From lawyer in private practice (‘advocaat’) and law professor…

For three decades, I worked as an advocate, and, for several years during that time, I was a professor in International Criminal Law (Tilburg). Working hard was my default setting, averaging at least 60-70 hours a week. I was always busy. Often, that meant stress, both professionally and privately. For a long time, I found it difficult to make choices, and was an ‘omnivore’, so long as the new project was fun, exciting, and preferably profitable as well. ‘Just do it!’ My self-confidence also needed this. Because, deep down inside, I felt I was not good enough. And so I worked harder and harder, to prove myself. I occasionally made choices I would not make today.

Still, I had an amazing career. I enjoyed the cases I was able take on, the clients I was able to assist. And also my colleagues throughout those years, a fair number of whom ended up in amazing positions, both in the law firm I co-founded in 1992, and elsewhere in the legal world. It was therefore a big step to leave  my firm, on 1 February, 2014. But the time had come to make a decision. It was time to contemplate who I was, at that stage in my life. It was time to regain peace of mind and harmony in my private life. It was time for a new future.

… to coach & personal leadership trainer

And that is how I came to be a coach/trainer. In 2013, the famous American ‘life strategist’ Tony Robbins made me aware that I had to change tack, drastically. That one session, during a seminar in London – Unleash the Power Within (UPW) – was so effective, that I was convinced of the quality of his coaching methodology. And I subsequently studied it, thoroughly. I do not have a degree in psychology. But my coaching education and live experience, both personal and professional (with numerous, sometime difficult, sometimes dominant, sometimes ‘lost’, sometimes apathetic, sometimes aggressive clients), made me a ‘practical psychologist’.

Through trial and error, more studying, coaching education, and practical experience, I have gained an insight into human behavioural patterns, limiting beliefs, frustrations, anxieties, insecurities, excuses, and deep-felt needs. For myself, I have cut some Gordian knots. That was an excellent learning experience, allowing me to empathize with the, sometimes extremely difficult, situations my current clients find themselves in. It is also the perfect background to have experienced – and to now be able to teach – that self-control is the way towards doing what you really want.

I am an experience expert and a physiotherapist for the mind.

I guide my coaching clients in structuring their thoughts when needed, in experiencing how much they are truly worth, in building self-insight and self-confidence, and in drawing a practical roadmap towards these goals. A roadmap towards renewed optimism, refreshed fervour, a tranquil mind and with a proper sense of reality.

‘The perfect world is created when the mind is free to see it.’ – Byron Katie