“I like FAQ pages.”

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a life path?

A life path is a journey through your lifetime, from the womb until now and beyond. The path travels rivers, meadows, mountains and valleys, all describing a story that only you fully know. Your personal depth, private and within a protected space, can be drawn upon as an ally on your pathway today.

During coaching you can access knowledge and information from within yourself with the aid of tools and support from the coach that will expand your contact with your personal life story and how you want to shape it as you move along.

How is coaching different than talking to a friend?

In some ways coaching can be like talking to a friend, especially if you have friends who can separate their own sets of needs in your conversations from your goals and directions. Friends are often busy managing their own lives and may not be available to play a coaching role for you on a regular and focused basis.

The coaching role is focused toward regular and reliable contact and centers around you and you only. The coach brings his or her tools, training and experience to your life path directions and maintains notes for you so he or she can track your most important interests as you move along over time.

Sometimes friends can do this for each other but friendships usually develop in a particular and unique way that includes a much wider range than mutual coaching. Coaching can complicate already established friendships, and if one person in the friendship is interested and able to play a coaching role while the other is not, this may lead to an awkward imbalance in the friendship.

When you hire a coach you are making a commitment to yourself. The intention you create by doing this attracts new possibilities toward you and tends to enrich your daily and weekly experiences in new ways.

How is coaching different than talking to a therapist?

The coaching process tends to center around assessing where you are now and where you want to go in the time ahead. As you enter into this process consciously we look at simple and practical approaches that will support you as you proceed along in your experiences.

There are many types of therapies available, each having their advantages and disadvantages. No one model fits all needs. Some therapies have similar aspects to coaching, and vice versa. There can be overlap in some areas depending on the type of therapy and/or a coach’s approach.

Some therapists deal with past pain and childhood wounds and may focus on uncovering this pain and bringing it up closer to the surface. Once you identify where the pain is and how it got there you may feel some release from pain, or you may develop strategies for dealing with it so you can move forward more easily in your life.

In coaching we don’t generally focus on this aspect of therapy unless it comes up in the course of coaching activities and conversation. Many coaches are not trained therapists and are not qualified to play an official therapist role. If old traumas from the past begin to interfere with coaching then it may be valuable to make an appointment with a qualified therapist who specializes in responding specifically to your deeper needs in this area.

Who is best suited for coaching?

Coaching is for anyone who is interested in looking at how their life path has formed and how they are traveling through it right now. If you are interested in identifying what you want in your life, coaching can support that. If you know what you want and you need support moving toward that, coaching can provide a variety of tools and approaches tailored to meet your temperament. If you are content and feeling grateful, you can use coaching to maintain that, to celebrate it, to enhance it or to develop new creative ways of moving in your life path for even greater contentment.

Coaching can also be a place for problem solving. If you are engaged in a situation that seems confusing or difficult we can use coaching to look at different types of options that might be available. We can do brainstorming to explore how different choices might affect you and other significant people within your areas of activity. During brainstorming we might learn more about what your relationship is to the difficulties and where your key values may be in conflict within yourself or others in the situation.

What is witnessing?

Witnessing is the intention by one person to notice what another person is saying, doing, or expressing while also maintaining an awareness of what he or she is feeling and thinking at the same time, usually in a state of acceptance.

When I witness you as your coach I notice what you say, do or express through your actions, words and stories from a place of acceptance without judgment. When it seems appropriate, and with your permission, I may share observations, stories, feelings or perceptions that I have experienced. The sharing can reflect back information that supports you.

Different coaches will give you different witnessing experiences, so witnessing is definitely subjective. No two experiences are ever exactly the same and no two coaches are exactly the same. However, witnessing is a powerful and simple process that is a core part of coaching and will give you the opportunity to be seen and appreciated in a positive way. This can lead to more poise and confidence in your daily and weekly experiences outside of coaching.

What is a protected space?

Your coaching time is a protected space. I protect it by listening without judgment and giving you my full attention during the session. You can protect it by setting aside time for coaching in an area without distractions and interruptions.

Coaching is a time without pressure. You can make an agenda or not, depending on your preference. If you focus on a goal and have setbacks, that can be a learning experience. You might decide to keep the goal, change it or even eliminate it.

Failure and success depend on how you want to define them. The many voices from within our environments define failure and success according to their inclinations, but the one that counts most is your voice.

What am I responsible for during coaching?

My job is to support your process. Your job is to be responsible for your life choices and actions.

 

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Who took the photos, wrote the quotes, wrote the pages, designed the layout and coded the website using HTML?

I did.

What’s with the Q?

I created the Q to separate my name from other men in my family. It could stand for questing, quizzical, quiescent, quintessential, questioning, quivering or Q-esque, as coined by some who know me due to the synchronous nature of oddities that sometimes occur in and around my life activities and that seem to be uniquely me.

Where did your mother live when she was 19?

On Balboa Street, 3 blocks up from the ocean in San Francisco.

How can I zoom in and zoom out on this page?

Press Ctrl + or Ctrl – on your keyboard. This works on any web page.

Do you have any silly problems?

I currently have an ordering disorder, I get lost when looking at café menus.