Stephen Artinian

The school of coaching that I have been trained in is called Brain-Based Coaching.

Brain-based coaching applies findings from neuroscience about the learning and performing brain to a coaching context. Our brain is a network of mental maps and associations that captures every experience, feeling, emotion or thought that we’ve ever had. The brain’s ability to form new connections throughout our lives (called neuroplasticity) is one of the great findings of neuroscience. It has enormous implications for learning, growth and the realization of human potential.

In our coaching sessions, I will help you to gain awareness into your own thinking and underlying patterns of behavior, reach important insights, set inspiring goals, move into action and build empowering new habits that will bring you steadily closer to your objectives.

Some of the key elements of coaching are:

Focusing on what you are doing right rather than what you are doing wrong. This is not simply optimistic or positive thinking. Our prefrontal cortex – the thinking part of our brain – performs better when it is moving towards a desired outcome rather than away from an undesired outcome. For example, rather than trying to change a bad habit, we will focus on building new positive habits. These literally become new neural pathways in the brain that through repeated use and reward will become the new “you”.

Coaching is self-directed learning. Rather than giving you advice, I’ll be helping you to make your own connections, create your own agenda, and work at your own pace. You are far more motivated to achieve a goal when the spark comes from within yourself. My role is to help you have that spark, to nourish it and to inspire you take action. Along the way towards reaching your goals, you will also experience a deeper learning journey in which you come to know yourself better and fully appreciate your true potential.

Coaching is about thinking big and setting inspiring goals that right now might seem out of reach. Ambitious goals usually require us to change some aspect of our usual way of thinking and doing things. As your coach I will stretch you to step out of your comfort zone. We are all capable of doing far more than we normally believe. My job is to gently push you to try new approaches, explore alternatives and to trust your abilities.

In our coaching sessions we will focus on solutions rather than problems. That’s not to say that we will ignore the problems, but by focusing on forward-looking solution-based thinking rather than backward -looking problem-based thinking we create an optimal mental state in which your brain can think best, generate ideas, create new mental maps and widen its field of perception.

All this happens within a specific structure that keeps you on track and moving from where you are now to where you want to be.

How it works

Generally a coaching engagement consists of 12 one-hour sessions, either weekly or bi-weekly. These are generally conducted over the phone, on Whatsapp, Facetime or Skype. Phone sessions tend to work surprisingly well since there are fewer distractions and we can focus all of our attention on listening.

During the coaching engagement we define and work towards achieving three inspiring goals in different areas of your personal or professional life.

The beauty of coaching is that it is highly flexible. So depending on your preference, a coaching engagement can be longer or shorter than 12 sessions. I also offer one-off coaching consisting of one or two sessions in which we focus on a specific issue, dilemma or decision.

Who do I work with

I work with individuals and professionals who would like to make meaningful changes in their personal and professional lives.