My Nonprofit Reviews

In 2012 as I lay on a massage table, describing to the massage therapist my tender spots following a neck/back injury, I told her, “I got myself into this, I can get myself out of it.” She replied, “You sound like The Option Institute”. I looked up, “The who?”

I then visited the Option website and read Son-Rise: The Miracle Continues, by Barry Kaufman. Once I discovered what the Kaufmans were doing — nurturing happiness and well-being through unconditional love — I thought, “I want to meet these people!” I promptly flew across the country and enjoyed participating in some preliminary workshops during my vacations from full-time employment.

In 2017, entering semi-retirement, I explored Life Coaching in California but found something missing. Remembering The Option Instituteʼs Mentor Certification program, I returned to the Institute for additional workshops and found the missing piece: the potential to powerfully relieve emotional — and, as an extension, physical — suffering inherent in the uniquely non-directive, loving and nonjudgmental approach of the Option Process Power Dialogues. I found nothing else like it anywhere.

So I enrolled in the Mentor Certification program.

I found an elegant, yet beguiling, simplicity to Mentoring. Although simple questions are posed to explore emotions, behaviors or beliefs, asking kind, helpful and timely questions requires art as well as skill. Itʼs not just knowing what to ask, but how and when.

Whatʼs more, I found, to my chagrin, that while Mentoring — more noticeably than when in school or at work (where, in the past, I had equated successful performance with self worth) — the moment I reverted to caring more about what I was doing than how I was doing it (which happened often), I dropped The [loving] Attitude of a Mentor, lost my way in the Dialogue and began “tormenting” (judging) myself or the Explorer . . . which begged the question: Why was I in this program? To learn to ask the “perfect” question? . . . as if there were such a thing. To answer othersʼ questions for them? . . . as if that were possible. To base my happiness on the happiness of others? . . . talk about self-imposed suffering! Or to become a happier, healthier, more loving human being? (Sigh of relief ;.)

So, once I gave up trying to control the outcome of a Dialogue and focused on feeling better for its own sake, I lightened up, relaxed, regained my self-confidence, enjoyed the learning process instead of dreading it and, in early 2019, passed Mentor Certification with flying colors!

Even if I hadnʼt passed Certification, I knew more than ever before that performance is not a measure of success or self worth; it simply reflects skill level. My self worth — my value as a human being — is a given; itʼs never in question. But how I feel in the moment affects everything I do and is a question only I can answer. Mentor Certification enhanced my life experience, bringing home to me a deeper understanding that love and happiness is the true measure of success.

Lynne Slater
Retired California Workersʼ Compensation Supervisor
Option Process Mentor-Counselor

Sonoma, CA