About Coach Cora
I have a deep passion and commitment to supporting people to live their best lives.
Hi, I’m Coach Cora.
I am an executive life coach and facilitator. With a B.A.Sc. degree in Family Studies and numerous leadership, coaching, and facilitation trainings and certifications, I have touched the lives of thousands of people. For over 11 years, I have volunteered on local economic development boards with a focus on supporting entrepreneurs.
I am a learn-a-holic, always learning and pushing myself to be a better person and contributor. “Be the Change You Want to See” is my favourite quote.
In 2018, I rappelled down 29 stories of the Harbour Castle Inn in Toronto, just so I could move beyond my edge, clear a very profound limiting belief, practice calming mediation, and use my inner settling techniques.
I also operate a Golden Pathways Retreat and B&B where we offer workshops, strategic planning, and meeting space in addition to hosting guests from around the world.
My parents immigrated from The Netherlands in 1952.
They came to Canada with some furniture and debt and nothing else except a willingness to work hard. They started with sharecropping and then, at great risk, bought a run-down dairy farm and changed it to a hog farm. I am the oldest of 8 children, and the third child had a rare bone disease. My sister, Bernadette, had a profound effect on my life. Her 16th birthday was her funeral.
After university, I married David and moved to Peterborough, where we joined his family farm. While David operated the farm, I continued to learn the latest in organizational development and facilitation and travelled all over North America, continuing to deliver services and loving it.
However, in 2002 everything changed forever.
No work, no home, no identity, no past.
Plenty of disillusions, disappointment, and pain.
Nothing was handed to me on a silver platter. Here are some of the toughest challenges I’ve faced:
- Having to sell our century family farm as a buffer zone for a landfill site.
- Our century home wiped off the earth in 3 days – it was as if our family and history had never existed.
- Losing all three of my long-term clients due to government cutbacks.
- Having all three of my children leave the nest.
- Losing all of the manuals and programs of all of my past work due to a computer crash (before we knew about backups and clouds).
- Parting ways as an associate of an organization.
- Being disillusioned with all of the traditional ways of team building and workshops.
- Having everything familiar gone – the only thing I had was my husband.
How could that list possibly be good?
Yet I will always say, Turning 50 was the best thing that ever happened to me.
I had this big empty space and I could create whatever I wanted. But what would that be? I knew that it wouldn’t be the way I did it before.
So What Did I Create?
- An exciting new phase of my life using the Law of Attraction and deliberate creation.
- A beautiful Retreat and B&B on 195 magical acres
- A coaching process that answered my questions – what is really going on? And what to do about it?
- A way to actually make a long term impact for individuals and teams
- A retreat space for people to use.
- Wonderful relationships with my husband, children, their partners, and now grandchildren.
- An ability to work with people through loss, grief, and career change.
- The most meaningful work of my career.
What I Believe About People and Success
There is more to you than your story.
Who you really are is miraculous, and you want to live fully in this life. The story you made up about what you can and can’t do is just that ~ a story. I work with your optimal self to support your essential nature so you can be calm, confident, happy, and a deliberate creator. And I can see what sometimes you can’t.
Your thoughts are very powerful.
What you think about will eventually become your reality. I empower and inspire you to become conscious of your thoughts, and your life will change. Guaranteed.
It doesn’t matter what has happened in your life.
It can be devastating, disappointing, or absolutely wonderful – there is still more to experience, and it can be better than you could possibly have imagined! (I know – I have had both and my life keeps getting better and better)
We have 15 more years than any generation before us.
And it is not at the end of our life. It is in the middle. It also has a transition, like the puberty of our teen years. Only this time, we know more and are wiser. Everything that has not been resolved or learned will be in our face. I help you work through the puberty of midlife so that you take back your power, make wise choices, take inspired action and enjoy the journey.
How I Became a Coach
I have over 25 years of leadership, organizational, and business experience. While working with teams, I sensed that while the team was excited about their learning, it didn’t last, and it was just days and they were back to their old patterns and problems.
I decided to learn how to become a coach and work with the lynchpin or leader. I figured that if I could work with the leader, there would be an energetic space for the team, organization, or business to change. So I started my search for coach training.
I hired a coach to experience the different schools.
And I was disappointed. I didn’t need a “goal policeman” I knew what to do – I just wasn’t doing it. I needed someone who could help me figure out why.
