Looking forward to a fresh start in 2017? Tal Fagin is a skilled  Certified Life Coach who can help empower you to define and reach your goals — and to stay on track.

For many of us the new year means making a list of resolutions that are unrealistic and unreachable. We start with good intentions and within months end up feeling like a failure. What if you had a coach who provided guidance and redirected you when you veered off-track? Life Coach Tal Fagin does just that. And she is really good at it.

Her business is called Tal Fusion — a nod to the combination of many skills and experiences that have shaped who she is today. A former corporate attorney, Tal works with clients to pin-point and solve problems. She listens and asks questions. She’s not judgemental. She understands. She’s been there. She is both direct in her approach and a compassionate listener. She helps you work through the obstacles in your life that are holding you back. She leads the way to clarity. Her simple strategies will enable you to lead a more balanced and joyful life.

Originally from New Rochelle, NY, Tal had an unusual up-bringing. Her parents were wildly in love, broke up several times, and kept getting back together. Her parents were archetypes. Her father was a salesman — a combination of Willy Loman and his son. Her mother was a rock. She kept it together for her children and gave them absolute unconditional love.

Tal Fagin majored in history at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. She also studied a little psychology and communications; the whole time she had her eye on Law School. Upon graduating from NYU Law School, she was hired at a large New York law firm. After 5 years there, she found that corporate law was not really right for her. She had been involved in some pro bono work on behalf of women who were victims of domestic violence, and those cases felt more meaningful to her. She moved on to work for the District Attorney’s office in Queens to prosecute domestic violence cases, but soon became pregnant with her first child. She had spent her whole life gunning for a legal career, and she found herself in a quandary. After an aha moment where she was interviewing a nanny, and communicating her work hours, she realized her baby would spend more time with the nanny than with her. She decided to stay home to raise her child, and her career was put on hold.

For the next ten years, Tal had two more children and spent time with her family while doing a variety of work from developing an app to legal pro bono work, to volunteering. She wrote a novel, a screen play, and a pilot for a TV show. Looking back, Tal says that all of those experiences have been helpful in the work she does with women and men now.

When coaching clients, Tal often turns to assuring them that they are not alone in their quandaries. Many of the concerns that they bring to her are universal issues. “Your inner voice tells you that you’re not doing enough. Often it is this voice that holds us back,” Tal asks “How self-aware are you? How open to experimenting and to change are you?” “How do your personal issues affect your work?”

Many people need someone to talk to about issues they have at work, and Tal offers insight beginning with this: The question often asked of you by strangers is “What do you do for a living?” which really means “What do you do for work?” Working is living — this is not a coincidence. Tal points out to her clients that there is a connection — your personal goals do affect your goals in business.

Tal helps clients to explore what their family or people did to them. “You either shut down or attack back. When you unpack it and unpack it again, it feels true.” Tal provides her clients with the pro-active tools to say to themselves, “This is where you are now. What can you do to improve that?”

Another area that she adresses is the physical toll of living with stress and anxiety. How you react physically and emotionally to your concerns affects your body, whether through a defensive posture, gaining weight, or with aches and pains. Sometimes you feel defeated and think “what’s the point?” Tal encourages her clients to use breathing and meditation to get through those difficult times. “When you learn the signals that your body is sending, you can pause, take a deep breath,” she says, “Meditation is great for calming down. From that place you can respond to everything as opposed to reacting. This is true of parenting, true of everything.

Tal points out that life coaching is not therapy. You go to a doctor if you are sick. You go to a personal trainer for better wellness. If you are suffering from anxiety or depression, you go to a doctor and get medication. If you are mentally sound and if you are relatively healthy, and if you don’t need a diagnosis nor medication, and just want to be listened to, having a life coach could be the answer. “My clients are mentally healthy, accomplished, highly functioning people who simply want more out of life — whether that be in their personal relationships, their careers, their health, or some combination thereof.”

After 10 years of raising her children, Tal studied with Martha Beck, Life Coach, author of eight books, and writer of a popular monthly column in O, The Oprah Magazine. Tal took the Martha Beck 9-month online program and became a Certified Life Coach. For her, it was a catalyctic event. After completing the program, she went through a training period where she practiced coaching, and then finally, she began coaching with a few regular clients.

Her business has grown over the years, and Tal has developed a few programs that can be implemented within groups or on an individual basis. She provides life coaching services to individuals, couples, business partners, or groups such as parenting groups. In addition to in-person sessions at her home office in Washington, Tal works with clients by phone all over the country. She guarantees absolute confidentiality.

When asked how she ended up in Litchfield County, Tal Fagin explains that she had ties to the area — as a teen she had spent time in a summer camp in Kent. Many years later, in 2006, when she and her husband were still living in Manhattan, they began spending weekends in Litchfield County. One weekend, they were staying at the Mayflower Inn and decided they wanted to live in Washington. They bought a home in Washington and by 2013, they made the move to Connecticut full time. Tal loves it up here— the scenery, the people, and the feeling of space.

The services Tal Fagin offers are on her web site, along with pricing: One On One Coaching, Parenting Groups, Special Programs, Workshops and Events. Here is a quick summary of the Special Programs she offers:

Love the One You’re With: This was developed after Tal realized that she worked out so much and was caught up with the idea of physial perfection instead of working out to take care of herself. She offers this program in person along with Dr. Alicia Zalker, a local dermatologist. It is a coaching program designed to liberate you once and for all from your harshest critic—your inner voice—so you can stop sabotaging yourself.

Lay Off, Love On: This is a program about parenting, about exploring  and helping you find a more effective and authentic way to parent your children. There are only two main emotions: love and fear. When you are parenting, you either act from one or another. We are afraid of losing that love. The result is fight or flight. Or walls go up, and you’re not communicative. If you go underneath that, and ask yourself “What am I afraid of?” “Why am I acting like this?” The answer is you want to help your children to survive, to be strong. “Parenting feels better to me from that place.”

Ready to Rev: This coaching program is intended to help you get honest about who you are, where you are, and what you want to do with the next chapter of your life. It is about empowering you to be your strongest, most authentic and best self.

And here are Tal’s Top 2 Tips:

1. Develop a meditation practice — even if it is just breathing deeply.

2. Develop a gratitude practice — whether it is telling yourself every day or writing about it.

With new coaching clients, Tal Fagin suggests beginning with a package of six sessions or to try it on an individual session basis. Six sessions is enough for some people, while others have seen her regularly for two years.

Tal Fagin concludes with this personal account of finding her true path here in Litchfield County: “I struggled for a long time to discover who I was. I tried yoga, dancing, hanging out at clubs, working as a lawyer — but I always felt like it wasn’t me. Everyone gets to be who they are in the Northwest Corner of Connecticut. Every day I tell myself how incredibly lucky I am, we are. I can’t express it enough. It’s my love-letter feeling to the community.”

With each new client, Tal asks, “Will you actually implement the tools that I have at the ready for you? Receiving coaching can be life-changing, yet it is so simple.” The work that Tal so effectively does is to spread hope and healing. “I have yet to encounter a problem I don’t feel compelled to help solve, or to at least try.” So, if you are ready to turn your life around, to restart and refresh, consider a coach to guide you through it — all you need is a little help. Tal Fagin is committed to helping you achieve your goals. “I have learned — through experience, introspection and coaching — how to get out of my own way, and how to live a life of my own design. And trust me, if I can do it — so can you.” As the tag line on her web site says: Let Your Life Shine.