Personal Coach in Toronto – How I Became a Coach

 

Hi, I’m Roman Mironov, a personal coach in Toronto.

I’m an MA and a certified Strategic Interventionist trained by Robbins Madanes Training.

I help personal coaching clients like yourself in Toronto and anywhere else in the world to live a happier life.

It’s an honor for me to welcome you to my website.

I’d suggest that we get to know each other at a clarity session.

It’s a free initial consultation that usually lasts about one hour:

• You talk about your goals or issues and I explain what I can do for you.
• You’ll leave with a clear understanding of what coaching can do for you.
• No pressure to buy my services or anything like that. After all, my goal is to serve you as much as I can so helping comes first with me.

If this sounds like something you want at this point, please contact me right away.

If you’re not there yet, continue reading to learn more about my background.

Or you can listen to my story in a podcast I did with Georgian Benta:

My story: becoming a personal coach in Toronto

Let me share the experiences that shaped me as a personal coach and resulted in coming to Toronto.

It’s been my dream to live in North America for many years.

And I love helping people improve their lives.

So read on about how I live my dream.

My obsession with personal development

I’ve been into self-help for a decade.

What got me into it was a mild depression years ago.

My wife had a dog that died unexpectedly. I loved that dog because I associated it with great moments we had spent with my wife. So I took quite a hit.

Now I know that I overreacted, but I was too immature back then. As a perfectionist, I blamed myself. Plus, I kept looping on the thought about how good things had been before and how bad they were now until I slipped into a depression.

Suddenly, my discipline and work ethic evaporated. I struggled in my translation business and got into debt.

But the worst thing was that my wife became pregnant with our son and I couldn’t support her as I should have or enjoy this sacred moment.

I struggled for two years.

Luckily, I have run into self-help materials and was able to recover.

At that point, I used self-help to improve my finances and health.

I didn’t like internal work such as focusing on the process rather than the results. I wanted the results.

I was all about efficiency. No time for being grateful.

And life was going to make me pay for it.

My divorce

First, I ended up divorcing my wife.

Instead of appreciating her for who she was, I nagged her constantly, expecting her to become as efficient as I was.

And when she failed to meet my unreasonable expectations, I would get angry with her. So communication stalled. Quite predictably, we grew apart and parted ways.

My business mistakes

Second, I burned out in my business.

I overworked myself because I thought no one could do the job better than me.

I also wanted things done my way instead of encouraging different perspectives.

For example, I would create a written procedure and then expect my team to follow it to the letter. Any changes were unwelcome.

However, it only stifled creativity. My colleagues became too dependent on my opinion and hardly took any initiative.

My passion for translation and languages was still there, but the way I ran the business made it a struggle for me.

Slipping into depression

The last drop was actually last year.

I became unhappy with my results in all areas: fitness, health, business, and intimate relationships.

So I pushed myself even further.

I started running too much.

I made a lot of changes to my diet too quickly.

I also set an extreme financial goal for my business. And I didn’t know how to get there so it was a huge stress every time I thought about it.

With my intimate relationships, I tried too hard to find love.

I was in for a crash, and boy, did I crash hard.

All this pushing had an opposite effect from what I expected.

Exactly. I was in a lot of stress every day and slipped into a mild depression quickly.

Again, it was 100% self-inflicted—the consequence of a wrong mindset.

I lost about 20 pounds and started to look haggard.

I would run masochistically long distances, up to 20 kilometers because I wasn’t getting fulfillment through work anymore and focused on getting it at least through exercise

I slept four or five hours a day because of the pressure to meet my big financial goal.

I felt tired and hungry all the time. I couldn’t stop thinking about food.

I realized this wasn’t working.

One thing that helped me recover was support from my younger brother who is also a personal coach.

He’s into self-development just like me, but he’s the opposite of me.

Whereas I’m an overachiever, he’s all about taking things slow and enjoying life.

He motivated me to strike a balance between pushing myself and relaxing.

How I recovered

I focused on three ideas that sounded relatively new to me: process orientation (instead of result orientation), gratitude, and accepting things as they are.

I put away books like Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill which teaches you to think about the amount of money you want to have.

I mean it’s a very motivating book otherwise, but this concept didn’t work for me.

Instead, following leaders like an online entrepreneur Neil Patel reinforced my focus on adding value to other people’s lives instead of focusing on financial goals.

Louise Hay taught me to love myself and appreciate everything. I re-read her book You Can Heal Your Life. And this time I finally started grasping its message.

