Frequently Asked Questions

What would you say is at the heart of Art of Life Coaching’s approach to serving others?

Focusing on a client’s fullest expression of themselves in the world rather than on some dysfunction-why something isn’t working.  Our purpose is to help a client move headlong into manifesting their heart’s desire in its entirety.

Our work is based on a simple principle: Every dream is a doorway to the power of God within us-the power of our unlimited consciousness.  Each of us creates our lives.  And the lives we create are determined by where we place our attention.

 

In a nutshell, how does that happen?

Most importantly, it happens in collaboration.  Art of Life Coaching is not a traditional doctor/patient relationship, a hierarchical affiliation where one person is the “expert” and the other is there to receive the “expert’s” wisdom.  Art of Life Coaching is an alliance of two (or more) beings who come together to learn from one another, to honor the power of one another, and to serve each other’s life adventure.  Everyone is there to grow.  The client is always in charge of his or her choices.

 

What does this mean in action?

Just as a client would not engage in a relationship with a coach if that relationship did not serve the client’s life, Art of Life coaches operate by the same principle: becoming professional allies only with those with whom a collaboration is mutually rewarding. 

This principle is one of the reasons why Art of Life Coaching is especially effective.  It is also why the process begins with identifying a client’s intention and then expressing that intention symbolically in whatever manner the client chooses.  Some clients know their deepest intention already, others discover it with our help. 

 

And after the client’s intention is identified, what then?

Then the collaboration between client and coach assesses the resources (internal and external) that a client has available to support them.  Perhaps some of these resources are ones the client hasn’t appreciated are available.  This is followed by developing new ways of viewing or organizing these resources so that a client can utilize them most effectively.  And, equally vital, helping a client track over time the ways in which their choices are lived in concert with their intention.

 

It sounds like your work centers around specific projects-not just helping a client be more happy.

That’s absolutely true.  The only commitments that matter are those that are aligned with action.  Moreover, the actions that matter most are those that are aligned with commitments. 
Action makes palpable the quality we are seeking through our intention.  This is why Art of Life Coaching programs include a creative project born out of a client’s greatest passion. 

Helping a client shape that passion into bite-size chunks, things that are doable every day, all day, waking or sleeping is all part of Art of Life Coaching

Clients deliberately create an outward lifestyle around the joy of their own inner adventure.  In the process, they become more steady, more capable of making healthy choices, and thus more willing and able to create (and co-create with others) new and broader dreams. 

 

Are you saying that you don’t address what may be preventing a client from achieving the dream they want-barriers such as low self-esteem or a brutal home life?

This is such a wonderful question.  No, we’re not saying that.  We address whatever comes forward.  It’s just that the framework in which serve focuses on what’s possible, not on what’s broken.

The biggest obstacles in life are not the events or people outside of us, but rather our own lack of clarity about such things as our divine nature, our commitment to be or do something, a plan of action, and the necessary support to make one’s intention a reality.

 

Why is your collaborative methodology key to this approach?

Collaboration, as we define it in Art of Life Coaching, means co-creative leadership guided by principle held in common.
When humans join forces as principle-centered partners to co-create something, a synergy occurs in which many essential qualities for realizing any goal are enhanced.  Among them: clarity, inspiration, courage, resilience, and humor.

In working with Art of Life Coaching, it is often ground-breaking for a client to participate in a professional relationship based on a paradigm of union and reciprocity rather than the more common linear model of healer/patient. 

Art of Life Coaching uses this methodology because, quite simply, it optimizes possibility rather than limits it.

To follow an intention wholeheartedly, we must be open to all that the intention will bring us-including things that are “beyond our wildest dreams.”  The collaborative nature of Art of Life Coaching facilitates this openness.

 

How do you measure success?

The short answer is a client’s satisfaction with their life.  We at Art of Life Coaching sometimes imagine that we’re running an old neighborhood diner where the only measure of success is whether our customers leave feeling satisfied.

Such satisfaction stems, at least in part, from the degree to which a client feels capable of effectively influencing their world-secure in the confidence that, wherever their aspirations and intentions lead them, they can take healthy, concrete steps to reach their objective while making the journey a joyful one. 

 

Do you represent some sort of religious or spiritual tradition?

Not really.  Our core understandings are as old as humankind itself, and are shared by many

The true nature of every human is divine.  Only ignorance keeps us from appreciating that we already are everything we could possibly want.  We need only learn how to become more aware of this truth.

All life experience is for the benefit of the self to realize its identity as the Source of existence.  God has become us.

Differences and disappointment are among the most powerful agents of self-awakening.
All the love and understanding we will ever know has always resided within us.

Ultimately, there is only Spirit-the energy or vibration from which the entire universe is manifest.  Separation is an illusion.  Our experience as human beings is the result of where we focus our intention.  We are an active participant in the creation of not just our own life, but of the entire universe itself-moment by moment.