Personalized Coaching
For people who aspire to live fully and purposefully.
Are you wanting something?
If you’re here, there is probably something that you want. It could be related to your career, your health, or your relationships. You might be here because you’ve done everything you thought you were supposed to do in order to live the life you want, but don’t yet feel satisfied. You might be here because you’ve reached an important crossroads in your life and are looking for support. You might even just be here because you are curious and want to know more.
No matter the specifics of why you’re here, you’re probably here because you want to live in a way that feels deeply true to you. To live a brilliant life. For everyone, that looks a little different. It could be quaint and satisfying, or grande and impactful. The work we will do together is meant to uncover what that is, and orient you towards deeper and greater truth, gathering what is needed along the way.
You are a brilliant human. You have the capacity to express yourself with your own flavour of creativity and genius. Much of the work we will do together will be to leverage your innate capacity.
“You are not who you thought you were”
-Ram Dass
You are constantly evolving, always whole, always you and yet, more than you know. This is an opportunity to experience yourself in a fresh, new way. This freshness drives the process of transformation. When we directly experience ourselves to be more than we knew, it opens new brain pathways that we then solidify with greater recognition of your innate resourcefullness, capacity, creativity and genius.
Through this process of coming into deeper contact with who and what you really are, you unfold these inner resources. You might use them to be a better leader, to connect to your most meaningful relationships, to chart the most meaningful course for yourself, or whatever else you might dream up from a place of deep knowing.
This is a process that is already happening for you. Experiencing and re-experiencing ourselves is how growth happens naturally. It doesn’t involve forcing ourselves to grow or crafting a new self. It is the regenerative process that we all already know drives change in our life. This process is how you know yourself to be different than you were 5 years ago. Did you decide to be how you are now? Or did you naturally respond to what life was asking of you?
Our work together is to harness this natural process and bring the direct heat of awareness to it. We leverage it to create meaningful, lasting, sustainable change to your life. Within the framework of western culture, this is revolutionary. To easefully and sustainably allow ourselves to become our truest, most capable nature, instead of forcing the change our mind believes we need.
In a lot of ways this paradigm is new and fresh, but this “new” framework is also a remembering. This is the most natural and oldest way that we experience change. This is the process that has created all majestys of nature. It grows ancient cedar forests, it hollows out canyons and raises mountains. This is the process that creates beauty beyond that which we can concieve of.
I am here to work with you, to recognize who and what you are and help you tend to the environment you exist in. I am here to help you nourish your natural growth, so that you can accelerate it and direct it towards what is most important to you.
This isn’t me driving you to fill the holes in your life. This is a remembering of your innate wholeness. A wholeness that is constantly evolving and discovering itself. This is you choosing to take the light of your conscious awareness and shine it upon your being to accelerate and direct yourself towards what is most important. This is you choosing to grow in a way that is kind, loving and sustainable. This is you allowing your greatness to unfold.
How does this type of coaching work?
The style of coaching that Foster brings is one where we truly sink into the issue at hand. Not just our idea of it, or what we think might help, but truly contacting what is happening. From there, we bring in what is happening for you in response to that, where you are blocking yourself, how that shows up and what it feels like. The magic of this approach comes with this next piece, we orient to your experience in a way where we can see it fully without the intention to fix it or change it. This may seem counterintuitive, which is why we call this the Paradox of Change.
Real, meaningful change happens when we first bring acceptance for reality the way that it is. When we do this in a certain way, internal blocks relax and give way for your innate capacity to flow freely. From there, you will find clarity and resources with which to face the challenges that are presenting themselves in your life. This is an excellent approach if you’re looking for fresh ways to show up in your life.
T
Hello!
My name is Foster McGee.
My vocation lies in connecting people to themselves more deeply. Sometimes, to depths they didn’t realize were there in the first place.
You could say I work as a guide, but most of what I actually do is listen. To a large extent, I help my clients by bridging their inner and outer worlds; facilitating their discovery of their own innate resources that they then get to express in their day-to-day life.
I coach in the Intergral Unfoldment paradigm, taught to me by Alethia Coaching. This is a powerful and standout method that allows coaching clients to engage more directly and fully in their world with more satisfying outcomes and to express meaningful impact.
A little more about my background; I am trained and registered as a massage therapist. My hands on work with patients has given me a deep appreciation for how the experience of one’s body interconnects with the rest of their life. It has helped to nurture a deep sense of attunement that allows me to connect more directly to the experiences of my coaching clients.
I am also trained and experienced as a leader in Relational Mediation. Relational practices such as Relatefulness or Circling focus on participants sharing their direct, in-the-moment experience of one another for relational purposes. During my training with Circle Anywhere/The Relateful Company I had an instructor offer me a reflection where he told me I was skilled at attuning to people and reflecting where they were at, and that the next stage in my learning would be to learn how to facilitate people’s own discovery of themself. This is truly what I had always been excited about, finding Aletheia felt like the missing puzzle piece for the work that I do and I’m incredibly excited to offer this coaching practice!
