On 1/9/09, the Louisville Courier-Journal published an interview, "Lunch with Paul Schmidt," by Pam Platt, on the subject of New Year's Resolutions, from the perspective of a life coach. A full reprint of this article is given at the bottom of this page.
After the problems that led to the start of counseling have been substantially resolved, intensive psychotherapy can reach a comfortable plateau. Attention generally shifts more toward maintaining
personal balance,
spiritual harmony,
proactive parenting, and
progress toward long-term life
goals.
To address these concerns, many clients naturally want to continue the rich dialog they’ve found with their counselor, because it has been built upon common values and beliefs, upon sharing life stories and discovering together what they mean.
But soon clients find that the format of one hour in the counselor’s office no longer fits their needs, and their enthusiasm for the dialog is weakened by commuting to a session that now lasts longer than they really need. In light of these factors, I am offering life coaching for clients who seem to have reached an experience of wellness, and who may want to continue working with me beyond their active phase of exploring and solving their problems. This coaching relationship can be conducted long-distance by way of the telephone and internet, by webcam through my granting email permission via Skype, or locally to include also face-to-face visits at my office or yours.
One option of life coaching is coaching by telephone or webcam. Such methods of remote counseling have traditionally been used in psychotherapy during periods of acute distress to supplement talking in the office. Nowadays we see more people wanting prevention, wellness, and holistic health, and they are enjoying new technologies of computers and cell phones with virtually free long distance. The reduction in secured privacy is made up for by the reduced need for that privacy, because the subject matter is more positive and forward-looking in life coaching.
Coaching by telephone/webcam is done by appointment, and billed at the same rate as face-to-face coaching. One advantage is that it can be done and billed at smaller (5-minute) increments. Life coaching, whether through telephone consultation or face-to-face in my office is billed at $125 per hour. The basic minimum for a telephone contact is $30 for 15 minutes, with $10 per 5 minutes after that. Office visits at your place or mine for life coaching cost $30 per 15 minutes. This includes my time traveling to and from you, but we can be talking on the phone then. (The cost of a one-hour therapy session in my office is $150, as that involves overhead, state licensure, insurance liability and reimbursement.)
As insurance may not pay for these forms of service, and we may not see
each other face to face to make payment, fees are collected in advance at the
beginning of the month or quarter, or at the time of service for face-to-face
visits. The time and money costs
for life coaching are cheaper than for
traditional psychotherapy, because there is less stress, office overhead, hassle
with insurance reimbursement, and with telephone consultation, less
commuting time for you.
Two hallmarks of life coaching are regular personal contacts and periodic review of the focus and format for those contacts. The coaching relationship is typically set up during an open-ended face-to-face session or a phone call to establish the goals and the format of our contacts. Our contract can be set up any way you like, and re-negotiated at whatever interval you choose. Here are some examples of possible arrangements (we'll customize yours to suit):
1. A 3-month long-distance contract for monthly 30-minute phone calls, fully personalized e-messages from me before and after each phone call
Cost $60 per month
2. A 3-month local contract for regularly scheduled monthly 45-minute contacts (office visits or phone calls), fully personalized e-messages from me before and after each phone call or visit, and ad lib open-ended visits at your home/office or mine
Cost $90 per month +
ad lib visits
3. A 6-month long-distance contract for every other week 40-minute webcam calls, plus a fully personalized e-message before and after each phone call
Cost $170 per month
4. A one-year local contract for weekly phone calls of 15 minutes, monthly office visits of 45 minutes, and personal letter from me by postal mail after each visit:
Cost $250 per month
5. Any type and length of contract you wish.
Note that the term of the contract (how long) and the terms (what type of contact, how often) is totally negotiable. The examples above are just that, not an exhaustive menu of your options. What would you like to do?
There's no charge for the time we spend setting this up, so
get your goals in mind, sharpen them up to be specific, and
Call
me at the office some Mon, Wed, or
Thur
(244-4407),
or
call me any other time on my cell phone (633-2860),
To get started, send me a brief email at
Soon by phone or email I will need:
1. Your name, email address, phone number(s), age, occupation, brief work and school history, marital status and brief marital history, and the names and ages of your children (noting which ones live with you)
2. Your goals for the coaching relationship: Think about both
OUTCOME GOALS (future events) such as
getting married in 12-18 months, getting a better job,
losing 20 pounds, or moving to a new home.
PROCESS GOALS (new habits to help reach those outcomes)
such as starting to exercise regularly, doing a daily devotional,
improving conflict management skills, improving control of
sexual urges, or perhaps forgiving yourself or someone else.
3. What variation of the arrangements above you would like, and any questions or suggestions you might have about the terms of our relationship. Note when might be good times for any regular contacts you might want.
You're welcome to call me
"Paul", "Dr. Schmidt", "Doc", "Brother', or "Coach".
Interview with Pam Platt,
re: New Year’s Resolutions
Louisville
Courier-Journal,
1/9/09, p. A6
Pam Platt:
It's the first of the year, a time
many of us set goals for ourselves. Who
better to discuss New Year's resolutions than a life coach?
We contacted Paul Schmidt, Ph.D., a longtime psychotherapist and also a life
coach to discuss why some goals work and why some don't. The
conversation - held over coffee at Bistro 535 in Shelbyville - also took some
surprising and rewarding turns, which included some of Schmidt's personal
successes and failures, what he learned from them and how pain and survivorship
are lessons and experiences to embrace. (His
website is mynewlife.com.) Read
about it here; more excerpts online.
