One-on-one Coaching

Work one on one with me to return to a place of clarity and possibility.

Sometimes individual support is exactly what you need. Nothing gets as quickly and directly to both what must be preserved and protected and what can shift and change, to support your most-fully lived life.

“It takes two to know one.”

Gregory Bateson

This may be good time to explore coaching if…

… you’re finding yourself in the midst of a transition. This could be an outer transition – a move to a new place or stage of your life or career, a loss that makes you wonder where to go from here, etc. It could also be an inner transition – a feeling that you no longer want to do things the way you’ve been doing them, that it’s time to take better care of yourself, that you want to get serious about supporting a bigger ambition you’ve been harbouring for a long time, etc.

Equally, this may be a good time to explore coaching if you’re feeling stuck. This can come as unexpected, often as a betrayal of expectations. Sometimes, on the outside it looks as though things are fine or even great, but you know the current situation isn’t working for you. You want something more, or different, but you’re feeling stalled, emotionally tangled, and unsure about the way forward.

What you can expect from one-on-one coaching

Grow into a freer, less apologetic, version of yourself.
Grow your leadership by consciously connecting with and taking a stance for yourself, others and the world around you.
Feel more peaceful and more joyful; not on edge or bogged down all the time.
Move forward, within the academic world or outside of it, with calm clarity about what is core and what is not.

I’m very committed to my clients; I really step into their corner, because it matters to me that they feel good about themselves and their lives and can make the difference they’re here to make.

My most successful clients are committed to themselves: they’re honest, willing to trust their longings, and willing to stay with their own process of personal growth through its peaks and valleys. They have a fighting spirit and a desire to be ‘well-used’, to make a positive mark on the world.

If you think you and I might click, please take a deeper look at how I work and then schedule an exploratory session with me.

“Coaching with Catelijne has helped me find my bearings after I lost my two most loved family members, and transitioned into a new leadership role at my university. Most recently, it has helped me find courage to move on to pursue my dream. Catelijne has been empowering me every step of the way, fully embracing me for who I am, and helping me draw on my faith, strengths and core values to bring out the best in me. I have grown so much as a person, in sureness of what I stand for and what I want, and in emotional strength and capacity to face life's challenges”

Kelvin Pang

Former Master of Tembusu College, National University of Singapore

“Writing my PhD thesis in the midst of all the other curveballs life was throwing at me was a daunting experience. In my final year, I felt I had lost focus. It was easy for me to produce more words but I was less and less sure that I was doing something meaningful. Coaching with Catelijne allowed me to reconnect with what I value most about being a researcher, and to get a different perspective on what I was struggling with. This helped me write with greater focus and purpose, and gave me some wind in my back to finish my PhD. From our first meeting, Catelijne was warm and confident and allowed me to discuss my life without ever taking away my agency. This is what I think is the strength of her coaching: she enabled me to think through and articulate everything that I was going through while ensuring that it was I who always solved all my problems. ”

Gayathri Haridas

Research Fellow, Lee Kuan Yew Centre for Innovative Cities, Singapore University of Technology and Design

More detail about one-on-one coaching and how it works

For me, one-on-one coaching is a relationship, not an individual session here or there. Most clients end up working with me for between 6 months to a year, some longer. When you join my client list, I invest in getting to know you and in attuning to you, so that we can create profound and impactful results through our coaching relationship.
The focus of my coaching is typically work, but not in a narrow sense. It’s about what you are creating and want to create in the world – through your doing but also your being. This means that we don’t set artificial boundaries between work and non-work but take a whole-life view of the matter at hand.
When coaching is connected to the active training of mental and physical habits, this can enhance its results. For this reason, I offer my clients the option to enroll in the Positive Intelligence Mental Fitness (PQ) program developed by Stanford lecturer/senior coach Shirzad Chamine in conjunction with my coaching. An app can do what a coach can’t: prompt you several times a day to pause and take charge of where your attention goes and what you are thinking and doing. The PQ program distils practices from old wisdom traditions and insights from fields such as neuroscience, positive psychology and performance science, into a step-by-step training that many of my clients have found profoundly beneficial.
Coaching is different than therapy and we may meet that boundary, for example if past trauma plays out in your present-day experience in such a way that your nervous system doesn’t have room for the growth and the results that you really want. I work in a trauma-aware way, which means keeping an eye on this and recommending you seek support from a professional who can work with you on trauma if appropriate.

Costs and booking

Costs:

1:1 coaching with me starts at EUR 1080.

Packages include:

six or more sessions of 75 mins each
in-between email support
possibility to add the Positive Intelligence Mental Fitness program

Meet with me for an exploratory session

These 90 minutes are:

for me to understand a bit about your situation and what you’re looking for;
for you to get a sense of what I’m like as a coach, and what it’d be like to work with me;
for us to assess and discuss possible ways forward to help you achieve your goals.

This is a free session with no obligation on your part to sign up for further work with me afterwards.

“Several weeks into the coaching program, I started seeing changes in myself - I was having more positive relationships with people in my life and more able to deal with the challenges that came my way. I began to see myself and the world with clearer eyes. I learnt to value myself again and appreciate how my wide-ranging strengths, abilities and experiences are not indications of a poorly crafted CV or a lack of direction, but an honouring of my values of curiosity, love of learning and an appreciation of beauty and excellence. This discovery of who I am and why I do what I do has put me in a better stead to positively impact those around me, and at the same time, not allowing myself to be pigeonholed by the social constructions in academia and the world. This coaching journey was not just transformational, it was truly magical.”

Academic in Singapore

“Catelijne is a super smart and trustful coach. I am so grateful that I simply started this as a fun experiment and gift for my 50th birthday, to reflect on and enrich my academic life after 20 years in academia. It was way beyond my original expectation that I learned so much about myself, developed so many useful skills for my academic life, and ended up with so much transformation and excitement for the next 15 years! As a senior scholar and teacher, I have done a lot of advising for students and junior scholars. Still, after working with Catelijne, I must say that professional coaching has its unique expertise and contribution that differs from other ways of seeking advice or reflection. It has been an amazing journey.”

Chia-Ling WuProfessor, Department of Sociology, National Taiwan University & Former editor-in-chief of EASTS