Work With Me

In a Nutshell:

Choices are what determine where you take your life. If you are anything like I’ve been at different times in my life, there is a part of you that would rather you not make those choices. You want to get from (here) to (there) but you aren’t sure where to start in getting (there). Wherever you happen to be in your life right this minute, you are at a choicepoint.

Choicepoint Coaching: $150 per session or $525  for 4 sessions

Recommended Coaching Commitment – 12 weeks

What’s Choicepoint Coaching from This Old Brain?

That is (The Story) that Part of Your Brain/Mind Wants You to Buy

If you’ve been reading This Old Brain.Net you know your mind is really there to protect you, but in doing that it wants you to stay the same. That’s where I come in as your coach.

The Encyclopedia Version: Choicepoint coaching from This Old Brain is a unique brand of coaching that helps you get your mind out of the way when you want to move forward. You have the BIG Ideas, YOU know what you want, so in this coaching process you make all the decisions. With this brain/mind focused coaching, you do that even when (That Part) of the mind wants you to do the same old thing, the safe thing. Together we will work on building and maintaining  the motivation, creative thinking, and emotional intelligence that will power you through to your own kick-ass life.

Who are you?

You are a boomer and you aren’t finished yet!

One way to look at it is that I work with all the other “me’s” (I know that apostrophe doesn’t go there but it really looked dumb without it) out there in the world. You are probably a boomer, maybe an Xer. You are either man or woman and you are probably ready, willing, and scared to death to get off the dime and get going alone.

I have an idea what it’s like to be in a major transition in life, to have a milion ideas, more gumption and energy than I know what to do with and still struggle with following through on the choices that need to be made. I’ve been there and was lucky enough to find the people I needed to guide me through those times.

Having survived major illness, I know what it is like to put all of my available energy into one major focus just to survive. That illness sucked. There is no doubt about that. I am not a big believer in positive thinking; I do believe in positive doing.  more about paying attention and mindfulness than I ever thought I would learn. Or ever wanted to, for that matter.

How I can help:

There are four broad areas of help I can give you:

• I can help you decide where you want to head your life.
  I’ve helped clients identify core values for moving forward,  brainstorm ideas for next steps, develop brain, body, and personal fitness plans. I’ve helped clients move beyond brain fitness so they can do and remember the important parts of life.
• I can help you design  your perfect business.
  Boomers in this transitional time of life are perfectly poised to start or grow a business. I’ve helped clients draw out the ideas they already have to create a feasible business plan including internet, blogging, and social media. Far from being an expert, I am learning and sharing what I learn on a daily basis..
• I can help you figure out how to live with the stress you have or change your life to reduce the load.
  I can help you understand how stress works in your life and help you find ways to change your relationships with it. Honestly, your well-being means something very different from what you may have been taught. And, when you come down to it, your well-being and your self-determination mean everything. I can help you find that perfect balance point so you can do all those things you planned to do as you grow older and wiser.
• The time to start these things is now. Taking care of yourself before disease gets a foothold is obviously the best route to take. Keeping your health and your wits about you is much easier than trying to get it back with even today’s medical interventions.

• I can help you work more effectively in relationships at work and homeLet’s face it, sometimes life depends on how well we get along with others. In that area, I can help you with the challenges faced throughout life in connecting with other people. I can help you better understand and master your life through changing the reactions to anger and other strong emotions into response-ability and healthier, more productive, and fruitful relationships with others.

So, yes, I can help you build the life you want and make the choices you have always want to make through brain based coaching.

You Should Also Know…

1. You and I design our relationships together.
   I am as invisible or as active, as questioning or directive, as hard or soft as you and I decide will work best for you to get where you want to go. No two coaching relationships are alike. It’s actually pretty exciting having a relationship with clients that are absolutely unique and at the same time so uniquely human.
2. One thing that will really define our relationships -  When I am working with you, for that time, YOU ARE MY ONE and ONLY CLIENT.
   What we will be looking for intensely and intentionally are the common threads that will help you continually succeed, even at times when you fail. And the honest truth is that we will fail at times, and we will handle it, and we will continue onward.
3. In that same vein, I take a maximum of three clients at a time, so there is a short waiting list. If you register, this is something I will let you know immediately.
4. On failing. If you have looked at my “About” page, you know many of the mistakes I have made throughout life, many of which had some pretty dire consequences. I want you to take that as encouragement. As Frank Sinatra sang…

   I’ve been a puppet, a pauper, a pirate,
   A poet, a pawn and a king.
   I’ve been up and down and over and out
   And I know one thing:
   Each time I find myself, flat on my face,
   I pick myself up and get back in the race.

