Old About

Pictures often say much more than words. The slide show below will give you a quick glimpse into my life and family, and hopefully, a sense of who I am.

The first question anybody looking for a coach or a counselor should ask is, "Why should I believe that you can help me?" Let me address this question directly.

I am an elder in the tribe of humanity. My mission is to deepen authentic connection in my world by teaching and modeling conscious, compassionate and courageous transformation. That mission is my touchstone, and I do my level best to live it every day.

Although I have been an analytical computer software developer for most of my adult life, I realized about 30 years ago that my analytical skills did little to help me connect deeply with people or make me feel happy in any profound way.

I started seeing a counselor and that led me into personal growth work where I learned about codependency, the Karpman Drama Triangle and how I seemed to have spent most of my life being a victim.

The more I learned about myself, the more I realized how much work I needed to do to become a person I could like, trust and respect. I realized that I had no self-compassion and that I believed that I was unworthy and unlovable.

At one point, I discovered the world of personal coaching and I dove in, heart first. I got certified as a personal coach in 2001, but something was still missing. I didn’t believe in myself, so how could I expect anybody else to?

My counselor told me about a new training he discovered called the "New Warrior Training Adventure", an initiation into a mature form of adult manhood. I took this training in 2001 and my world started to change rapidly. I was constantly making mistakes and screwing up in one way or another, but I learned that the mistakes were not what mattered. The pot of gold was how I recovered from my mistakes and what I learned about myself from making the mistake.

I staffed the New Warrior Training Adventure many times and learned to lead subsequent trainings which helped men develop the skills and self-awareness to sit in circle with other men and go deep. For most men, this is a new experience, but we help men learn to become more transparent and willing to let themselves be seen as they really are.

As men learned how to push themselves through their cultural programming, become appropriately vulnerable and share their deepest feelings of fear, sadness, guilt and shame, the transformations I witnessed were profound.

My life has been transformed as well. This work, which I label simply as becoming more emotionally mature, has saved my marriage and my life. And I have heard the same comments from dozens of other men.

From these experiences, I developed a deep understanding of the pain so many men feel. Men in our culture have been trained to be assholes. We are taught not to show sadness, fear, or shame. Eventually many of us lost the ability to even recognize those feelings; but they are still buried deep in our subconscious and leak out as anger and depression, addiction, broken promises... and an epidemic of loneliness.

And men are not alone with these feelings. Women are trained that they must look a certain way, do lots more work than their male counterparts and get paid less than 80 cents on the dollar while being treated as objects by misogynistic men. The most significant difference, however, is that women often (but not always) provide deeper emotional support to their sisters.

So to address the question of “Why should I believe that you can help me", I bring a lifetime of learning growing, caring and listening deeply and decades of training and experience in helping both men and women.

Check me out. Read some of the testimonials people who know me have written. Call and tell me about yourself and what you want. And remember, your first session is free.