Thomas Leonard – founder of Coachville
So I attended the Coachville Conference in Toronto and heard Thomas Leonard speak. He showed two slides called the Core Dynamics of Common Problems and the Absence of the Core Dynamics and I knew that was what I wanted to learn. And I had the impression that I had to learn some basics before I got to that.
I then got another link in my email and went to the Core Dynamics website and decided – yes that is what I want – but decided it was too expensive. (Isn’t that typical of limited thinking!)
Then as I interviewed more people for different schools, I contacted a friend in New Jersey who gave me the pros and cons of the two schools she had attended. Then it happened. She said but in two weeks that she was going to California and taking an intro to The Core Dynamics of Common Problems and we could share a car and a room. Well that was it – three times of that knowing in my gut and I knew I needed to go.
Three days before I left, I got a phone call from the Royal Bank asking me if I needed a loan for anything at prime minus one. I said no. I went to the workshop and decided that this is what I had been looking for – signed up for the programs and came home and called the bank. When the stars line up – I listen.
It was an amazing process. Before coaching others, I learned that it is very important to clean up my own energy field first. I was carrying around some “resido-do” from the broken association and a host of other life experiences. It was actually the current manifestation of a core dynamic “Looking for yourself where you are not”. It took some work and I finally let go old feelings of “neediness, looking for approval, disappointment, not being good enough and the feeling of being misunderstood”
Does your life change if you can do that? You betcha.
I have a confession…
I have been a “science of energy” junkie for over 30 years.
Long before it was popular to watch “What the Bleep Do We Know” and “The Secret”, I was studying “reiki, therapeutic touch, quantum physics, and listening to Abraham-Hicks ‘Law of Attraction’ tapes (in the 80’s and 90’s).
And here I am teaching others how to harness special power for their lives.
More Woo Woo Stuff That Actually Works
Intuition and Muscle Testing
I was ahead of my time and wanted the share what I was learning yet I didn’t know how to frame it in “corporate” speak. Learning how to be a Core Dynamics Coach from Tom Stone gave me the language that business and corporations resonate with.
My “muscle testing” and “intuitive” skills are exceptional and I am able to get to the barrier of what is getting in the way of you moving forward. It still surprises me at what my client and I uncover. What we discovered was not in either of our conscious minds yet it very often is the key to moving forward.
It is amazing how open people are to this skill. In 2019, I saw an episode on “Grey’s Anatomy” where Owen goes for counselling and the therapist uses “Muscle Testing” in the same way that I have for years. April 18, Episode 22 “Head Over High Heels”
Quantum Physics
There are scientific explanations for all the “woo-woo” stuff that I have experienced all my life. I have joined the thousands of people attending Dr. Joe Dispenza and others’ workshops to learn about the mind-body connection and the positive effects of meditation and mental and physical health and then have quantum physics and brain scans explain it all. These are exciting times.
I am a learnaholic: I have taken live programs from Esther Hicks, Dr. Joe Dispenza (four advanced workshops), Dr. Jean Houston, Collette Baron-Reid, Bob Proctor, John Assaraf, James Ray, Debbie Ford, Wayne Dyer, Eckhart Tolle, Imaculee Ibiganza, Christian Mickelsen and audio training and book learning from Joe Vitale and John DiMartini and way too many more to mention.
Plus never-ending facilitation and coach training from Tom Stone, Harrison Ford, Bernard Mohr, Lance Secretan, and more. (If you want to see a thorough list click here)
Awards and Associations
Cora received an Excellence Award for commitment to excellence in hospitality and customer service, staff knowledge, quality and consistency of product, signage, marketing and promoting, accessibility, and community involvement.
The Women’s Business Network of Peterborough is a networking channel for women who wish to enhance and expand their contacts and grow their businesses. Cora has been a member supporting women for over 20 years.
Cora and David were inducted into the Peterborough Ag Wall of Fame in 2017 for being developers of and promoters of leading-edge ideas. David for his work in the beef industry and Cora in leadership development, training and facilitating with the Agriculture community throughout Ontario.
The Judy Heffernan Award recognizes women in the community who exemplify the qualities that Judy embodied and promoted daily. These include leadership, mentorship and volunteering. Cora is the 2020 recipient.
Your Free Strategy Session
Imagine yourself able to move through the ever-changing complexities of your life with confidence, clarity, and calmness. If you are feeling lost or overwhelmed, then request your free strategy session now.