Individual Coaching

Performance and achievement cannot be attained by will-power alone. CookStar’s performance and achievement coaching supports and guides you to maximize your potential through tailored coaching strategies designed to enhance motivation, focus, productivity and personal achievement.  All with the goal of leading an easier, more successful and more joyful life.

Know-how and desire are very rarely factors in limiting performance and achievement.  In a world filled with unlimited noise and distraction (ex. infinite information, social media, infinite professional and personal development choices, endless demands on time and commitments) it can be challenging to focus on what actually adds value and is truly worthwhile.  Indeed, various studies have shown that people generally focus 80% of their time on things that only return 20% of the value in their business, careers and personal lives.  Meaning people generally are only focussing 20% of their most valuable resource (their time and attention) on the 80% that is most valuable and enjoyable.   

This may come as a surprise, but the biggest limit on our own achievement and performance is ourselves.  While many of us have had the gift of education and higher education where we learn substantive knowledge (math, language, science, business, analytical skills and technical skills etc.) few if any of us were taught or have skills in managing and becoming self-aware of our inner workings – how we think and why we think it.  Worse yet few are conscious of how these thinking patterns are wasting our time and energy and limiting our own success.

The good news is that Coaching can support and guide you toward self-awareness and self-knowledge of the limiting factors to your thinking (i.e. limiting beliefs, insecurities, fears, fictions created in your mind, and other self-imposed limits) and create new positive habits and boundaries to focus and dedicate your time and energy to those things that you value most.  Interestingly, it is possible to improve thinking such that achievement and performance increase substantially with less time and effort.  Ever wonder why some people seem to accomplish a seemingly impossible amount in almost no time at all?  It is because they think better, create healthy boundaries for their time, and don’t waste energy on the noise inherent in the modern world.

What set’s CookStar’s performance and achievement coaching apart is that it is designed to guide and support lasting long-term change and improvement.  It achieves this by giving you the self-knowledge and skills to set goals, develop action plans, overcome obstacles, develop accountability and self-management skills such that overtime you will have the skills and self-knowledge to perform and achieve with less effort and time and without the reliance of a professional coach.  Our coaching ideology is to guide and support you to be your own coach over time – Not to create dependency on a coach for success.   

CookStar’s coaching model is rooted in Neuroscience and influenced by positive psychology, spiritual psychology, philosophy, mindfulness, emotional intelligence, empathy and vast professional and life experience.  In essence, our coaching model is based on two fundamental premises and principles: (1) that each of us is the absolute expert on ourselves – you have lived every experience in your life and it would be pure ego to think that one could know you better than you innately know yourself; and (2) that through our maturation (the way we were parented, our education and our life’s experiences), we develop hard-wired responses (automatic/unconscious responses)  that limit us and our enjoyment of life. 

It is our unconscious and limiting beliefs, insecurities, fears, negative self-talk, unhelpful and ineffective behaviors and thinking patterns, overthinking and unproductive and unfulfilling thoughts, beliefs and behaviors that automatically produce  automatic responses to external stimuli (behaviors).  These unconscious and automatic responses are ultimately what limits us and causes us to fail to live to our potential.  Ultimately we make our lives much more challenging than they need to be.  We are generally unaware of these limiting responses.  But, neuroscience has shown that we can quickly develop new habits and responses that unlimit ourselves and allow for a more enjoyable existence.   

The iceberg metaphor explains this phenomenon.  Specifically, more than 90% of an iceberg cannot be seen because it's underwater.  Our hard-wired and invisible emotions and thinking patterns (the 90% of the iceberg that can’t be seen) are largely (if not exclusively) responsible for the 10% that can be seen (our behaviors (our habits) and results (outcomes of our behaviors)).  CookStar Coaching can support and guide you in learning and understanding your inner world.  Your inner world is the primary (if not sole) determining factor of  your outer world (what we see).  In essence, THINK BETTER LIVE BETTER!

Neuroscience shows that while it is very challenging and time consuming to rewire the brain (i.e.  changing unhelpful thinking patterns and behaviors) the good news is that it is relatively easy to leave the wiring where it is and develop new wiring (neuroplasticity – development of new neural pathways).  In essence, it is about creating new positive habits rather than eliminating old habits that no longer serve us.  Positive change is more powerful than negative change.   Stated another way, unlearning a behavior (if possible) takes an immense amount of time whereas replacing it with a new positive response or behavior can happen incredibly quickly.

Whether you are struggling with work-life-balance, career struggles, relationship challenges, divorce, loss of identity and purpose in retirement, motivation issues, or would simply like to start taking responsibility for your own life and begin creating the life you want, CookStar Coaching can guide and support you in learning about your inner world and assist in creating new responses and behaviors to help you think better and live better.  

Stop being a passenger in your own life, reacting to life events and the things that you cannot control, and start driving and intentionally creating the life and outcomes you desire.   Coaching is perhaps the best investment you can make in yourself and through consistency, desire and commitment can produce profoundly positive and transformational change and improvement.