Dr Phil Bennett, Life Coach, Growth Coach & Retired Psychologist

To live is to grow and to grow is to live

Hope comes from the possibility of change

and neuroscience provides a hopeful road map.

Becoming more ‘awake’ can lead to growth, altering your autopilot reactions to life.

Relational coaching

Relational contentedness is fundamental to long term health. Our brain (and heart) require human connection and attunement to heal. A well integrated brain is what enables us to create a future full of meaning and connection.
It’s always an honor to walk with someone toward relational goals, hopes, and dreams. 

Relationships hurt us or heal us, so the health of our relationships is vital to our overall health.

Couples can choose to work with myself and my wife if they desire. Hit the button below to learn more about working as a couple with a couple.

Resiliency /transitions coaching

Life is full of transitions, and we need resiliency to manage both unexpected and expected shifts in life. We finish school and move toward a career. We marry or divorce. We retire and wonder ‘What’s next?’ Life is stressful. We experience beginnings, endings, and losses of all sorts as we journey through life and have to set new goals. 

Its never too late to improve tomorrow.

There is beauty to be found in transitions 

growth and mindfulness coaching

For many (but not all) of us its easy to see we are broken; discovering our beauty and the amazing nature of our minds can fuel our change. We can work together to increase your curiosity about why you are stuck, discover alternative ways of living, and move from reactivity where you feel like there is no choice, to taking actions of which you are fully mindful.

I took this photo on a backpacking trip, after climbing the Grand Teton’s Full Exum. This expansive view of the Grand Teton makes me think of what I love to do in everyday life — coach! Coaching is about expanding our view and seeing from new angles, a necessary task for growth and moving toward resiliency. Stress and crisis are always opportunities to pivot toward life. Consider grief and loss for a moment. Losses in life either leave us unchanged, and thus rigid in our approach to life (a path toward death), or crack us open (brutally at times) — expanding our awareness of the world around us. Embracing growth means learning to embrace everything, including loss. Life and loss go hand-in-hand just like our inevitable movement through the seasons; summer leads to fall, and winter leads to spring.

Our culture often encourages us to minimize loss. One loss I often hear minimized is the loss of a pet. Losing a pet can be a massive trauma felt as deeply as losing a child, best friend, partner, etc. Coaching through any loss can help us move toward growth and resiliency. We experience loss. We suffer. We ache. We would never choose to relive the suffering, yet it can also be true that, looking back, we would never want to lose the growth we achieved as we survived our loss and continued to live. We can’t control losses in life. We can only control them if we use them as opportunities for growth. If we embrace it all, we end up with an expansive view of life.

“If you're not busy being born, you're busy dying.”

This quote from Bob Dylan is true at even the cellular level of life, new connections between cells keeps us living and growing day after day, and if new connections are not being made then there is cellular death… there’s no in-between, just life or death.

Relational Coaching

beginnings…

While most people seek relational coaching for intimate relationships, it can be useful for any relationship, e.g. friendships, parent-child, coworkers, etc. When we begin a relationship whether in marriage, or as partners or friends we tend to have lots of hope. This hope is valid, it’s like planting flowers and waiting for them to grow. However, we all carry a past into our relationships, and thus our brains have been set up by previous attachments, wounds, expectations, joys… seeking coaching at this stage of relationship is preventative work. It’s creating a space to explore dynamics as they unfold instead of waiting until they’re full blown and carry lots of emotional baggage. This kind of work is simply doing the watering and tending of the garden to promote the fullest expression of the beauty that can unfold, pulling the weeds as they come in. It’s a rare thing when people seek preventative coaching. Think of it as becoming as mindful as possible about a specific area of life.

After time and damage…

Sadly, most of us don’t seek help at the beginning in pulling relational weeds. Fights and woundings ensue over time. If we carry skills with us from previous relationships we can communicate well, empathize, and do the necessary work to strengthen our attachments, but most of us grew up in imperfect environments with our own unique strengths and weaknesses. At this stage, coaching can explore these strengths and help us apply them, as well as understand triggers and work to mindfully counter them. In learning to create an open, nonjudgmental space for ourselves and each other, we can embrace the reality of the one(s) we love as well as our own experience. Learning to see, hear, and feel where each other comes from creates the kind of space necessary for reconnecting. Coaching can help get us there.

Exploring The layers…pursuing the beauty

Relational coaching can contain many layers because we are complex human beings. We have personalities that cause us to relate differently to our environments and the events we experience. We have narratives that develop which either help or hinder us. We have neural networks formed from our first to most recent experiences in this world. We have varying levels of mindful awareness, some being hyperaware of everything in and around them, and others being more or less asleep. We also have varying levels of rigidity and flexibility in our brains due to our upbringings, and various bodily responses to stress. The good news is that we can be coached through all these areas to become more mindful of ourselves, our triggers, our stories… discovering the beauty in all the layers of our lives, and how each layer can enrich our intimacy, connection, and attachment.

Growth and Mindfulness Coaching

mindfulness promotes growth…

As you look at this picture try to place yourself there. It’s a cool fall morning. It rained the night before. What might it smell like? You can see the stream, imagine the sounds of the stream, wind, leaves. Can you feel the coolness on your skin? There is history in this place. We can be mindful of that or dismiss it. These are only a few of the things I could have been mindful of as I stood in this place. Any moment in life offers us the opportunity to be fully present, aware of ourselves, others, our environment… so we don’t miss the beauty, or the suffering, or the growth that all of life’s seasons offer us. Every moment of life we can choose to be present and enriched. Mindfulness is the foundation for growth. If we want to change, then first we have to be aware…

Resiliency through Life’s Transitions

Transitions…

As day flows into night, I am reminded that we spin through space at thousands of miles an hour and our universe is constantly expanding, change and transition are the constants in our world. One manifestation of health is our ability to weather change, to be flexible and adaptable. Demanding that change not occur is a battle we will never win. Instead we need to learn to bend and move through the transitions of life, be they seen or unforeseen.

