For Miami native Sylvie Jordan, Westport is wonderful.
She moved here in 1999 with her husband, a Fairfield native. They divorced; she returned to Florida, then headed to New York with her fiancé. During the first COVID summer they joined the exodus from the city, and bought a house in Old Hill.
Westport is like a small town, Sylvie says. Everything is close. It feels safer than Miami.
And though she loved the sun and palm trees, the rhythm of the seasons is rewarding. “It’s like death and rebirth,” Sylvia notes. “Seasons shape the human experience.”
Sylvie knows a thing or two about that human experience. She’s always been a people person — and they’ve long been drawn to her.
Sylvie Jordan
While working in the legal field, she was the person people asked for advice. Her home was where her son’s friends always gathered; they felt at ease talking to her.
Sylvie followed that people passion. In 2019 she earned a diploma in coaching from New York University’s School of Professional Studies. She’s continued her new career in Westport.
“My greatest satisfaction comes from human interaction,” she says.
“Some people think they need big rewards. I believe, and I try to help others see, that they don’t have to be grand. If the kitchen is your passion, you can get great rewards from baking a pie.”
Coaching is different from therapy, Sylvie notes. The latter is based on “diagnosis and treatment”; the former on “discovery and inquiry.” Her job is to help clients figure out “why they’re stuck in life. Sometimes they’re at Point A, and they just need to get unstuck to get to Point B.”
Human beings get stuck, she says, because we use only 5% of our working brain. The other 95% was hard-wired when we were young. It’s easy to fall back on familiar ways.
Through her Pathways Coaching, she helps people “create new pathways” — new ways of looking at situations.
“It’s not easy to make change,” she acknowledges. But through passion, empowerment, trust, integrity and courage, it can be done.
She takes on those challenges — and, challenging clients with questions, allows them to figure things out for themselves.
It takes about 6 sessions, Sylvie says, before there’s an “aha!” moment. The next step then is to create an action plan, to change routines and take chances moving forward.
“Little by little, they do it,” she says. “It’s beautiful to see.”
Working virtually, she has clients as far away as Brazil and Argentina. Her specialty is young adults — people trying for the first time in their lives to figure out their place in the world.
Sylvie remembers what it’s like to be that age, and not know what you want to do. The pandemic is heightened those feelings.
“Lots of kids have been isolated,” says the coach. “They deserve to do what they want, not what they think others think they should do.”
(For Sylvie Jordan’s website, click here.)