In my personal life, I am committed to deep meaningful friendships, spending quality time with my family, and spending as much time as I can outside. I have spent many years practicing a few different forms of yoga and meditation. I love to dance, make art and write poetry. I enjoy listening to music, though I play no instruments and I happily ride my bike all year long. I am constantly exploring new things to do and new ways to be, this orientation to life has brought me many rich and bizzare experiences.
My Journey toward Coaching
My Journey into coaching began with the achievement of a goal that felt impossible for my whole life. I tried, succeeded and then failed countless times, until one time it stuck. I wanted to reverse-engineer my experience so that I could help others, but I learned that people don’t really work that way. What works for me might not work for anyone else, which is why all the help I had sought in the past from successful people fell flat. My Journey towards coaching has been a trajectory of learning how people discover themselves.
How can my achievement benefit you?
For me, the process of purpose-driven success is baked into my lived experience. It is more than an abstract concept that can be described in a book. It is felt and known in a direct and personal way. I now feel confident, present and at ease most of the time, but I certainly haven’t always felt this way.
You want to learn from someone who is successful, but some people are so innately successful that how they got there is completely alien to most other people. I know success and I know struggle; through that, I am able to meet you where you’re at and help you soften into the unfolding paradigm. I can’t teach you how to live, but I can help you learn.
So, what exactly did I do?
Growing up, I was always a bit overweight, but as a young adult, I found myself depressed and extremely obese while struggling with a binge eating disorder. My health was flagging and I put on a handful of different medications. I’m not even sure how much I weighed because after ~355lbs, my scale stopped working. In a few years of figuring it out for myself, I lost more than 150 pounds. And for years without fear of relapse, I have maintained a healthy weight and a high level of fitness. I was able to lose weight, get off all my medications and start enjoying a new healthy sense of what normal feels like.
People have always asked me how I managed to lose the weight, and I never had much more to say than that I ate less and exercised more. For the longest time I felt confused, I knew what I did, but I didn’t really see how. I’d been on lots of diets that never really worked. If anything, my attempts to improve myself usually led to rebounds and backlash where I’d end up in a worse spot than where I started. Globally, the weight loss industry is valued at around half a trillion dollars, and yet the number of people able to successfully change their lifestyle to attain a healthy weight in the long-term is statistically insignificant, Why??
For the longest time, this question drove me crazy. What did I do differently? I felt liberated from the shackles I’d bound myself with and I wanted to help others do the same, but when I was looking for help, I never found anything useful to me. I needed to learn it all on my own, and what I learned from that process, was that what worked for me, probably won’t make a difference for other people. The world is full of “here’s what I did, you can do it too” stories, it’s an attractive idea but it almost never works. The things that made a difference for me weren’t fad diets, programs, or fitness watches (though I tried all of that). It was realizing the reason I was trying to eat myself to an early grave.
Eating was my coping mechanism, and when what I was coping with changed, my strategies were able to change as well. I had an impossible problem, no matter how hard I tried, nothing worked, but when I stopped ignoring the things I knew I needed to do in my life, change suddenly became possible.
When I found Aletheia, I was extremely excited. Here was a system of coaching that was aimed at the method of transformation itself. Not the what, but the how and the why.
I help connect you with your own innate inner resources and wisdom
When you want to achieve something, the ‘what’ is often obvious. Want to lose weight? eat less. Want to be a better leader? Be the example of what you want to see and connect with those you’re leading. Want to live a happier life? Prioritize meaningful connections with people you feel uplifted being around. It’s easy, but for some reason, it’s usually not so easy. — Because ‘how’ and ‘why’ are often much more complex than ‘what’. No one can tell you what your ‘how’ or ‘why’ is, it lives in you and it has to be seen by you. This way of coaching allows me to facilitate your own discovery of your ‘how’ and ‘why’ as it relates to the challenges you’re facing in your life.
In a word, you’ll be becoming more present in your life. Being fully present is always when we do our best work, it’s when we surprise ourselves with our own capacity. That is what I want for you, I want you to surprise yourself by how capable you are. I want you to be capable in ways that you didn’t know were possible and don’t fully understand. I want you to be filled with yourself and with presence so full that you positively impact and inspire all around you. I don’t want to help you become the best person you think you can be, I want to go beyond what your mind thinks is possible to realize who you really are and be the fullest expression of that in your life.
I did not choose my approach just because it seems positive and good, but through deep personal resonance with how humans self-transform.
In our sessions together, I connect with you through my own resources that I have uncovered doing this work. If this is of interest to you, I can help you find yours.
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Let’s connect!
