- November 29, 2014
- Posted by: Sean Fargo
- Category: Blog


“How can I best help people?” Have you ever asked yourself that question?
This has been long-held question that has spurred my quest for inner and outer development for as long as I can remember. In my youth, I wanted to be like James Bond, someone who goes on covert missions around the world to protect my country. Then in college, fascinations with Indiana Jones sparked my interest in unveiling the greatest secrets of foreign anthropological artifacts. With a newly earned Global Studies bachelor’s degree, I tasted the lives of corporations, start-ups, teaching, and monasticism, each one refining my palette of what it means for *me* to best serve the world with my unique set of gifts and challenges.
Browsing a San Anselmo bookstore in 2011, I found a book called Personal Power by Tony Robbins, life and business coach extraordinaire. While many think of Tony as a motivational speaker, he considers himself to be a coach, someone who helps people evoke long-term, self-correcting excellence in themselves. Because I love teaching and counseling, and because the role of a coach strongly appealed to me, I thought, “no matter where I am in the world, no matter what I do for a living, I would love to be able to utilize the best skills and techniques to train people on finding their own true personal fulfillment”.
Later in the year, I also began learning about Ken Wilber and integral studies. Utilizing all of the world’s information in every area of humanity, the integral movement classifies tools and techniques in an easy-to-understand language to help people develop themselves to be as compassionate and wise as humanly possible.
Then, serendipitously bridging these two new passions, I found New Ventures West, an Integral Coaching Certification Program. Coaching is not just about the mind, but rather integrating kind awareness with cognitive functioning, somatics, relationships, spirituality, emotions, etc.
Accepted into their 2013 cohort with a generous scholarship, I spent one year being coached on my edges, meditating, journaling, reading, writing book summaries, and coaching several guinea pig clients ten sessions each. Now, as of last week, I am fully certified to coach people who have a challenge or issue, whether it’s personal or professional. As I create MindfulnessExercises.com during the next few months, I will begin accepting new coaching clients on an ad-hoc basis.
It feels incredibly empowering to be trained in a curriculum of proven methodologies and techniques to help people become more authentic, powerful, compassionate, and alive.
“New Ventures West pioneered Integral Coaching — an evolving evolving methodology intended to be the most comprehensive response to human life. Its practitioners reach deeply into the past, gathering wisdom from East and West, while simultaneously staying current with the frontiers of new discovery in cognitive science, genetics, and other disciplines.
Our certified coaches build competence, foster personal fulfillment and open up possibilities by drawing upon the knowledge of what’s unchanging about human life and taking into account that which is particular about our times. To be useful, of course, coaching must be eminently practical and be helpful in both the immediate and the long term. Coaching can only accomplish all this when it’s practiced by people who are highly skilled, experienced, and models of what they represent. Our program, the Professional Coaching Course, produces such people.” – http://www.newventureswest.com/display.aspx?catid=11,17,25&pageid=209