by Rachel Schreiber
Alje Van Hoorn seems to be destined to lead his life on the grandest scale. He met Leah, his girlfriend, three years ago while she was studying abroad in his hometown, Cape Town, South Africa. Alje journeyed to the US on a 46-foot sailboat via Tortola, British Virgin Islands. He and Leah kept in contact for two years until he moved to be with her in Ann Arbor late last year. He says, “I decided, if I sailed this far I might as well go to the US. He describes the States as, “the grandest scale of everything.” Alje says, “The American experience is great. I love that you can order online and have it delivered the next day. The language is a bit different, we have the same words, but they’re spelled differently. I’ve been told I use proper English. We use British English the expressions are different.”
Back at home, in Cape Town, Alje studied psychology and he yearned to find a career that would give him as much satisfaction as his father’s profession (a physician) and his mother’s career (a physiotherapist). “I enjoy studying psychology and I want to help people find the solutions to what they want to get out of life,” he states. He discovered neuro-linguist programming (NLP) six years ago and got his certification in San Diego last year. Alje explains NLP, “It’s the logical way to explain the way people link thoughts, emotions and experiences and how this creates the stories we tell ourselves and our behaviors. The model of someone’s reality can be all extrapolated from their language as well as from the expectations of whey they want to get out of life. There’s a very logical order to thought and that completely intrigues me. It’s about thought patterns and how one thought leads to another or to some kind of behavior and how they impact on a person’s mood and/or attitude.”
This appeals to Alje because as he says, “I don’t try to help people get over their problems. Instead using NLP coaching, I help them achieve what they what. If you can see what’s down the road, you’re going to look at what’s in front of you and where you want to be going. It’s the things that are ahead of you that my coaching is about.”
He speaks about a client, “This client had read a lot of self help books, the unfortunate thing was he partially completed the exercises and that’s when people can really create a quandary. Over intellectualizing is a problem, I want my clients to incorporate the emotional side of their issues too. My job is to find a way get emotional leverage and to use that to get the change he wants. Start attacking the issue from the emotional side and this allows him to buy into the new idea and the new behavior. Everyone wants to buy into his or her own ideas and beliefs. The missing link is what will that goal get him emotionally. How will accomplishing that goal make him feel? Is this compelling reason enough to drive him to start taking action?”
His current and past clients work in the areas of social work, a horse trainer, marketing, students, salespeople and business people. Alje would like to see his business grow to where he’s coaching five businesses and has10 private clients a month.
If you have found this story, interesting, informative or inspiring, please let Coach Alje know! He can be reached at 734-660-9751, coachalje@gmail.com or www.coachalje.com.