Flora Bami is an optimist, experienced, and passionate integral coach, with expertise in life coaching, mindset, purpose and relationships coaching. Her main focus is on making your relationship with yourself healthier and reframing your inner voice based on self-love, acceptance, and compassion.
Her mission in life is to support people in their life journey to reach their potential and feel better and happier, through individual coaching and setting up wellbeing programs in big organizations.
After going through a deep transformation herself and turning trauma into a gift, she dedicated her life to supporting people reconnecting with their true selves.
Better people, better world!
Happier people, happier world!
Flora Bami, Certified Integral Coach
Who is Flora
I am of Greek origin, raised in Ioannina, a beautiful city on the west of Greece. Although I was born in mid-November, my parents associated my arrival in life with the spring. “You brought the spring in our life Flora”, they always say after their Happy Birthday wishes every year.
This was a beautiful metaphor they used to express the joy, happiness, high sense of hope, and faith they experienced with my birth, which represented a new beginning for them, a new family after the loss of their first daughter 8 months prior to my birth. Indeed the spring season is full of transformation. The plants are coming to life again, the trees have buds on them and the new greens are popping right out of the ground. Everywhere you look around the colors are changing from brown to green. The leaves we saw fall and flowers we saw wilt are now budding into lush, green, picture-perfect plants. This narrative was well stored in my subconscious and has run my life since then without even me being aware. My interpretation was that I have to be the spring in others’ life; to make them happy and joyful. As expected this is how I was living my life until my early 30s; being the perfect child for my parents, always obedient, well-mannered, and emotionally regulated, having the best marks at school, being a role model for my classmates, teachers, family, being the first one leading the way, studying at the best University of Greece, building a successful career in Finance in Athens and Geneva, supporting and listening to my friends and family with all my heart and energy, being considerate of others’ feelings and needs. Making others feel disappointed or sad was not an option for me.
In 2011, I moved to Geneva, the world’s smallest metropolis which embraces more than 180 different nationalities in harmony. This peaceful, diverse and very special place allowed me to slowly start my personal growth journey right after my 30s, mainly triggered by my love relationships. Coming from a place of genuine curiosity and self-love, I started exploring different personal development techniques and an era of transformation started where I allowed myself to be the spring in my life, prioritizing my needs, connecting with my true self, and discovering my gift and my mission in life. My way of being changed fundamentally, the way I approach life and people has changed and this journey hugely inspired me on building the confidence, skills, and knowledge to support people in their life journey to reach their potential and feel better and happier.
After 12 years of corporate experience in Finance across 3 different international organizations and being blessed to have great mentors in my career, I made the big leap and moved to Diversity Inclusion / Wellbeing in the corporate world three years ago, while building my coaching practice on the side.
I am inspired by people, nature, and the calmness, serenity, and transparency of the sea.
I believe that every individual is unique, special, different. Everyone has a success story that is worth unpacking and listening to. I love exploring people, they have always been and will be my best teachers. I love nature, the best designer ever that exceeds any expectations, unlocks imagination, inspires creativity, and supports healing. I spend a lot of time in nature; exploring the mountains in Switzerland, meditating by the river, admiring the wisdom and divine beauty of nature in all its forms.
When not working or coaching, you can find me doing sports (running, tennis, body combat, pilates) or connecting with my body and spirit on my yoga mat; cooking and experimenting in my kitchen, painting and playing with colors, traveling around the world, discovering the best wine cellars and restaurants in the world, reading spiritual and personal growth books, journaling, taking care of my plants, playing with kids and connecting people.
What is it that you do for your clients?
I am a passionate certified integral coach. “Integral” means inclusive of everything (mind, heart, body, spirit), entire, complete, whole. So, at its deepest root, integral coaching refers to a way of coaching that is whole, complete, and integrated. I approach every client with an empty mind, genuine kindness, and curiosity. My coaching style is specific, tailored, and crafted for each person. Every human being is unique and has a special way of being and interpreting life and this is what we are trying to unpack and build awareness on during our coaching journey together. I make my clients feel seen, heard, respected, and comfortable enough to be themselves and share the unique qualities that only they embody. When this occurs, they start to flourish and collaborate with life, and transformation happens. The integral coaching approach allows me to be able to coach any human being regardless of the problem or difficulty that brought them to coaching and enables me to get underneath the coaching topic. I am coaching the person, not the problem. And that’s the beauty and power of integral coaching. Through my coaching practice since 2016, I have built solid expertise mainly in the areas of life coaching, mindset coaching, purpose and meaning in life, relationships, performance, wellbeing, and executive coaching. My main focus is on making my client’s relationships with themselves healthier and reframing their inner voice based on self-love, acceptance, and compassion, and this is how transformation occurs. This is the necessary and vital starting point to enable my clients to handle their life, problems, and relationships in a better and more efficient way.
How do I contribute to making this world a better one?
“Try and leave this world a little better than you found it, and when your turn comes to die, you can die happy in feeling that at any rate, you have not wasted your time but have done your best”. Lord Robert Baden-Powell’s quote triggered a lot of self-reflection and contemplation a few years ago until the moment I got the answer after my first coaching session.
