FAQ

We offer virtual workshops and learning sessions that are as little as 3 hours. These shorter sessions are designed to build upon each other if ever you want to continue your ontological learning path. We also provide workshops and learning sessions that are designed to be one time commitments.

We offer a 1 or 2 week learning, leadership and coaching intensive virtual retreat(s) where participants are taught foundational ontological distinctions. This sets up participants to get the most out of their coaching for on-going support.

After a 1 or 2 week intensive learning, leadership and coaching retreat or workshop where participants learn foundational ontological distinctions, some participants opt into weekly coaching sessions for on-going support. This support is more personalized to the participant given their unique goals and objectives. Participants can choose a 3 month commitment, 6 months or a year.

Some of our participants need an ad hoc coaching session periodically, and this is where we are offering a 1:1 coaching session to help support our participants in becoming their best and most effective selves.

Currently we are offering all programs remotely via zoom.

We understand sharing in a group setting can be scary and intimidating! We never force participants to be vulnerable. You are always empowered with choice in what you choose to disclose.

Because Ontological Learning is Transformational Learning!

Transformational learning is the process of deep, constructive, and meaningful learning that goes beyond simple knowledge acquisition and supports critical ways in which learners consciously make meaning of their lives. Transformational learning produces a fundamental change in our worldview as a consequence of reorienting ourselves from mindless or unquestioning acceptance of available information to reflective and conscious learning experiences that bring about true independence. As Mezirov (2000) puts it, transformational learning is one’s becoming critically aware of unconscious assumptions/expectations and assessing their relevance for making an interpretation.

Transformational learning consistently leads to profound changes in our thoughts, feelings, perspectives, beliefs, and behaviors because it is a radical shift of consciousness that permanently alters our way of being in the world.

Ontological coaching offers an invitation to the coach and to the coachee to endeavor into the frontier of the soul, to have the privilege and honor to accompany another fellow traveler, as partners or equals in exploring ways of being and creating a desired outcome.

Ontological Coaching holds a coachee as whole, complete, creative and resourceful. This means we see you as someone who is capable and able to initiate change. In ontological coaching any interpretation about the coachee is only valid when the coachee acknowledges it as such. This is a golden rule in ontological coaching. This is at the core of the difference between ontological coaching and teaching, training, therapy and other learning modalities. YOU are the expert and authority of you.

The aim of our coaching relationship is to dialogue in a forward motion conversation. We will collaborate in a thought-provoking and creative process through the use of deep inquiry. By asking from a place of curiosity, insightful, sometimes powerful questions emerge that give you access to your personal inner innate wisdom, so that you may maximize your potential by shifting the way you see and thus act and or be in your personal and/or professional world.

While some sessions will leave you with big aha moments and others will leave you with more questions than answers, know that we are in process. Think chipping away at a wall. Each session builds upon the next even without intention.

Ontological Coaches offer the skill sets required to be able to help you see and understand the unpinning to what you see, how you see. We help you look underneath and then look underneath, and then look underneath some more to make the invisible visible.

The Ontological Coaches role is to facilitate you becoming a different and more powerful Observer by helping you to develop perceptual lenses for which there weren’t any before. Ontological Coaches help you look at how you look.

In the absence of perceptual lenses, we experience cognitive blindness as blindspots or ontological transparencies. We aren’t able to differentiate the undifferentiated and at times have two mental constructs collapsed together and mistake one mental construct for another. As part of our shared humanity we also make the mistake of collapsing mental constructs with who we are. Coaches help you develop perceptual lenses in which will help you see what you could not see previously. This new sight enables you, empowers you to take more effective actions and behaviors and to choose more intentionally within your inner-worlds and well as your outer-worlds and allows you to choose new actions and behaviors that align to your goals and objectives. We can only, with intentionality, participate in a world that we observe.

As an example, two common constructs of the mind that often get collapsed are success and failure. One way is that when an observer holds or defines success as the results they produce in the world of performance and they mistake those results with who they are as an identity. We might say internally or externally, “I’m a failure because I didn’t ace my exam.”

Notice the observer collapsed a mental construct of failure and success with who they are. All observers exist outside and independent of observation and cannot be adulterated by interpretation.

Mental constructs in this context refers to ideas, thoughts, beliefs, the set of ideas and beliefs we hold about the world and ourselves, the meaning we create or have inherited as individuals and as a collective. These constructs are conscious and unconscious.

Coaches facilitate a sacred space you can step into, provide structure, accountability, reflection and feedback while responding to your agenda, goals and needs for the coaching relationship rather than imposing a direction or agenda.

Coaches will be present. Listen fully and be consistently and unconditionally constructive.

Embody the Beginner’s Mind.

Be a co-designer or architect in helping you create new actions, practices and next steps.

Maintain the ethics and conduct guidelines set by the International Coaching Federation.

Just like a coach, you will need to try out being curious by taking on the Beginner's Mind. In our working together, we invite you to take on the Beginner’s mind. Beginner’s mind refers to having an attitude of openness, eagerness, and lack of preconceptions when studying a subject, even when studying at an advanced level, just as a beginner would. Beginner’s mind inspires curiosity and wonder and from this place we look and we listen.

"In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert's there are few." -Shunryu Suzuki

Experience tells us that any new learning can be uncomfortable. Entering into a learning or coaching relationship requires the willingness and at times the courage to leave familiar shores and venture into uncharted waters. We will support and guide you through the process but the process and results belong to you.

Like many things, what you put into learning and coaching, is what you’ll get out. You take full responsibility for all action or inaction you take as a result of your learning and coaching received. The desired outcomes vary from person to person, given their own personal goals and concerns. You understand, YOU are the expert of you and ontological learning and coaching is a relationship between two equals.

Communicate honestly about your challenges and what you truly want, be open to feedback, and participate fully in generating your own solutions. Take responsibility for your own learning and growth, and assert your needs so learning and coaching works for you.

Ontological learning and coaching holds a student and or coachee as whole, complete, creative and resourceful. This means we see you as someone who is capable and able to initiate change.

No - coaching is not consulting, therapy, counseling, or professional legal, medical, financial, or spiritual advice, and do not expect that it will provide this kind of support.

The coaching relationship is founded upon mutual respect and trust. The central focus of the coaching relationship is the participant's wellbeing. Within a coaching session, coaches will hold all coaching conversations in confidentiality and will not disclose any information about the conversations without your written consent, except as required by law.

You can snail mail a check, please make it payable to The Giving Bank Fund and include being Me Foundation on the memo line and mail to the following address:

The Giving Back Fund

C/o being Me Foundation

500 Commercial Street, Suite 4R

Boston, MA 02109

It is important that envelopes be addressed to The Giving Back Fund c/o being Me Foundation to ensure prompt delivery.