The Synergix™ Process

Understand the pattern. Decide what you want instead. Build a better response. Put it to work.

The process is structured, but it is not one-size-fits-all. We use five stages to move from understanding the issue to doing something useful about it.

01Self-Assessment

We start by understanding what is working, what is not, and what may be getting in the way. The objective is clarity—not self-criticism.

02Goal Setting

We define the result you actually want. A useful goal is specific enough that we will know whether anything has changed.

03Pattern Mapping

We examine what tends to happen before, during and after the problem: what you notice, what you tell yourself, what assumptions appear, how you react and what result follows.

04Restructuring

We challenge assumptions and practice alternative ways of interpreting and responding to the situation. The objective is to give you more choices instead of automatically repeating the same response.

05Action Planning

Insight matters only if it changes what happens next. We turn the work into specific actions and tools you can use outside our conversations.

Eight sessions or fewer, start to finish

Two sessions to find your rulebook.

You tell me the three main problems you want to resolve and your goals, and you complete a questionnaire of 138 statements. From that, I put together the rulebook by which you process what happens to you and think about it.

Three patterns to change.

If you agree, we pick the three that concern you most and define how you want to react, think and feel instead.

Practice until it sticks.

These patterns took 30 or 40 years to form. Practice is what changes them.

One final session to make it yours.

We sum up what we learned and what you will keep doing on your own.

If I can’t help, I’ll tell you.

I’ll explain why and suggest where to look instead.

Why this can work

Human beings learn patterns. Some become so familiar that they feel automatic. We can mistake a familiar response for an unavoidable one: “That is just how I am.”

But familiar is not the same as inevitable. Once you can recognize a pattern, you can examine the assumptions underneath it, interrupt it, try a different response and reinforce approaches that produce better results.

That is the practical idea behind Synergix. We are not trying to turn you into someone else. We are expanding the choices available to you.

What the Synergix Process draws on

Synergix is not built on a single school of thought. My background includes coaching training, training in neuro-linguistics, and extensive personal experience with cognitive-behavioral approaches. I use whichever ideas help with the problem in front of us.

A woman listens and takes notes during a conversation.

Two woodworkers examine a wooden joint together.

Psychology — how beliefs formed early in life shape what we expect of ourselves, of other people and of the world.

Cognitive-behavioral approaches — the connection between what we think, how we feel and what we do, and practical ways to change the response.

Neuro-linguistics and language — the words and meanings we attach to experiences, because how we describe a situation affects how we respond to it.

Business and entrepreneurial experience — more than five decades of watching what actually works when real money, real people and real consequences are involved.

These are tools, not the product. The product is a better decision, a stronger performance or a pattern you no longer have to repeat.

The same process can apply in very different situations.

A leadership conflict, fear of speaking, a difficult business decision, the need to control everything and a poor financial choice may look unrelated. But each can involve assumptions and habitual responses that affect the eventual outcome.

That is also why Synergix and my financial work at LouisBerlin.com are related: both are concerned with helping people understand their choices and make decisions that serve them better.