Northern Illinois Counseling Associates, P.C.

A Tradition of Excellence

FAQs for Personal Mentoring Services


What are the benefits of personal mentoring services for me?

Personal Mentoring Services provide you with your very own personal mentor whose role is to be an assiduous, facilitative, catalytic change agent, advocate and ombudsman of you, with you and for you.  Each and every person needs a healthy admixture of permission and encouragement to be who they are and not who they are not and the consistent and appropriate challenge to become who they are to be. 

Consequently, you will derive immediate and continuing benefit from the life lessons of a truly “seasoned” community elder, who has “been there and done that” so that you do not necessarily have to learn all of your life lessons the hard way.  When the protégé is ready the personal mentor appears.

For more information, call us at 1-815-455-6736 or Contact Us

What exactly do personal mentors do?

Personal mentors provide you with a uniquely individualized personal relationship to learn some of the expressed and implied rules, endemic to the vast multiplicity of roles, across the broad life domains of work, love and play.  Your personal mentor can “give you a fish” or alternatively can “teach you to fish.”

As mentors, our purpose is to help you to choose your particular path in life with meaning, purpose and value.  A personal mentor helps you become the best you can be for you.

For more information, read Dr. Glenn’s article, Whole and Holey or Dr. Larry's article, Mop's Here.

How is personal mentoring different from life coaching?

Personal mentoring significantly differs from life coaching.  The focus of a life coach is often limited to a performance-based, task-oriented agenda which is invariably predicated upon a subordinate-superordinate hierarchical model. 

The focus of a personal mentor is unlimited insofar as it is agenda-free, process-based, life-oriented and predicated, at core, upon a collaborative, non-hierarchical model.  Mentoring is positively biased solely in your favor because your personal mentor cares about you and your personal development. 

If you “fit-in” with everyone else, great; if not, then fortunately, the world is a big enough place for you to find a way that’s just right for you!

Coaching is impartial and biased in the service of addressing a specific behavior or skill so that you participate or contribute better to a group or team.  Personal mentoring puts the “I” back in life and the “me” back in meaningful!

What's in it for me?

"What's in it for me” is a dynamic - power-free and power-full - non-clinical mentoring relationship where you will learn to live, laugh and love. 

When you select your personal mentor, you will enter into a friendly, respectful and dynamic relationship with a high-functioning “life-elder” who will respond with honesty and candor to any and all of your questions, and also, help you to significantly refine the quality of those questions so you are able to arrive at much better answers for yourself.

Who are you?

Who are we?  During the course of our 40+ year careers, respectively, as mental health professionals, Dr. Larry and Dr. Glenn have learned a thing or two about life, and the three-legged ‘stool’ of work, love and play which comprise it.  Our own personal journeys have necessitated confronting our self, alone by our self, in service of our self, and also in service of others. 

Along the way, we have actively sought the wise counsel of personal mentors, good and true, who provided us, by their lived examples, with excellent role modeling, that we might emulate such qualities and attributes in them that we experienced as personally meaningful, useful and relevant in our own life.

Throughout our own respective journeys, we have each learned the importance of re-creating our self, with the help of our own exemplary personal mentors.

Read more about Dr. Larry and Dr. Glenn

What is my role in the mentoring process?

Your role in the mentoring process is to think, judge, and act in accordance with your emerging and evolving values-system in the interactive “give and take” with your own personal mentor. 

You must make a sincere and sustained commitment to yourself and to the mentoring process which challenges you to aim high and do your best, albeit, in a fair and honorable manner.

In the Oriental tradition, “when the disciple is ready, the master appears.”  Your role is to be ready, willing, and able to open yourself up, by emptying yourself out, in order to fill yourself full with how you need and wish to live - and thereby be full-filled. 

Be ready to be championed, challenged, promoted and provoked, in search of guiding you to be who you are  - and become the best version of yourself.

Where, when, and how do my personal mentoring services take place?

Personal mentoring services can take place by phone, Zoom, or in person. 

Appointment times are initially scheduled with our administrative staff.  Thereafter, you can schedule additional consultations directly with your personal mentor. 

You may schedule personal mentoring “sessions” daily, weekly, monthly or yearly.  You choose a time that is best for you and your personal mentor.

To schedule your first appointment, call us at 1-815-455-6736 or Contact Us.

What are the fees and payment terms?

Fees are one hundred dollars ($100.00) per half-hour and are rendered in half-hour increments, or fractions, thereafter.

Times listed are based on Central Daylight Saving (CDT) and Central Standard Time (CST) for Crystal Lake, Illinois, USA.

PERSONAL MENTORING SERVICES (PMS) does not require the user to sign-up for any length-of-term contracts and offers "pay-as-you-go" for your personal mentoring needs.

All services are scheduled by appointment only.

Twenty-four (24) hour prior notification to our office is required to avert full charge for cancellation.

Pre-payment for all personal mentoring services is required unless there is a continuous payment guarantee on file.

How do I schedule with my personal mentor?

Simply call us at 1-815-455-6736 or Contact Us to schedule your first PMS appointment with Dr. Larry or Dr. Glenn.


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