About Andrew
How I got here
The Call
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At the beginning of 2019, whilst working for LinkedIn in Hong Kong, I had a profound opening experience during meditation. This experience transformed my perspective of the world and catalysed a period of self-directed learning and, more painfully, unlearning.
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During this period I felt as though the scaffolding of everything that held my life up to that point had been pulled down. Whilst I felt an incredible vividness, vitality and connection to life that I hadn’t experienced since childhood; I simultaneously felt lost, disconnected and isolated.
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This swinging pendulum of emotions led me to lurch from experiences to thinkers, to jobs, courses, cities and lifestyles, grasping unsuccessfully for answers. Through this time, I was in acute need of someone that could hold and guide me through what was one of the most significant and confusing periods of my life; a coach and advocate that could bear witness to and support this unfolding.
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What I was experiencing was a call toward something that I couldn’t articulate; something I had ignored, or explained away many times before. By responding to it I felt that I had left the lake of my certainties and comforts; and been plunged into an ocean of possibility and uncertainty.
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Aletheia
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The psychiatrist, neuroscientist and philosopher Iain McGilchrist was an enormous influence throughout this period and whilst reading his Magnum Opus, The Matter with Things, I came across and subsequently became enthralled by the ancient Greek word for truth, Aletheia.
This notion speaks of 'truth' not as something to be possessed, but as a process of continual dis-covering and un-concealing, a process that is often concealed by the busy-ness of our daily experience.
This word was the lightning rod that began to give me a new sense of direction. This notion speaks to the fact that change and transformation are not catalysed by a grasping outward, but through an unfolding of what is already within.
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The Response
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That experience has led me to where I am today. During that period of upheaval I returned to tertiary study, completing the Graduate Diploma of Psychology at Monash University.
I spent a year in Berlin, volunteering for the MIND Foundation for Psychedelic Science where I supported therapist recruitment, researcher interviews and fundraising. I also completed the Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction certification with Wolfgang Schröeder, an experience which reminded me of the importance of community, leading me to return home to Sydney during COVID and commence my ongoing practice with Geoff Dawson at the Ordinary Mind Zen School.
Last year, whilst developing my own approach to coaching that utilised this concept of Aletheia, I synchronistically came across the Aletheia Advanced Coaching Program run by Steve March. This in-depth coaching and development program has formed the basis of my approach to developmental coaching and advocacy (you can read more about my view and how I integrate this method here).
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Working with me​
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My personal view is that the values, beliefs and inner resources that we take for granted can be our source of emotional distress and suffering if they no longer align with our action.
We often aren’t aware of who or what drives our action and can easily fall into patterns of burnout, breakdown and self-sabotage if these drives aren’t aligned with our value, beliefs and inner resources.
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Experience has shown how a good coach can provide a supportive container for someone to undertake this exploration of values, beliefs and inner resources; catalysing a learning process that supports the unfoldment of someone's potential.
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You the client are the expert and it is my role as coach and advocate to help you dis-cover your own innate resources, capacity and potential. I offer sessions via video call and can also offer in-person sessions at your office/place of business.
Qualifications
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Graduate Certificate of Counselling, Western Sydney University, 2023
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Aletheia Advanced Coaching Program, Integral Unfoldment, 2023
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Graduate Diploma of Psychology, Monash University, 2022
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Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction Certificate, Wolfgang Schröeder, 2020
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Bachelor of Business (Finance/Economics), Charles Sturt University, 2009