Book a discovery call
Let’s talk about where you’re at, where and how you want to be, and the coaching support program I offer.
Go ahead and book a 30-minute discovery Zoom call in my calendar. It’s no charge, and there’s no obligation.
Book a coaching session
This is for established clients only.
Add a new coaching session to our calendars.
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Privacy & Confidentiality:
When you provide your contact info, you agree to receive communication from me.
I promise to never rent, sell or share any information you provide.
People I coach . . .
I am honoured and grateful to be able to help people who adopt a mission to live better themselves and have a positive impact in their relationships and the world around them.
Foster has a way of being with you in coaching sessions that helps you feel heard and seen in ways that are deeply nurturing and healing. I will continue to work with him as I navigate my life for a long time to come, and could not recommend him enough.
Foster is especially gifted with relationship challenges and health struggles, so our conversations have helped me move forward in those areas significantly.
J.J.
It’s been AMAZING to work with Foster! When I first reached out to him, my fear of making wrong choices kept me from moving forward. The clarity I gained in our initial session inspired me to keep working together with him.
Since then, session after session, I continue to feel seen & heard. Ultimately, his coaching philosophy has gifted me with the courage & confidence I’ve needed in order to improve my quality of life. I think that’s one of the best gifts I could ever receive as a client.
Debbie
You are the sky.
Pema Chödrön
Everything else – it’s just the weather.
Coaching Questions
What is your approach to coaching?
My work is fundamentally guided by the Aletheia method of coaching. This includes work I have done to complete level 1 training as an Aletheia coach.
I was excited to discover this approach because it fits my beliefs and research on how people learn, grow and flourish. Because it fits the relational approach I take in my work and life. And because of the positive life changing impacts I have seen it have in people’s lives.
Aletheia coaching is an advanced coaching methodology that was developed and founded by Steve Marsh. It goes beyond the common, self-improvement approaches to coaching that tend to target and correct a personal deficiency.
When we work together, expect to see growth in your capacity for achieving outcomes that are meaningful. And for getting excellent, long lasting rersults. My role as the coach is to act from a place of presence and attune to where you are at, then, appropriately listening and guiding through various practices that include Feeling/Saying, Tracking/Offering contact, Parts Work, Process Work and Presence Work.
In our coaching sessions, much of the work we do will allow you to deepen your self-knowledge, self-understanding and self-compassion. We will pay close attention to your internal experience of yourself and your world. This is an approach that allows you to engage more directly, energetically and fruitfully with life.
What types of results can I expect?
Regardless of the goals and issues you bring to our conversations, expect to gain the following:
- More insight and self-knowledge about how you derive meaning and energy.
- Greater clarity about what guides your sense of direction in your life
- Enhanced sense of capacity and openess to the unfolding of your life
- A fresh experience of yourself that deepens your understanding of your inner processes that are integral to the achievement of many kinds of goals.
- Coaching guidance and support throughout your goal achievement process
- Higher personal confidence and sense of empowerment in the face of uncertainty
- New depth of meaning within your relationship to yourself and others
- Greater trust in your ability to achieve what is important to you
How does my coaching differ from other professional help?
An answer to this question should give you more clarity about the role I fulfill, the work I do, and the services I provide. So, what is that I do not do?
I do not provide psychotherapy and clinical counselling.
This means that I do not use techniques to heal people when they struggle with emotional pain, personal loss or grief trauma, or mental illness. Some therapy treatments like Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, or CBT, are goal focussed, but the purpose of therapeutice treatments focus on mental and emotional health, not on advancing outcomes and impacts that are chosen by the person, and which are personally meaningful.
I do not provide training.
That is, I do not facilitate instruction, modeling or rehearsals. I do not help individuals develop competency in a vocation or an area of life that is needed or expected of people with comparable responsibilities or circumstances. I do not advise people how they could improve in a particular sport, job or a skill.
Also , I do not play a mentorship role.
Therefore, my effectiveness as a coach does not rely on my having direct experience in the vocation or situation you are grappling with. Further, it is not my role to give you answers to questions, as a seasoned mentor would do. As a coach, I do not provide specialist tips, tricks, formulas or pathways for you to replicate. And I do not advise you what to do. I will sometimes offer models or concepts from relational practices if they happen to fit your current circumstances. I might offer quotes or poems, but never advice.
Instead of fulfilling these other roles, the assistance I provide is that of a life coach.
This means that I join with you to help you define and achieve outcomes that matter to you. And so, I ask a lot of questions. Not to extract information. But as skillful prompts that can help you deepen awareness and get more clear. And that can help you uncover your true capabilities, and spark the right kinds of actions. By these and other means, I empower you to better understand your goals and convert them into reality.
This is not to say that a therapist, trainer, consultant or mentor cannot complement work that happens in coaching. If you are trying to learn how to do something, life coaching can certainly be complementary to these other disciplines.
