The Goal Is Self-Empowerment

At its core, everything I do as a coach and therapist stems from one important objective: to help clients become self-empowered. I emphasize their strengths and focus on helping them become better at who they already are, rather than striving to “fix” them or make them different.

Whether I’m working with a boy, a man, a couple, or a team, my goal is to help people discover their inner resources to achieve their goals, create a healthy lifestyle, and experience well-being.

Sometimes that well-being is at school or work; sometimes it is at home or in a relationship. Often, it is a combination because as human beings we are complex.

As I teach in my Positive Psychology Course at the College of Executive Coaching, there are eight areas of well-being* that people are challenged to manage throughout their lives:

• physical and psychological health
• career
• social connections
• home
• community
• time and money
• time in nature
• mindfulness and/or spirituality

Although clients may initially consult with me regarding one or two of these areas of well-being, they quickly discover how our work together has a positive impact on the other areas of well-being. The mindsets they gain from our conversations empower them to find health, happiness, and success in many aspects of their lives.

Most people come to me in crisis, but there’s no need to wait. In the daily, motivational walks I lead at the Canyon Ranch Health Spa in Lenox, MA, I remind people of the value of taking a proactive, rather than a reactive, approach. My approach is designed to help you enhance any of the eight areas of well-being as well as to deal with problems when they are in the simmering, rather than the boiling, stage.

A Practical Coaching-Style That Gets Results

While I draw on my extensive background as a traditional psychoanalyst trained at the Boston Psychoanalytic Institute and as a psychologist at the Austen-Riggs Center psychiatric hospital, today I use a more practical, coaching-style approach with both my therapy and coaching clients.

I guide clients to discover what they want in life. Once we have identified their goals, we work together to determine their ideal strengths for those goals, find the courage to take action, and never quit. This practical coaching style leads to results.

My classic training and years of intensive clinical experience enable me to formulate a deep understanding of my clients that informs how I work with them. Yet, in our day-to-day work, the focus is often on the practical aspects of life.

This may mean working on graduating high school, resolving conflicts related to marriage or raising children, finding a new job or career after another has ended, grieving the loss of a loved one, dealing with legal matters, navigating the challenges of older age, or managing substance abuse and addiction.

Regardless of the nature of the goal, I help my clients find their voice, their courage, and their will to work hard to create a happy, healthy, and productive life. Because I am an athletic coach, a former semi-professional soccer player, and an identical twin, I can appreciate individual differences as well as the value of working as a team, where the voice of everyone involved is considered and honored.

An Unexpected Emphasis on Process

The work that clients and I do together creates tangible results. Still, I pride myself on something even more important happening: clients who engage with me learn to appreciate the process as much as the outcome. This mindset has been the secret ingredient to my own success over the years, as well as that of my twin brother and Rolling Stone Magazine’s “100 Top Greatest Drummer’s of All Time,” Kenny Aronoff.

While Kenny and I are quite different in some regards, one of the many things we hold in common is our love for learning, process, hard work, and self-improvement. As young boys, pre-Internet and pre-Information Age, we spent hours building model airplanes and boats; hiking and biking through the woods and rivers of our hometown, Stockbridge, MA; working for neighbors to save money so we could buy toys and crafts at our favorite hobby store; and turning our parent’s house into a magical world of hide and seek. Then, and now, we enjoy engaging in work and life for the love of it.

When my clients are in the midst of their struggles and feel they can hardly bear them a minute longer, I am the grounding presence in their lives that reminds them that the forces of wind, rain, and gravity they are  subject too right now will only make them stronger, more seasoned, and more successful.

I let them know my own story: that I wasn’t the top student or one of the wealthy children in the schools I attended over the years, but by working hard and never giving up, I was offered prized slots as a pre-doctoral intern at Harvard’s Cambridge City Hospital and a post-doctoral intern at the Austen Riggs Center. I earned my PhD in clinical psychology, after completing two master’s degrees. It took me 8 years to conceive and write my book on how to raise boys in the modern age of technology and affluence. It is now in its final stages and expected to be completed in 2020.

What will your own process teach you? My approach of self-empowerment and dogged perseverance can help you, your family, and your loved ones get to the top of the mountain you are climbing.

Working Together to Move Forward

As a trained psychoanalyst, I understand the effect that childhood, past experiences, and trauma can have on a person’s development and the way they cope and live in the world today, but this is not the focus of the work that I typically do with clients. We may talk to some degree about how and why you are the way you are today, but I am most interested in what we can do together as a team to get you where you want to go to be happy, healthy, and successful in the areas of life you desire.

We will work together to help you find genuine happiness and success without minimizing or avoiding life’s inevitable disappointments, stress, losses, rejections, and setbacks. A person’s strength and courage to appreciate the negative moments in life are essential to personal development and moving forward. As I often say to the athletes I coach, to win a game is like a birthday celebration or a trip to Disney World; to lose is an education and an opportunity to change and grow.

If my philosophy of self-empowerment and my team approach inspire you to take action, contact me today.

*Comprehensive research by the Gallup Organization uncovered five areas of well-being that are interconnected and universal in shaping people’s lives: Career Wellbeing, Social Wellbeing, Financial Wellbeing, Physical Wellbeing, and Community Wellbeing. In my work with clients and students, I refer to these five areas of well-being as well as include three of my own that I believe are also essential: home, time in nature, and mindfulness or spirituality.