MEDITATION

LifE and Sport COACHING (Scroll down)

The wheel of mental balance

Purpose

The main purpose of the “Wheel of Mental Balance” is to develop mental balance and resilience in a modern context. It combines techniques and methods found in classical Buddhist texts, extracting the benefits of practical application without compromising the source materials. While it is based on traditional meditation practices, the Wheel of Mental Balance incorporates and builds on insights stemming from current neuro-scientific and clinical research. 

mental balance

The Wheel of Mental Balance is structured around three domains of mental activity: attention, the cognitive, and affective spheres. In order to develop mental balance, each of these three areas of our mental world needs to be explored, understood and – preferably – be well-adjusted. The program is structured so that it addresses each domain with separate exercises. This leads to a better understanding of how our mental processes work, helps us realize early when they are out of balance, and how to bring them back to balance. The Wheel of Mental Balance provides the tools that explore our mental processes and it teaches techniques aimed at creating and maintaining mental balance.  Modern scientific research has identified four components of wellbeing: resilience and the capacity to recover from adversity, positive outlook, generosity, as well as mindfulness and the ability to control attention.

The wheel of mental balance

The teachings provided within the Wheel of Mental Balance offer methods that strengthen these four elements of wellbeing, and aim at contextualizing the original use of Mindfulness from the Buddhist teachings within a larger, secular context in order to progress towards a deeper sense of purpose; to have the experience of mental balance; and to awaken to the beauty and magic of life. 

Based on a profound conceptual framework, it represents a collection of practical methods that use proven tools with the sole purpose of enabling and finding mental balance, and overcoming hindrances in the midst of our daily lives. It incorporates well-honed and proven tools, but also expands the spectrum of the application of mindfulness towards critical and important factors of the mental world, such as enthusiasm, joy, tranquility, concentration, impartiality, loving kindness (benevolence), compassion, ethics, and wisdom.

Modules

The Wheel of Mental Balance can be taught in different modules, depending on how much time is available and how deeply participants want to explore: one day, two days, three days, five days, or spaced over a period of 10 weeks. 

All modules are based either on Attention, Cognition or Affective training, and each teaching of the program completes by including all three modalities of practice and training.

Each teaching includes a theoretical part followed by a practical application. The first practices are directed towards stabilizing the mind, followed by several exercises to enhance cognitive perception and mindfulness, and ending with tools to improve affective proficiency through developing compassion and loving-kindness.

Coaching (life and SPorts):

Coaching is the partnering with clients in a thought-provoking, creative process that inspires them to maximize their personal and professional potentials. It is a change process intentionally designed to support the client to achieve particular outcomes they have chosen. Personal or team coaching is a way to empower individuals to identify and implement action steps to reach their goals in a safe, ethical environment and with integrity.

Over the years, I have trained and been certified in the following methodologies:

Life Coaching:

Individuals engage in all sorts of activities in order to manifest their inner hopes and potentials – in the hope to achieve fulfilment, mental balance and joy.

Using the Co-Active coaching model, clients learn to identify their personal fulfilment goals, values, saboteurs, and their inner leadership and allies. Using the 3 Principles of Fulfilment, Balance and Process, the client is held to and supported by the coach to evoke transformation, deepening the learning and forward the action. Combining an extensive knowledge of positive psychology with management tools and personal experience makes the engagement in the coaching relationship fun and highly beneficial.

SPort and performance Coaching:

What is the commonality between Mind Training and Sport?

To improve performance and success, one needs to cultivate an appropriate training.

It is my conviction - and personal experience - that high-level sustainable performance in any discipline (sports, business, work, family, and personal flourishing) depend on mental preparation and a healthy mind. Like basketball great Michael Jordan said:

“The minute you get away from fundamentals – whether it’s proper technique, work ethic or mental preparation – the bottom can fall out of your game, your schoolwork, your job, whatever you’re doing.”

Current neuro- and clinical-science irrevocably point to the fact that mental health is a skill that can be learned with proper training – like physical fitness, we can speak about mental fitness. Both physical and mental wellbeing depend on an appropriate training.

With my long career and profound personal experience in mind training and sports, I use different methods and suitable tools to translate my keen interest in performance and meditation (a specific training for the mind), making them available to my clients.

As a coach and teacher, I emphasise the need to gain insights from personal experience and ongoing practice in order to be able to teach and coach others. WALK THE TALK. (Would you go to a dentist who just talks about it, but has not practiced?)