With coaching, you are the leader at every step. I assist as you move through the process. I do this by drawing on my unique training and experience as a life coach. I help you make progress by starting with supportive questions. And by working as a guide and navigator as I walk by your side.
Is a life coach the same as a wellness coach?
There can be similarities, but they are still not the same.
Wellness coaches focus on goal setting and conversations that plan and monitor progress. And that provide accountability. They use these and other behavioural approaches to help people when they want help to improve their health. That is, to improve their physical, emotional or mental health.
A wellness coach can help their clients manage stress or their time. Or to improve their self-worth, follow an excercize regime, optimize sleep and make positive lifestyle choices.
These are worthy aims and desires, of course. sometimes these sorts of issues will overlap with a life goal you have.
Life coaching brings focus and results to a different class of goals.
Here’s one example: To have a greater sense of clarity and autonomy throughout my day.
And one more: To balance peace and joy in my life.
What kinds of outcomes can you help me achieve?
I can help you overcome a stubborn challenge that keeps re-asserting itself or help align key parts of your life with a purpose that is personally meaningful.
Such otucomes may relate to your business, career, or an important relationship. In any of these areas, our work may add focus and energy to your decision making, longer term planning, and ability to see and navigate unique, perplexing, and complex challenges.
This is the kind of work that leaves you feeling more personally knowledgeable and confident about your own abilities. Whether that relates to a specific challenge we address together, or with other challenges you address on your own in the future.
Expect our coaching sessions to be a catalyst for a productive response, even when a challenge or opportunity feels huge and daunting.
How and where does coaching happen?
I live and work in Canada. On Vancouver Island, to be more specific.
That’s GMT-8 (GMT -7 when daylight saving time is in effect).
You can be virtually anywhere. This is because my coaching work is usually online. Mostly, I use Zoom for coaching conversations.
In-person coaching is not common. But if you are looking for that, and if we are local to one another, sessions may be able to be arranged.
How often are the coaching sessions? How long can they last?
Coaching works as a series of conversations with cumulative results toward your coaching goal. It is not a one-time conversation.
When we meet on a discovery call, we will talk about the kinds of results you seek. And about the number of sessions we can expect to need before re-evaluating
Without knowing your specifics, here is some guidance on what to expect.
A basic coaching engagement may consist of ~8 sessions that take place once or twice a week. I typically like to start with an engagement of this length as it is long enough to see results, yet not an overly long commitment for an initial engagement.
Longer arrangments can be made for existing clients.
My job is to help you navigate your inner world within the context of the goals you set. Once you convert the insights and energy from our coaching sessions to realize the results you’re looking for, the coaching may conclude. It may be that you achieve what you had intnended to and want to continue working on something else.
Ultimately, the duration and frequency of coaching will be tailored to your aims, progress, and schedule.
What can I do to get the most out of my coaching sessions?
The ways you approach our coaching sessions will affect the results you get. Whether you have been coached before, here are some things to help you anticipate what our sessions will be like. These include tips that can help you get more from our coaching.
- Set up somewhere that is private and where you feel comfortable. The Coaching work we will do together could feel quite personal, and it likely won’t work very well if you are censoring yourself or distracted by your environment.
- Review your past week before our Call. Take 10-15 minutes before our call to center yourself and reflect on the past week. What happened? Were you on track to meeting your goals? What worked well? Where did you feel like something got in your way? Take note of any impediments and recall if they came from within you or if they were circumstancial, also recal how you felt about that and how you feel about it now
- Commit to Daily Practices. Depending on the style of our engagement we will likely have a handful of daily practices to help stay on track with your goals, commiting to their fulfillment is an important part of your unfolding work
- Schedule space following our session where you can do a follow-up practice. In this work we leverage the 5-hour memory reconsolidation window. Often when we work with impediments, you will find that you have a fresh experience of yourself, creating an experience that is mismatched with the idea you hold about yourself. After an experience such as this there is a 5 hour window of neuroplasticity where you have the opportunity to further wire in this fresh experience. The Follow-up exercises are an incredibly powerful way for you to make long-lasting change while investing only a little bit of time. Scheduling your day so you have space to complete these practices following our session is very important.
How does coaching begin?
With me, the first action is to book a discovery session in my calendar. This a 30 minute, no-charge conversation. It allows us to meet and confirm that we’re a good fit.
If you’re ready to get started, book a spot in my calendar.
On the call, I’ll answer questions you have. Or we can get right to a discussion of where you’re at, where you want to be, and what it looks like to have me coaching as you go. With that, I will present a personalized coaching plan. When you’re ready, I will be looking to know whether you see the approach as useful and valueable to you, and whether you are going to work with me. I’ll also be looking to see if we are a good fit as a coaching relationship, if not I am happy to refer you to someone else.
Viktor Frankl
Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.