Pam Platt:
What does a life coach do?
Helps people prioritize
their goals, and identify what's getting in the way of achieving them, and then
discovering the motivation to work through obstacles.
PP:
Do you do a lot of work with people
at the beginning of the year?
Oh, yes. Everybody now
needs to re-balance, restore a balance to life. Everybody's life seems like it's
out of balance most of the time if you're an American. This is a society that
spawns a lot of addictions and excesses, I think.
PP:
Is it a good thing that people look
at the beginning of a new year as a new start, and to seek and find that
balance, or is it kind of a cop-out to look at the first of the year as a way to
start again?
Both. Because it comes at
the end of the holidays and it comes at the end of the winter solstice, when
there are very short days and long nights to ponder life, and less social
interaction because the weather inhibits it - this is a great time to take
stock.
PP:
Is it your experience that most
people who start the New Year with goals or resolutions succeed or fail by the
end of the year?
So much failure that few
people dare to set goals.
PP:
Why do they fail?
I don't think it's very
cool to succeed anymore.
PP:
Why do you say that?
It's not a trait that
people seem to want anymore. It seems that what's cool is to have some excesses
in life, so I don't hear people setting many goals. They may say, "I want
to make some adjustments," but they don't call them goals or resolutions.
If someone is really setting one - such as losing weight, which is the most
common one at this time of year - it's much more difficult for someone to go to
friends and family and say help me with this, I want to lose some weight, and
this is what you can do to help me. That's just unusual.
PP:
Why is that?
We are a more competitive
society than we were a generation ago and we are less community-minded and
family-oriented. So to feel as if there is someone I can trust not to compete
with me and not to undermine my goals, there's fewer people we have trust in.
PP:
As a life coach, would you tell
people not to make a resolution, to avoid that word?
It is not cool to resolve
anymore, because that whole thing is about willpower. That was a very popular
concept in the '50s, willpower; we celebrated John Wayne, who had a lot of it.
Now just creating something new in your life is more what is celebrated.
PP:
So would you just call it a goal or
a priority, or is that even too strong?
If I am going to teach
someone to re-balance their life, I'm going to have to find some theme of
self-fulfillment in it. Most people have a strong sense of self that they want
to fill full of life's pleasures, attention, admiration, affection. Most people,
including me, want to do that, so I'm going to have to ask, which self are you
fulfilling?
PP:
What should people not do at this
time of year? Should they not bite off more than they can chew?
That's definitely a good
tip right there. You can only work on two or three aspects of your life at once.
That's a common problem - trying to do too much.
PP:
So if you wanted to lose weight and
to get organized, would you pick something that is a bigger issue, like getting
things in order, whether that's your calories or your bills - or would you make
it more specific?
You have to get the bigger
picture. If you're going to put something in place of something you're giving up
- whether it's comfort food, or a bad relationship, or whatever you're trying to
detach from - you need to look at "what was that doing for me and how else
can I do that for myself." So a person has to look at positive things that
will make them feel this way, and I need to set up some negative consequences
for myself so that when I go back to this I'm going to pay a stiff price. There
are lots of things you can do. If you have a habit like smoking that isn't good
for you, you can set up a little thing that says, if you go back to smoking,
let's say you hate Rush Limbaugh or you hate some liberal person, you're going
to send some money to someone you don't agree with as a consequence.
PP:
So you have to set up your
punishment.
Oh, yes. And telling your
friends and having a plan set up.
PP:
It really has to hurt.
Yes. It makes it worth your
while.
PP:
Then you have to get social
consequences. A lot of times we won't do it for ourselves but we will do it for
somebody else, so you need that involvement.
And the last thing is to
have some big reward at the end, a vacation, or a new set of clothes you're
going to buy or someone is going to do something for you.
PP:
What are some of the things you've
done?
All of us need to learn how
to simplify.
My wife and I spent most of
our lives in big houses in subdivisions. Now we live in a three-room log cabin
surrounded by woods. I cut my own firewood. We don't see any neighbors, we don't
hear any neighbors.
PP:
What difference has that made in
your life, getting rid of the big house and living more simply?
Huge. Just coming up our
driveway, we feel it as soon as the trees envelop us, as soon as we can't see
anything but God-made things.
PP:
What was it in your life that made
you and your wife decide to say, we're sick of this, we're not doing this
anymore, we want to live in a more real way?
(Laughs) Failure in
business, and failure in love, and failure in health.
I'm a cancer survivor, I'm
a divorce survivor and I'm a survivor of a business I used to run and I came to
realize, I'd better not have any employees now. I'm self-employed.
You take advantage of the
hard things that come in life and you look at what matters the most, and that's
all you have to hang onto.
(Cancer) makes you live one
day at a time. It makes you not count on the future. It makes you not postpone
things that ought to be done sooner.
PP:
What would you tell people from
your experiences as they sort of encounter their own mortality, gravity,
everything else this year?
I would tell them that the
best things in life are, indeed, free. Let's start looking at them and let's
start listening to them. That would be a good New Year's resolution. Which ones
of these things are growing in my life? You could start with the fellowship of
friends, the affection of my loved ones, the laughter of children, the beauty of
nature, the wonder of music, the thrill of ongoing learning, the satisfaction of
service to others, lovemaking, religion. These things are free.
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