Northfield Man Pursues Passion of Life Coaching

John Owens does not have the answers. Actually, the new life coach and proprietor of MooseHeart Coaching says you do.

“They are the expert in their lives,” said Owens of clients. “The coach’s job is to send them somewhere to bring new information into their process.”

To do that Owens, 59, practices “co-active” coaching, which employs practices from both therapy and consulting. The alliance of the two, he said, effects the way a person learns and finds fulfillment; each one on its own bringing only one half.

“My client has the answers,” he said. “They just need the right questions to catalyze … to take the next step.”

Helping people get to that elusive “next step,” be it in response to a major life event or to live daily life with more purpose, is what prompted Owens in January to leave behind a 35-year career as a project manager at Malt-O-Meal to work with with clients full time, having coached on the side for several years.

Owens, who moved to Northfield in 1970 to attend , said the decision to change was not easy.  But with support from his men’s group, children, and his wife, , he said he was ready to move to work more “right-brained,” or creatively and emotionally focused.

“I agonized with the decision of when to make the leap for a year and a half,” he said, but in the end he said the choice was clear. “It fit so well with who I had become over the course of the last 10 or 15 years.”

Finding “what holds you separate”

Nearly anyone can benefit from coaching, Owens says, and there isn’t a typical type of client (he currently works with five). What drives someone to coaching instead flows from something all adults have felt: the “disconnect between how you act—or think—and who you are—and are called to be.”

“The key,” he said, “is to align one’s actions more perfectly with one’s own values.”

The disconnect comes both from within and outside a person. Limiting one’s thinking, behavior and relationships, he said, leaves “[us] itching for something more fulfilling and different than the status quo.”

That’s where the focused questioning and intense conversation that coaching employs can help. At first a client will meet with Owens in person for several hours in “discovery sessions” to help suss out a person’s values and goals. After that, Owens coaches clients through focused conversations of 45 minutes several times a month.

“There’s no program,” he said. He works with different clients in diverse fashions, incorporating visual, tactile and other methods. “In any given moment, there’s a thousand different directions you can go in. I choose a question that I feel may have the most powerful effect on the client to bring a new awareness or information to the coaching topic.”

Or the client may feel impelled to do the same. Owens emphasizes that “it is the client who brings the agenda [. . .] we explore together.”

In short time, Owens' clients say they have experienced great change.

"John’s ability to ride the waves of my different moods and perspectives helped me go deeper into creating a new and powerful self-image," wrote Kate Fredrickson in a testimonial.

“Reaching to the depths”

Owens frequently uses the word “discovery,” and his methods and website make use of spiritual imagery. One of them, the power animal, inspired MooseHeart Coaching’s name.

“When I’m lost in the swamp of life,” Owens states on his website, “the moose knows how to get to high ground; it is a large and powerful ally against predators.”

Owens also draws on the animal’s unique build as a metaphor to reconcile apparent contradictions.

“[It is] strange to behold, yet majestic. Seemingly awkward, but graceful in movement," he said.

Moose can also dive to the bottom of a lake or pond, to pull up plants for food.

“Reaching to the depths,” Owens said, “to bring up new life.”