Life coach helps navigate through transitions.

December 7, 2009 — By Amy Deis

Patti Schreiber meets in her office with Laura Porada. Rob Hart/Staff Photographer

For Clarendon Hills resident Laura Porada, seeing a life coach helped her adjust to her new life as a single mom.

After going to a therapist to resolve issues involving her marriage and ex-husband, Laura Porada no longer wanted to dwell on what went wrong.

“There was no solution; I wanted to work more on a solution,” she said.

Porada started weekly sessions with life coach Patti Baron Schreiber, another Clarendon Hills resident who started her business, The Spirited Path, four years ago. Through various techniques, tools and methods, Porada said her resentment and anger toward her ex-husband has diminished and her self-image increased.

“I feel like I’m sitting down talking with a friend,” Porada said.

Finding purpose
Baron Schreiber started thinking about going back to work after her children were a bit older. She had worked in the corporate world for 12 years as a senior vice president in marketing for a bank and quit when she was pregnant with her second child.

“I experienced a huge loss of identity because I saw so much of myself in my career,” she said.

She first tried volunteer work for her children’s schools, and although Baron Schreiber said it was very rewarding, something was still missing. After exploring her options, she met with Sonia Choquette, a psychic, spiritual teacher and author of numerous New Age books, including The Answer is Simple, Love Yourself, Live Your Spirit.

“A lot of her seminars are on intuition and finding your life’s purpose,” Baron Schreiber said.

She attended courses at the Napa, California-based Hoffman Institute, which specializes in helping adults dramatically change their lives.

Teaching others what she had learned now became Baron Schreiber’s life purpose and she became a certified professional coach.

In transition
Baron Schreiber mainly coaches women going through some sort of transition whether it’s a divorce, becoming a stay-at-home mom, going back to work or starting a business.

“I try not to commiserate with them but we can share experiences and it comes from a more heartfelt place,” she said.

She also leads group sessions, and even though they are six or eight weeks long unlike one-on-one sessions, which can last for several months, she said the benefits include additional support from the other attendees.

“It’s a great way to get exposure to a coach and see what you can do,” Baron Schreiber said. “It’s exposure to what women are looking for and where they want to be in the end.”

Not therapy
Unlike therapy, Baron Schreiber does not ask her clients to relive the past or process issues. She said life coaching is more about achieving goals and changing lives.

Visualization can help release negative energy.

“I get a lot of people who are finishing up with therapy,” she said.

She uses tools such as journaling, forgiveness exercises and visualizations to help her clients release their negative energy that prevents them from moving forward.

Porada said Baron Schreiber had her draw an ugly, vicious creature with negative false statements about herself around the creature. She chose a spider.

“I took it home, crumpled it up and burned it,” she said.

Porada also has to keep self-affirmations such as “You are lovable” written on her bathroom mirror.

A lot of Baron Schreiber’s coaching involves transforming how a client thinks about herself or about a certain action or situation.

“The real core is the thought, a shift in thoughts, which can affect action,” she said.

As for her children, who are 7, 12 and 15, Baron Schreiber said they the love the fact their mom is a life coach.

“I ask them if they want me to be the mom or the life coach,” she said. “Mom will give you the answer and the life coach will ask you the question.”

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