   And Churchill defined success…

   Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm

5. Our time will not be wasted.
   As your coach, my goal from moment one is to help you reach your goals. I am not an advisor, for the most part, I am a questioner. I am trained to ask the questions that will move you forward as effectively as possible. Does that mean that if I have a tip or an idea I won’t share it with you. Absolutely not! I get to excited to be neutral. Bear that in mind. Your success is my success.
6. If you think you don’t have it together enough to move forward, welcome to the club.
   

   Some of the most successful people I have ever met have been some of the most deranged nut cases. And they built in to their success. Dave Navarro, also known as the Launch Coach, talks about this. None of us have our shit together all the time. We are like the inchworm reaching out from the edge of a branch trying to find a foothold.
   And we do it anyway. That is the key, the absolute key.

What I Know to be True (and why that’s important to you)

You are an adult, and more than likely, an adult of the baby boomer generation. I think there is a societal norm that as we age we should role over, play dead, and mind our own business. If you work with me, you don’t buy into that story. At least you don’t want to buy into it. There is a ton of societal pressure to believe that story, and it tends to sink into our brains.

When you work with me, I won’t allow you to buy into that story. Why? Because when you work with me, you have decided that you aren’t willing to quit growing, to quit being motivated to live life to the absolute best of your ability, to continue creating and maintaining the brain that has gotten you this far. You have also decided that you are going to use it to do the things you want to do, whether that is to be there for your children and grandchildren, to stay fit and as athletic as possible, or to maintain and expand your social network.

Or whatever else fits with what you value.

Why Should You Hire this Bozo on the Bus?

Good question. It is something you have to decide.

Although, I have been to graduate school, and gone through an extensive coaching program at the Alfred Adler Institute, I have never been able to make myself use the lingo of either the coaching of the business world. I coach from life experience and use things I have learned in classroom settings when they apply.

Am I a certified life coach? Frankly, it pains me to even say those words. The one thing I for certain agree with from some of my coaching professors – You are creative, resourceful and whole.

In other words, you’ve got what it takes to have the life you want to have.

• If you are sixty years old and out of shape, you may not be ready to run a marathon (and I never understood why anyone would want to, anyway), but you can sure as hell get yourself on an exercise program.
• If you can’t write like Elmore Leonard, you may not be ready for the great American novel, but you can find an outlet for your writing. Hell, you can start a blog.

You get the idea.

Think of me as a navigator. You tell me where you want to go and I will work to find you the best route to get there. When you have a flat tire, we’ll get it changed. If there is a detour, we’ll either get through it or get around it. You always have your hands on the steering wheel, your foot on both the gas and the breaks. Direction and speed are always in your control.

I’m pretty good at this. I’ve been an educator, writer, counselor, and coach for the past 20+ years, and I am continuing to learn daily. I’d love to put this experience to work for you.

Why is this the Time for YOU?

It’s a cliche, I know, but if not now, when? If not you, then who?

Let me allow you inside my head for a minute. I’m probably at least as old as you are. For a long time, I sat on my ass thinking that whatever I did, I couldn’t afford to fail, because at my age, who has the time?

And so I sat. And did nothing.

Then I got cancer. And of course, it really pissed me off. And what pissed me off was the time I wasted. A friend of mine was about 45 years old and thinking of going to Law School. His argument against it was that by the time he finished he would be around 48. I wish I could take credit for this, but another friend said to him, “Well, it looks like you have a choice to make. You can be 48 years old and be a lawyer, or you can just be 48 years old.” He went to law school. That was 20 years ago and he recently returned to school again.

And as the Zen master would say, Now is Always the Time.

What do you want to do?

Get Started Now

Ready to get started? Then:

1. Click on one of the buttons below and select your plan.
2. Then use the form below and let me know several times when you are available for coaching.
3. I’ll contact you within 24 hours and send you the link to my online calendar so you can choose the time that works best for you.
4. We will hit the ground running. In our first call, we will design how you would like our coaching relationship to be, what you want to accomplish in your coaching time, where your (there) is, and some ways we can work together to get you (there).
5. We will schedule further sessions. There have been clients who have done well meeting once weekly. Others have discovered that a week isn’t long enough to see progress and have scheduled bi weekly or every three weeks. I have found that going a month is not as productive.
6. What if it doesn’t seem like it will work out? If you or I decide in the first half hour of our call that this just isn’t a good fit, there will be not cost to you. I will also suggest options of either rethinking that, or offer a referral to another coach. If it ain’t working for you, there will be no questions asked as to why.

SET! READY! Go!

Great! There are two ways to pay:

1. Single Session Level – $150.00
   
   
   
2. Commitment Level – Four Sessions $520.00
   
   
   

   Level 2 obviously challenges us both to commitment to our plans. It is a preferred level, and it saves you a few bucks as well!