“To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest.” Pema Chödrön

Loss…

How much suffering occurs in life because we think of things as opposites? death-life; despair-hope; love-hate; north-south; east-west; night-light; suffering-life… the list can go on and one. Perhaps instead of opposites we should think of things flowing. Death flows into life, life flows into death; love flows into hate – and with forgiveness and healing hate can flow into love; night flows into day and day flows into night, east flows into west… there is a natural flow in our world. Learning to ride the ebb and flow of life allows loss to become life’s cradle, just as winter turns to spring.

Openness…

Patricia Kuhl studies infant’s brains, and says that infants have a ‘celestial openness.’ Jesus said that you have to become like a child if you want to enter into life. Buddhism equates openness with emptiness, not fixating or holding on — thus not becoming stuck. We come into the world empty, then we learn to grasp, learning to live again requires releasing our grip. Life can destroy our ability to be open, but it’s this openness that makes new beginnings possible. Learning to be open after a loss, a transition or change, a life long career, etc. is a necessity to becoming unstuck and learning to embrace life again. There is beauty to each stage of life, but the openness of children is without comparison. It isn’t something that should be left behind, but something we should continually strive toward until we have no breath left.

WHolistic health…

Our health includes our bodies, our relationships (with self/others/nature), and perhaps all we cannot see as well as what we can see, touch, hold — I’ll use the word ‘spirit’ though I hold the term loosely if that offends you. Let me start with our bodies and exercise science. The idea that it’s all downhill after our 20s is just flat out wrong! It’s true that our cells are always either in growth or decay mode, what’s not true is that we have to let our cells settle into decay mode. Exercise science has shown that if you do 1 hour of cardio (simply hard enough to sweat) EVERY CELL in your body goes into growth instead of decay mode for the next 8-12 hours!! If there is a fountain of youth we know about in science it rises out of cardio. The sweet spot for cardio is an hour. So when I heard this research in my 40s I set about doing cardio for at least an hour a day. I had always done cardio, e.g. I would do 30-50 mile rides from Boulder to Estes Park or Ward when I was at CU, but I generally did this 3-5 days a week. However, during a stressful time in my 40s, I started doing cardio every day. I had no idea how it would boost my immune system. I had canker sores ever since I was a little kid. They would come in with a vengeance and could last for weeks, the pain often left me unable to enjoy eating, but after I started doing cardio every day they went away. Now if I don’t get enough sleep or I’m really stressed, they disappear within 24 hours. EXERCISE HELPS YOUR BODY HEAL ITSELF! I work with people all the time who struggle to build a consistent exercise routine into their lives.

Focusing on the mind/body connection…

Thinking about our health at every level is a big deal. Our brain is part of our body and we need to take care of our entire self. Dr Dan Siegel has a wonderful teaching concept he uses called the Mind Platter, where he describes how to ‘optimize (our) brain matter and create well-being.’ He summarizes health in 7 subcategories: Focus time (goal oriented brain usage strengthening and building connections in our brain — think learning); Play time (the joy of new experiences — think travel, adventures, new activities, etc); Connecting time (relational time; Siegel emphasizes people but I personally love the more Native American framework that speaks of both 2 and 4 legged people, i.e. animals are just as important as is all of nature); I would also make sure to add touch time into this, there’s so much research around the power of touch; Physical time (moving our bodies and kicking in our cellular growth mode!); Time In (focusing on what’s happening in our brains, i.e. mindfulness of our internal world, physical sensations, etc.); Down time (non-focused, relaxation that allows us to recover); Sleep time (rests our brains/bodies, consolidates our learning, aids recovery, etc).

It all matters… we can’t neglect aspects of our humanity if we want to live and age well. So learn to love yourself in a wholistic manner!

Couples Coaching

Dreaming together

My wife Emma and I both love coaching. We discussed for years doing this together and coaching couples. Both of us had first marriages which were less than ideal, though we grew through these journeys. Our years of friendship and life together have introduced us to a depth of connection and joy at every level of life. We delight in helping others achieve this as well. Emma, has coached people for years in both personal, professional, and corporate settings using her mindful insight, attunement, and wisdom to help others move toward flourishing. She is also in the process of completing a Masters. We find great joy in coaching together when people desire the perspectives we both bring. Her perspective is obviously one I deeply respect.

Our journey… Being changed by the unexpected

Life is an adventure if we hold on tight to what is safe we will never reach the summit — a high place in life that requires risks to achieve. Our journey of finding each other and falling in love was unexpected. Society, family, friends all believed our age difference and other factors meant we should not love each other, yet grow in love we did. We each bring a unique perspective to couples coaching. Emma has her frame as a woman who has worked through traumas to find joy. Her openness to life often leaves her overwhelmed and her work in part is bringing balance to what her natural openness results in for her. I, on the other hand, often shut life out to survive and have to overcome struggles with vulnerability, and being mindful of self and life to bring balance to my life. I shared this because each couple brings a unique struggle to their joint journey. Emma and I continue to learn that: together we slog through the mud and grow toward beauty, together we take risks and climb summits, together we find joy. Together we love to help others.

the mud and the lotus

"The lotus cannot be there without the mud. Likewise, happiness can not be there without suffering. Looking deeply into our suffering, we gain an understanding of it, which gives happiness a chance to blossom. There is no relationship which does not bring suffering. To love is to suffer.” — Thich Nhat Hanh

“Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements.” — C.S. Lewis

“Change happens by listening and then starting a dialogue with the people who are doing something you don't believe is right.” — Jane Goodall