I help professionals who had a dysfunctional or traumatic past…

To grow their emotional resilience and positivity…

So that they not only feel like they’re performing well - but actually thriving in their work and life.

I’m passionate about helping others this way - because that’s been my journey too.

I grew up in a very dysfunctional home. My parents were plagued by mental health and substance abuse issues. Us kids were moved from place to place whenever our parents weren’t able to be there for us (or for themselves). By the time I was 18, I had lived in 26 different places. 26 different homes, homeless shelters, aunts or uncles’ houses, friends-of-the-family - anywhere we could be taken in, just to survive and have a warm place to sleep. The constant moving, the constant displacement, was traumatic enough. But the repeated abandonment and neglect by the parents that I idolized was crushing to my little heart. As you can imagine, I had to learn some pretty drastic survival skills to feel safe physically and emotionally. As you can imagine, a lot of these same tools carried on into adulthood.

One of my strategies in childhood was to hyper-achieve in school - the positive reinforcement from teachers was a balm for my exhausted little nervous system. Thus, I learned that hyper-achieving was my path to feeling appreciated and liked. I learned it was my path to emotional and psychological safety. So, in adulthood, I would overemphasize the need for achievement and positive feedback from others - and would become hopelessly insecure and anxious about what others thought of my performance.

I had many gifts and strengths that I brought into adulthood, and others that I learned and cultivated as I continued to mature. And yet, the insecurities, the unconscious defense mechanisms, would plague my inner landscape and rob me of any joy or fulfillment in my professional life. This insecurity and anxiousness, created by the unconscious defense mechanisms, the patterns I was barely aware of, would spill over into my relationships, my friendships, and my relationship to myself.

I reached a point where the suffering was unbearable. I had seen glimpses of what it looked like to be a healthy, thriving and fulfilled human being. And I desperately wanted to learn how others did it.

This sent me on my path of personal development, my spiritual journey, my healing journey. It’s been a 20-year journey of learning from different modalities, from different teachers, from different healers. It’s been at times highly professional, and other times esoteric and mystical, at times clinical and western, and other times spiritual and eastern. And all along I’ve received the gifts of expanding my heart, expanding my healing… On the one hand, I think it’s important to acknowledge all the work that we do to try and heal… But on the other, I feel it’s important to acknowledge the miracle of healing that happens when we but attune to that Loving Force (or whatever words you like to use to describe that Higher Power - I’ve been trained to be fully respectful of other peoples’ beliefs and journeys in regard to their spirituality or lack thereof). This growth and healing journey is a miracle for a lot of us - and I’m incredibly gratified to know that I play a small part in that journey for others.

In my learnings, I began to realize that there are some common denominators, some root factors that are common to all of the teachings. Over the years, I had learned so much - but distilling all of that down into something that was easy to understand and applicable for others in their everyday life was a challenge. I began to realize that there should be a process, a way to streamline this process of personal and professional development.

When I decided to become a coach, I wanted to find a methodology that would be rooted in science, that would be accessible to anybody, and that would simplify this process of personal development.

That’s when I found Positive Intelligence(c) - created by an organization of the world’s most pre-eminent coaches, led by Shirzad Chamine. This program has done the research and the analysis and the field-testing to demonstrate that there really are common denominators to success, to high-performance, to great relationships, and to high wellbeing and happiness.

What are these common denominators?

What are these root factors at the foundation of all high-performance and high wellbeing and happiness?

And is there a way to systematically implement these simple principles into our life in an effective and lasting way, so it’s not just a short-term fix but a lifelong journey of happiness and growth?

Yes. Yes, there is.

And I would love to share this process with you. If you’ve read this far, then I invite you schedule a “Saboteur Discovery” session with me. Just write me an email with “Saboteur Discovery” in the subject line and I’ll send you the Saboteur Assessment and a link to schedule: david@lionheartcoaching.org.