What Is Identity Coaching? (And What It Isn't)
A plain-language look at identity coaching, how it differs from life coaching and therapy, and why it treats who you are as something you recover rather than something you build.
My coaching philosophy
Understand yourself,
master your life
The principles and frameworks I use to help clients understand themselves more clearly, translate that understanding into how they live, and end up with a life that actually fits the person living it.
The heart of the practice
Most coaching practices position themselves as fixing what is broken in a client. I work differently. My job is to help you see yourself more accurately, and to make sure the person you find there has room to live inside your actual life. Identity work happens through conversation more than through assignment, and most of the time you turn out to already have what you need. The work is helping you find it, name it, and arrange a life around it.
Six guiding principles
Atomic Reinvention
Identity does not reinvent itself in a single dramatic move. The shifts that last tend to be small ones that compound over time, with your values gradually expressing themselves as virtues and your virtues gradually settling into everyday habit.
Strength in Vulnerability
Most of what keeps a person stuck is something they have not yet been willing to look at directly. Being honest with yourself, in the company of someone else who can hear it, is usually what makes change possible.
Balancing the Paradox
Sustainable growth happens in the tension between trying to become more of yourself and trusting that, at root, you already are yourself. Without the trying, you stay stuck; without the trust, the trying tends to break you.
You Already Have the Answers
When you slow down and tell the truth, you usually already know what to do. The discipline is in doing it, and in respecting the part of yourself that knew the answer before the rest of you wanted to hear it.
Gratitude!
Being a conscious creature in a universe like this one is, by any honest measure, an improbable thing. Work that begins from genuine gratitude for that fact tends to be the kind of work that lasts.
If You Can Define It, You Can Build It
Most of the difficulty in identity work happens in the language. Once you can describe your values, your virtues, and your calling clearly enough to write them down, building a life that matches them turns out to be more straightforward than it sounds, closer to engineering than to philosophy.
Tools I use
A short sample of the frameworks and practices I draw on. I picked them because they hold up well under client use, not because they are fashionable.
Proven Typology Assessments
The Enneagram and a few other validated typological frameworks. They give structured language for how you tend to operate, without pretending to summarize you.
Contemplative Practice
Zen sitting, mindfulness, and breath practices as a foundation. The point is the capacity to be present to whatever your life is actually doing, with a degree of stillness that does not require everything to be going well first.
NBHWC-Approved Curriculum
My training program was structured around the National Board for Health and Wellness Coaching (NBHWC) standards, which is the closest thing this field has to a recognized credential.
Functional & Ayurvedic Nutrition
Functional and Ayurvedic perspectives on nutrition and bodily care. I treat the body as a part of identity that is worth tending well, rather than as a project for relentless optimization.
Eastern–Western Integration
Contemplative traditions in conversation with modern psychology, narrative therapy concepts, and behavioral science. The traditions do not have to disagree with each other to be useful together.
HIPAA-Compliant Platform
All sessions, scheduling, and records run on a secure, HIPAA-compliant platform.
Recent articles
Notes on identity, contemplative practice, and the practical side of putting an authentic life together.
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About Lee
I am a mindbodygreenâ„¢ Health and Wellness Coach. Before this work, I spent twenty years as an engineering leader in Silicon Valley. I also audited a two-year Buddhist chaplaincy program. The personal work that brought me into coaching came after burning out hard, getting autoimmune illness, going through a long depression, and rebuilding over several years.
I work now with people willing to do the same kind of honest work in their own lives, across body, mind, relationships, work, environment, and contribution. The practice is client-led, salutogenic in orientation, and intentionally whole-life.
Ready to start?
Book a free thirty-minute call. We will talk about what has been on your mind and whether the work I do is a fit for what you are looking for.