Both meditation and sport have a commonality, and it is no coincidence that even the Buddha emphasized the importance of endurance:

 “Endurance is one of the most difficult disciplines, but it is to the one who endures that the final victory comes.”
― Gautama Buddha

I offer following performance specific coaching:

• Mental and physical components of performance

• Embodied approach to wellbeing

• How to prepare the mind in view of upcoming challenges

• Guiding sabotaging inner chatter

• How to recover from failure or frustration

• How to activate your motivational systems

Mental Fitness and Positive Intelligence:

A key to Mental Fitness is to weaken the internal Saboteurs who generate all your “negativity” in the way they respond to challenges. Your Saboteurs cause all your stress, anxiety, self-doubt, frustration, regret, shame, guilt, and unhappiness. Saboteurs include the Judge, Controller, Avoider, Victim, Stickler and 5 others.

Your “Sage” lives in an entirely different region of your brain and handles challenges in ways that produce positive emotions like curiosity, empathy, creativity, calm, and clear-headed laser-focused action. You’d perform better and feel happier.

Based on a synthesis of recent breakthroughs in neuroscience, cognitive and positive psychology, and performance science, Positive Intelligence enables you to build the 3 core mental muscles that constitute your mental fitness: Saboteurs Interceptor Muscle, Sage Muscle, and Self-Command Muscle.

For more details: www.positiveintelligence.com

Team Coaching:

Teams exist to produce results. They are more than a collection of individuals, they are a living system. The greatest leverage for productivity is at the team level, and sustainability is equally important to the organization as results are achieved.

When teams are healthy, they are high performing, productive and sustainable; if they are not healthy, they are a source of much pain and can block results.

What are the conditions necessary for teams to excel? Competencies that support a team’s ability to produce results are the Productivity continuum; competencies that create an engaged and sustainable environment are the Positivity continuum.

Both of these continuums can be measured, and provide an objective assessment of the team. The following team coaching work is based on developing the existing strengths together with the transformation and development of qualities at the low end of the spectrum towards High Productivity, High Positivity, and team development.

ORSC (Organization Relationship Systems Coaching):

No person is independent: we are all part of complex systems such as our families, business partnerships, teams and communities. Relationship Systems Coaching is different from individual coaching. A system is composed of many parts, yet the sum is greater than those parts. The parts are always in an interdependent relationship with other parts, including its emotional, social and relationship intelligences. This type of work has one primary job: to reveal the system to itself. By helping the system to see itself – its strengths, its obstacles, its potential – the coach can create the conditions for the system to find its own answers.

Brain Based Coaching:

Performance and Result Oriented Coaching for Individuals and Teams. By applying cutting-edge research-based tools and skills, Brain Based Coaching will help you to effectively reach results more quickly within the workplace or private practice. As a certified Brain Based Coach, I help you adopt effective, science-based strategies to help you develop new habits, skills, and behaviours.

The Leadership Circle (TLC):

An assessment tool that reveals reactive patterns in leaders and teams - and a methodology to move towards more creative engagement, relationships, self-awareness, authenticity, and achievements.

The Neuroscience of Change:

Neuroscience fundamentally changed the way to coach. Sometimes the changes happen before our eyes, at other times we feel like nothing shifts: we now are beginning to understand why. Through decades of revolutionary research, neuroscience can tell us what happens in the brain and body when different coaching techniques are used:

• We now know why and how some traditional coaching techniques actually inhibit change, and what we can do instead.

• We now understand the neural states that are most conducive to deep intuition and clarity, so we can consistently create breakthrough sessions with your clients

• I equipped my coaching toolbox with techniques validated by neuroscientific research, so I can create positive change in each person I work with

ACE (accelerating Coach Excellence):

An active and immersive training program by leading corporate coach David Peterson (Director of Executive Coaching and Leadership at Google) and David Goldsmith (Coaching Pioneer, co-founder of the Institute of Coaching at Harvard). The ACE program allowed me to move from being a good coach to become a great coach by delivering greater impact in less time (more Value per Minute) - even for the most challenging clients. Better coaching means also better results - irrespective if they are individuals or corporations. Nobody wants to waste their precious time and resources.

RED TEAM COACHING

Red Teaming provides the specific tools and a reliable process to continuously improve your management system and business plan to adapt and thrive in our rapidly changing world.

Red Team Thinking is a method that improves decision making in a volatile, uncertain, chaotic, ambiguous, and hyper-connected world (VUCAH). It is a systematic way of making critical and contrarian thinking part of the strategic planning process of any personal development or organization. It provides a robust set of tools designed to challenge your assumptions, expose hidden threats, identify missed opportunities, and stress-test your plans and strategies.

These techniques help you think differently about you, or your business, and consider the unintended consequences of your actions. In the context of business, they let you see how customers, competitors, and other key constituencies will react to moves you make in the marketplace before you make them. They can also show you how to turn disruptive events to your advantage. With Red Team Thinking, you can stay relevant, keep ahead of  your competition, and cope with an increasingly uncertain world.

If you have further questions, please feel free to get in touch with me: diego@diegohangartner.org

BOOK YOUR FREE - no strings attached - 30 Minutes Sample Session: HERE