The Offer

You are very accomplished

Think about what you have invested and accomplished in education and work, in relationships, friendships, and family life, in yourself. Amazing in many ways, and yet …

Strange and paradoxical isn't it? There is so much that's good in you, but that thing throws you so off-balance. It might be a person, or a circumstance, or one of your own traits or behaviors. All of us have several somethings that unbalance us – defy our intelligence, defeat our resolve, poke at our vulnerabilities, give us pain.

It might be something you can clearly identify, or vaguely identify, or not identify at all. It might seem huge or tiny on its face, but its impact is big, which is why it's on your mind. What it has done to you, and is doing to you now, matters.

Zen-ish Coaching Can Help

Zen is very interested in the present moment. Do you want to wait a little longer, or is the present moment, now, the right moment for you to begin being freer, more able? You want the problem gone, but taking it on is oddly scary, isn't it?

Nothing provides immunity from life's distress and disarray. You will have get plenty. Since you can't have immunity, you have to have resilience and resourcefulness, confidence and creativity. I can help you apply Zen-ish ideas and skills that reduce the pain, and enable you to respond in ways that are well-aligned with your values and objectives. If you are not even sure what those are right now, we'll clarify them.

Challenges will still come. But because you will be more skillful, they will arise less often, and distress you less intensely. You will navigate to better resolutions. You will operate with more self-confidence, and feel more calm and peace even when you are in the midst of life's muddy waters. Do you want to start moving in that direction right now? Does it make sense to not start now?

Whatever currently pains you, you are here now, looking at this website, wondering if this is a place where you can get the help you need.

Let's talk

Let's talk – no commitment, no pitch. Since I am retired, there will be no sales pressure on my side. You can contact me here.

Logistics and Cost

At the top level it's pretty simple. If we decide to work together, we meet weekly over Zoom.

Whatever issue you bring is one that has been difficult for you to solve until now. So, it's reasonable to assume it will take a commitment to more than a couple of sessions to make the degree of progress you are after. At the same time, neither one of us wants coaching to go on endlessly, nor should it. You and I both want to see improvement in weeks, not years, which is a good fit for coaching. Accordingly, I offer six-week, eight-week, and ten-week packages.

Many coaches charge upward of $3000 for six sessions. (And if it's business-oriented coaching it could be $15,000 or $20,000!) Do you want to pay $3000 for six sessions? I don't. Since I use Zoom instead of renting expensive office space, and am already retired, I can afford to charge significantly less.

To be more accessible, my package prices are $900 for six weeks, $1200 for eight, $1500 for ten. (In case math doesn't automatically happen in your head, that's a 70% comparative cost reduction!) If we are a great fit but my fee is too much for your circumstances, we can likely come to an agreement. I recommend most clients sign up for eight weeks. That gives you enough time to experiment and reflect, and not just rush through trying to implement things you have not really made your own. I offer six weeks, but that's a little tight for most concerns. Consider eight.

What actually happens across a series of coaching sessions?

Frankly, most coaches don't have much to offer beyond pep talks and "accountability" – making you feel bad if you don't do something "on schedule." They don't have the training or experience to do anything else, and they are likely passionately convinced that their personal view of the world is the right view for everyone they work with.

What I do in a session is listen closely to what you say and what you don't say, and then, with compassion and humor, I challenge the beliefs and assumptions I think are keeping you stuck. I bear witness to your feelings, and show you the common humanity in those feelings so you feel less alone. Paradoxically, our biggest problems are simultaneously achingly personal and not at all unique to us. In the history of the 117 billion people who have ever lived, none of us is the only person to ever face the emotional or intellectual challenges that press upon us. Details and combinations matter, but the themes that transcend them matter more. My goal is to help you arrive at a response as personal as the problem you are addressing, in part by seeing them as less personal, and considering ideas that have helped many, many others time and again. Personal answers to personal questions are the only answers that actually stick. But those distinctly personal answers are often found by considering what is universal in the human experience.

Most of our sessions go something like this: you describe what's going on, I ask questions that push on the parts of the picture that seem incomplete or assumed, and we work together toward a clearer view of what you actually want, what's actually in the way, and what you can actually do about it. Typically, the what to do about it part is to take a specific action or set of actions that emerge from the discussion or your continuing thoughts afterward, and see what that produces. Often, the most powerful thing is coming to a change in perspective that transforms your relationship with a problem. This is can be immensely helpful in itself and also greatly clarify what actions will be most likely to bring you closer to your objectives and which current behaviors should be stopped.

A note on scope: Coaching is not therapy, and I'm not a licensed therapist. Therapy does deep excavation of the past – it's the right tool when the past is actively running the present in ways that require clinical skill to untangle. Coaching works with where you are now and where you want to be. Sometimes achieving that comes from, after, or concurrently with therapy. It can often occur without therapy. I will let you know if I think therapy is indicated.

Here is a compressed example of my work with an actual client. A father came to me after his child came out as trans. Rather than telling him what to think or feel, or doing an archeological dig on everything that came before this moment, we worked through what this meant to him, what kind of relationship he had and wanted to have with his child, and what his next actions should reflect. He developed clarity within the context of his own feelings and values, which in this case evolved how he felt, and freed him to interact with his child in a manner consistent with his values, even though that was challenging. This was three sessions, not three years. This is how good coaching is supposed to work.

What you will not get from me: a one-size-fits-all template for life, or an arbitrary schedule you're expected to perform against. Unlike many coaches, I won't impose external goals on you or make you feel bad about the variability we all encounter in our own progress. And there will be no pressure to continue past the point where our work together is genuinely useful. I'm here for the very customized-to-you work of seeing how your thoughts, feelings, and actions are helping or hindering the life you want to be living.