I also returned to 7 Principles of Highly-Effective People by Stephen Covey. It helped me gradually move to a place where I was able to accept things as they were and cherish relationships.

Another book that led me to understand gratitude on a deeper level was—surprisingly—Unshakeable by Tony Robbins. Although it’s an investment guide, Tony has a chapter on gratitude there. So this chapter really stands out and appeals to me. He explains that nothing fulfills you until you trade your expectations for appreciations.

My best gratitude techniques

More specifically, I use two techniques that Tony Robbins teaches:

1. Taking 90 seconds to relieve stress through appreciation.
2. Taking 2 minutes to think about three things you’re grateful for.

I also maintain several gratitude journals:

1. A general list of things I’m grateful for. I refer to it often to remind myself how grateful I really am.
2. Things about life that I love most. This one I got from Leo Gura.
3. Three good things that happened today. This journal trains you to look for good things during the day and, as they come up, appreciate them more and feel happier.

What kind of changes this transformation brought about

A huge part of my stress was due to trying to be superefficient. So I slowed down.

I taught myself to appreciate things that I had always taken for granted. Like taking a break from work and going outside to enjoy the sun, smell cut grass, breathe in deeply.

I now catch myself when I feel too focused on the negative side of a situation. I step back from it and find something to appreciate in it.

I’m more tolerant of others. For example, my 9-year old son is into video games just like his peers. I always preached that it was a waste of time, but not anymore. I let him roam free more easily. Let him make his own choices and mistakes.

I became much more loving and supporting with my family. I realized the relationships I have with them is the best thing in my life.

External results that came with this transformation

I got two results that I feel strongly about.

1. I moved from Russia to Canada.
2. I made a major career shift: from translation to life coaching.

Why I moved to Toronto to become a personal coach

I’ve been dreaming of living in North America for a long time.

One reason I love it is because of the 80’s culture. Action films mainly.

Another reason is the fact that I fell in love with it back in 2002 when I spent four months working in Denali National Park, Alaska.

The third reason is my passion for languages. I want to speak languages other than my native Russian every day. With its two official languages—English and French, Canada presents a great opportunity.

How exactly I got into Toronto

I tried to move to Canada in 2014 but was refused a visa.

This refusal made my chances for the next attempt pretty slim. The fact that I was getting older also didn’t help.

So I didn’t expect much when I applied the second time in 2018.

However, this second attempt was successful and I became a permanent resident of Canada this year.

I think accepting things as they were helped me back then.

Sure, I wanted to succeed, but I never focused on the result. I did all I could and then let the whole thing go.

So this “have no expectations” approach worked for me this time. Which reinforced my belief in being grateful for what you have instead of focusing on what you don’t have.

Now that I’m in Canada, I find even more things to appreciate.

Yes, I’m deeply grateful for the privilege of being able to live in a country like Canada.

1. Toronto is very green and clean.
2. I love the level of organization they have everywhere and concern for the well-being of people.
3. I appreciate public libraries with immense amount of books available offline and online.
4. As an avid bike rider, I love how many bike paths Toronto has.
5. I love how friendly people are here.
6. As a personal coach, I get to speak English to my clients every day. That feels great since I’m so passionate about languages. And I also plan to add French as a fourth language by practicing it in Montreal.

I mean, the list goes on and on and on.

I also appreciate my friends and family more

I miss my family and friends a lot. In fact, saying goodbye to them as they saw me depart from a railway station in Ivanovo, Russia was heart-breaking.

But I’m grateful for the chance to experience this distance between us. It made me appreciate them like never before.

The distance inspires me to show my love and gratitude for them in ways that I’ve never used before.

Transitioning to a career of a personal coach in Toronto

I’m grateful for the realization that I can make a career out of my passion for helping people overcome challenges.

My personal gratitude journey played a key role here. I feel such gratitude towards life now that I just have to share it with others.

Now that I’m in Canada, I have great opportunities to reach more people. There is a huge market for these services here.

Plus, I’m grateful for the pressure that Canada puts on me in terms of pursuing my passion. It’s a completely new environment, a fresh start. If I had stayed in my home country, I could have still been stuck in my translation career.

So I’m thankfully pushed outside of my comfort zone and have to hustle.

Work with me as a personal coach in Toronto

If you need help resolving life issues, contact me for a free clarity session.

We’ll discuss what’s on your mind and see how I can help you.

If I feel I can’t serve you in the best possible way, I’ll refer you to a trusted colleague such as another life coach or psychotherapist.

Here is a short form you can fill in to contact me.