To make this world a better one, we need to start with ourselves first. I am responsible for my own happiness hence I am responsible to take my personal growth seriously and commit to becoming a better person, building better relationships with people around me hence having a positive impact on others. Imagine if we were all committed to personal development and open to change, how our world would be?
In addition to my personal role in becoming my best self, coaching enables me to support people in building self-awareness, explore a better version of themselves, create a healthy relationship with themselves, and as a result sustain better relationships with others. The ripple effect is huge and contagious when something like this happens at a universal level.
Coaching is not my only contribution to making this world a better one. In parallel, designing and implementing holistic inclusion and wellbeing strategies and policies for international organizations has a global collective and positive impact on thousands of employees. I am extremely passionate about making wellbeing, mental health, and inclusion a strategic imperative in the corporate world simply because I believe that happy employees perform better. Furthermore, this year I will be coaching on a voluntary basis a global community of students who are committed to their personal development as part of their vision to build a better world.
Serving others in any way or channel is my driving force. This is my contribution to the world.
Being able to support people in any context with my coaching practice and wellbeing expertise, my passion, care, and kindness, is my little contribution to making this world a better one.
Every single one of us has the capacity, talents, and skills to contribute to making this world a better one; can be a single act of kindness towards people we see daily, a smile, or dedicating our time and energy to supporting people around us at a professional level. Simply reflect on your unique gift and find your own way! When you do what you love, you have a purpose and the power to have a positive impact on people.
Who should hire/work with you?
I love this question because it allows me to clarify a misconception that some people may have around coaching. Coaching is not a remedial procedure, it’s a developmental investment. The most successful people in our world take their personal growth seriously and make sure that they have a coach, mentor, or are involved in activities that support their development at a physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual level. You can be a successful professional, a great friend and partner but you can become even better by building awareness of yourself, your “algorithm”, the way you have been programmed, your limiting beliefs, etc. Self-awareness is an endless lifelong beautiful fascinating journey. The desire to be coached comes from a space of self-love, self-worth, and genuine curiosity.
Taking all the above into consideration, all human beings who are curious to discover themselves and become their best selves can contact me and work with me. There is always a trigger or challenge in our life which may lead us to coaching, whatever it is, I am more than happy to support everyone out there.
In parallel, organizations and communities that are determined to build a more diverse, inclusive, and healthy working environment and culture could enormously benefit from my experience and expertise. I have a firm genuine belief in authenticity, equality, inclusion while I passionately embrace the power of diverse minds, cultures, and beings and acknowledge the paramount importance of mental health and wellbeing in achieving a positive and healthy culture within an organization...
What is your big goal?
My mission:
Better people, better world!
Happier people, happier world!
My favorite quotes
"The quality of your life is the quality of your relationships." Tony Robbins
"Outward change comes after we change from within."Bob Proctor
"Never trust your fears, they don’t know your strength." Athena Singh
"Life begins at the end of your comfort zone."Neale Donald Walsch
"The only one who can tell you "You can't" is you. And you don't have to listen."Dean Karnazes
Where do you see yourself in 10 years from now?
My long-term vision is that coaching becomes as normal and as indispensable as running water, electricity and WiFi in every family, workplace, business, school, university, public services. My main focus at the moment is individual coaching, making coaching accessible and available at the corporate level across all seniority levels and coaching students at the very early stage of their career and life in general.
Over the next 10 years, I see myself collaborating with more diverse organizations, communities and the public sector to make coaching a necessity and not a privilege. I strongly believe that parents and kids should have direct and easy access to coaching and wellbeing tools.
Writing my first book is one of the projects that will keep me creatively busy over the next 10 years. I want to share my story, my personal growth journey, all the tools that I have learned and practiced that enabled me to change and live a life with a higher purpose.
On the other hand, life sometimes has other plans or surprises for us. My life journey so far taught me to simply trust in the process and go with the flow gracefully and fearlessly. But whatever those plans may be, I see myself dedicated to serving others and contributing to making this world a better one.
My Top 3 tips
The art of being: Our busy lives keep us active, busy, and on a doing mode all the time. My invitation to you is to consciously stop, pause, breathe, simply take a few moments to savor a relaxed state of being. Allow them to gradually permeate your body, mind, heart, and spirit. Simply be. It may sound difficult to grasp, but this simple exercise has transformed the lives of many clients, mine included.
True happiness is found in the difference we make in the lives of others. Contemplate what is your gift to this world; this is the number one step to finding your purpose in life.
Be selective on how you use and spend your time and energy. Energy is currency. When you pay attention to something, you are buying an experience. Be selective and treat your time with respect, care and love. Be conscious of how, where, with whom, and what you spend your energy on. Do you invest your energy in people, projects, situations with a high ROI or simply waste it on careless scrolling, unproductive gossiping, and gloomy people?
My favorite deep and thought-provoking questions for Brainz magazine readers:
How self-aware am I?
What is one thing I can learn from any situation, person, relationship in my life?
What blocks me from making peace with my life?
What is my central motivation now?
What really matters?
What is my gift to the world?
