I studied how identity forms — at Carleton University, and through graduate work at York University and Sophia University in Tokyo, across sociology, psychology, and social theory. I taught these subjects at the university level and published on developmental psychology, identity formation, the social dynamics of self-presentation, and theories of the relationship between the conscious and subconscious mind.
That study and research gave me a working map of the structure: how meanings get attached to situations, how beliefs get confirmed through behaviour, how patterns get locked in early and resist updating.
What it did not give me was a way to change any of it quickly.
Building Heavenly Vines — a Canadian wine import business in Japan — compressed a lot of that theory into something more useful. But the deeper education was cultural. Operating inside a different set of assumptions — about relationships, communication, obligation, and how trust is built — made my own assumptions visible in a way that living inside them never had.
Culture works the same way patterns do: its meanings feel like reality until you encounter a different set of meanings that work just as coherently. That collision of frameworks sharpened something I had only understood theoretically — that most of what we take for granted as natural or obvious is neither. It is learned, embedded, and open to revision.
Over the years that work also taught me how directly personal mindset and behaviour affect business outcomes — and how central social psychology is to every meaningful business relationship. Those were not abstract lessons. They showed up in results.
The most useful thing I can tell you about this work is that I have done it myself — not as an exercise, but because I needed to.
For years, certain foods were a routine part of my life despite an otherwise healthy set of practices. I knew they were not serving me. Knowing did not change anything. What changed was something more fundamental: I stopped seeing those foods as treats or rewards and began seeing them clearly as part of a system working against the health and vitality I genuinely valued. The moment that meaning shifted, the appeal went with it. That was six years ago. What had once felt irresistible became something I simply do not want. Not through discipline. Through a change in what it meant.
When I later took an NLP Practitioner course, I realised I had stumbled onto something that the methodology makes deliberate and precise. What had happened intuitively in my own life turned out to be a cruder version of tools that are considerably more elegant and effective when applied with intention.
The result speaks for itself. At 54, I effortlessly maintain an ideal weight — not by managing cravings but by no longer having them. That is the difference between controlling a pattern and changing its structure.
I needed precise techniques for working at the level where patterns actually operate — meaning, internal state, belief, identity. An NLP Practitioner course provided exactly that: the point where two decades of accumulated understanding finally connected to practical tools.
The result is an approach that is rigorous without being theoretical, and direct without being shallow.
The three areas I work in most — weight and health, emotional regulation, and confidence and assertiveness — are not arbitrary. Each one is an area where I have done this work myself: where I found the structure underneath a pattern I did not choose, changed what it meant, and experienced the difference between managing a response and no longer needing to.
That is not a credential. It is a reason to take the work seriously.