1. Your executive coaching company is called “Frame of Mind Coaching” where you coach people solely on mindset. How does this approach work?

Frame of Mind Coaching is a results-driven coaching model based on the fundamental principle that there is a direct connection between the way we think and the results we get. 

Over the course of an intensive 10-week coaching program, our clients have ten phone calls with their coach plus 70 days of journaling with fluid feedback and prompts from their coach.  This gives the coach and client relationship added dimension and continuity, and keeps the momentum at a peak between weekly appointments so both the client and the coach come to the calls ready and able to make the most out of the time.

When I developed the Frame of Mind Coaching model, I believed journaling was the single most important tool in accessing the thoughts and beliefs that lead to expectations and ultimately, results. Now, several years and hundreds of clients later, the evidence overwhelmingly supports my hunch.  Journaling provides an invaluable window into the thinking we’re very often unaware of that affects everything in us, about us and around us.  Accessing the thoughts and beliefs that drive our actions is a critical component to creating sustainable transformative change.

2. You are one of North America’s foremost experts on performance through thought management. How did you acquire this skill and how does it benefit your clients?

As a result of years of study and data analysis, and literally working with thousands of sales professionals during my tenure at an assessment company, I discovered that there is really only one substantial difference between top performers and others – their frame of mind.

With this knowledge at hand, I began to massage a philosophy based on the idea that people stop themselves from achieving their goals for reasons that are not immediately apparent.  Something interferes with their ability to go out and do what they want to do – what they are well able to do.  Both intuitively and with experiential evidence to support the notion, I believed what prevents people from getting where they want to go has to do with the way they think, with their emotional resilience, with their self perception, with their past experiences and how those experiences influence who they are today.  So I thought that if I looked exclusively at a client’s thinking…at the story they tell…at the way they see themselves, I could create a unique model of coaching that delivered far-reaching impact at a deeper level.  I founded Frame of Mind Coaching as a platform to help my clients develop the skills of deliberate thought, and to teach them how to bounce back from negative experiences with speed and agility.  Then, as now, results seem to magically unfold in a short amount of time.  Things start to flow and come with greater ease.  The change is deep and fundamental. 

3. What are some ways that we can change our happiness by changing our thinking? What do you mean when you state that “When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change”?

Here’s an interesting analogy to explain what I mean when I say “When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.”

There’s a scene in the 1994 film, “Interview With A Vampire” starring Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt that brings the idea to life, so to speak.  Cruise’s character, Lestat, is a veteran vampire and Pitt is playing a 24-year-old depressed, heavily burdened socialite who finds no joy in living any longer.  The vampire bites the young lad to turn him into an immortal. The scene plays out with Pitt’s character, named Louis, dying a human death in order to be reborn a vampire upon receiving the nourishment from Cruise’s supernatural lifeblood.  As the process completes, the elder vampire says to his protégé, “Now look with your vampire eyes.  What did you see?”  Louis replies, “No words can describe it.  Might as well ask heaven what it sees.  No human can know.”  The camera pans the set giving us a look from Louis’ newfound perspective.  Everything appears more vibrant, more three dimensional, more fascinating.  It seems as though Louis is mesmerized by a previously mundane environment as if he had never see it before.  We hear him muse in the voiceover, “The world had changed yet stayed the same.”

Sound dramatic?  It is.  When you change your frame of mind, it transforms your perspective so the melancholy becomes the magnificent…caution gives way to curiosity…and obstacles turn into opportunities.  Seeing possibility in what was previously believed impossible?  Of course that’s going to impact the happiness factor!  How can it not?

4. How is “Frame of Mind Coaching” different from all the other coaching companies?

Here are the primary ways in which Frame of Mind Coaching is different:

                1.   My very strong opinion is coaching MUST be results-focused.  Frame of Mind Coaching guarantees results.

                2.  We are in constant contact with our clients, increasing the momentum and accelerating the results.

                3.  We deliver a distinctive experience for the client that is designed and led by the coach.

5. How does one obtain a focused frame of mind? Is it necessary for success?

At Frame of Mind Coaching the most important focus for our clients is their perception of everything, including themselves.  Its genesis is in their stories.  We all have stories.  The way we see and hear our own stories is directly connected to how we live our every day…how we approach everything.  When we can view our experiences in a way that serves us rather than blocks us or weighs us down, not only does it improve our focus and increase our happiness, it lightens our load so that we can soar.

 We have a choice about our focus.  We can choose to focus on our flaws, our mistakes, our resentments, our hurts…or we can focus on all that is right and good and extraordinary about us.  What we focus on grows.  Frame of Mind Coaching is a philosophy of living by choice through deliberate thinking that will serve us in designing the life we want and playing full out every day of it.