or "fixed", the insurance policies that help to offset the costs of healing the sick do not usually cover the costs of programs that help you to get out of pain by addressing and correcting the environmental factors that lead you to fail or feel frustrated about the direction your life is heading.