About Us
Our Mission
To provide innovative, engaging and best-practice services that support individuals and organisations to better understand and meet their needs, and achieve higher levels of personal fulfillment, achievement and productivity.
To provide innovative, engaging and best-practice services that support individuals and organisations to better understand and meet their needs, and achieve higher levels of personal fulfillment, achievement and productivity.
Our Vision
To assist young people, adults, families and organisations to be grounded, inspired and productive by facilitating:
Our Team
To assist young people, adults, families and organisations to be grounded, inspired and productive by facilitating:
- Their connections to themselves (e.g., who they are);
- Their connections to their family community and customers;
- Their connections to their environment;
- Their connections to their goals and aspirations, and ways to overcome barriers to these.
Our Team
Our Practice Philosophy
- To integrate sound evidence-based practice with creative and engaging services
- To value and foster creativity
- To be at the cutting edge of innovative product development and delivery
- To provide quality, sustainable and outcome-focused services
- To be professional and relationship focused at all times
- To value the uniqueness, capacity for change, and strengths of all humans
- To deliver responsive services that are informed by a holistic understanding of our client's needs
- To deliver individually tailored, flexible and dynamic services that can meet the complex and changing needs of our clients
- To provide realistic and honest advice on service outcomes
- To value continuous improvement and life-long learning
For a more detailed version (pdf) of our practice philosophy click here.
Our Values
- Acceptance
- Integrity and responsibility
- Authenticity of people and services
- Creativity and innovation
- Fun and play
- Importance of the inner journey
- Environment and sustainability
- Embracement of diversity and uniqueness within all humans
- Relationships as central
- Collaboration and teamwork
- Persistence
- Open communication
- Respect and honesty
For a printable version (pdf) of our values and business culture click here.
Our Logo
The Connected Self Logo symbolises the values and practice philosophy that underpins our service delivery. The circle, cubes, triangle, star, centre point and colour schemes are deeply symbolic.
The logo was inspired by:
For a detailed overview of the symbolism attached to the Connected Self logo (pdf version), click here.
The Connected Self Logo symbolises the values and practice philosophy that underpins our service delivery. The circle, cubes, triangle, star, centre point and colour schemes are deeply symbolic.The logo was inspired by:
- Carl Jung - the famous Swiss psychiatrist who valued depth psychology, symbolism, understanding individual differences and spirituality
- Oscar Reutersvard - the Swedish artist who first created the "impossible triangle"
- Gestalt Psychology - for the viewpoint: "the whole is greater than the sum of the individual parts" (or the importance of holistic approaches)
For a detailed overview of the symbolism attached to the Connected Self logo (pdf version), click here.
How we started
We have included this information as we thought that others may be interested in how Connected Self came to be. We also wanted to record the establishment of Connected Self as a way to remind ourselves how and why Connected Self was developed.
The very start of this story pre-dates any discussion between the founding members. The seed of thought that lead to the initial discussions had been planted long before in each of the founding members. This seed was nurtured in each of us by our passion and interest to use a range of innovative approaches to support young people reach their potential. Up until the initial meetings however, the process was missing one essential ingredient - ACTION. The seed could not germinate and grow into a reality without it.
The next part of the story saw the process move from thoughts to a frenzy of excitement and ideas. In mid 2007 Ivan approached Sean to discuss his ideas and, over a cup of Japanese tea, there was verbal agreement that this business is something that we would pursue. At this very same meeting both Ivan and Sean identified Tim as a third member to join the team to bring this concept into a reality. Tim joined the journey without hesitation and after a series of e-mails we made plans to head to Port Noarlunga and spend most of the weekend trying to work out if it could actually work.
The weekend was an amazing part of the journey in many ways. First and foremost it was a chance to get to know one another on a more profound level. Over the course of the weekend we discovered what made each other tick and what informed us in our journeys. While there were some differences between each of us there were overwhelming similarities at the core of what we believed in. With the help of some fabulous South Australian red wine we worked hard to get clear about what we were interested in achieving through the proposed business and whether there was enough common ground to make it work. Our shared passion for working with young people, their families and others in the community, as well as our clear commitments to our families (including being able to support them while enabling us the flexibility to spend time with them), sealed the deal. We also recognised the fact that our differing backgrounds, experience and areas of expertise provided a well rounded compliment in achieving our goals. We had officially begun the journey!
The following months were challenging but fulfilling. The process of shaping Connected Self into what it has become had us all reflecting on our own connectedness and prompted us to be more deliberate in improving the consistency of being connected; both to our inner worlds as well as with our external environments. We challenged ourselves, we challenged each other and we shared our experiences frequently. We also did a massive amount of work! We have an absolute commitment to ensuring that we are clear on what Connected Self is and what principles and values underpin the work we do. Part of this was coming up with the name and logo. As Ivan had already begun a psychology practice we rode on the back of what he had progressed which was very much aligned to our shared thinking and demonstrated the innovative nature of what we wanted Connected Self to be. We then sought to establish the vision, principles, values, practice philosophy, business culture and our mission. These served as a solid platform in the development of countless policies and practice guides.
We had also started work on this website which we invested a lot of time in getting right. In our minds it was critical that the website projected the image of Connected Self that we had worked so hard to get right. Ivan did an enormous amount of work in developing the framework and uploading a huge amount of information and we have been updating it ever since to ensure it reflects the quality and 'personality' of Connected Self.
After Tim delivered the first group Rock and Water program with excellent feedback, and Ivan continued to deliver clinical services, Connected Self was finally a reality. February 2008, however, represented the official launch of Connected Self. I hope that you have enjoyed reading about the evolution of Connected Self as much as we have enjoyed living it.
A final note goes out to our fabulous families who - as always - have provided amazing support to us as throughout the establishment phase. Thanks, you're wonderful and we love you lots!
We have included this information as we thought that others may be interested in how Connected Self came to be. We also wanted to record the establishment of Connected Self as a way to remind ourselves how and why Connected Self was developed.
The very start of this story pre-dates any discussion between the founding members. The seed of thought that lead to the initial discussions had been planted long before in each of the founding members. This seed was nurtured in each of us by our passion and interest to use a range of innovative approaches to support young people reach their potential. Up until the initial meetings however, the process was missing one essential ingredient - ACTION. The seed could not germinate and grow into a reality without it.
The next part of the story saw the process move from thoughts to a frenzy of excitement and ideas. In mid 2007 Ivan approached Sean to discuss his ideas and, over a cup of Japanese tea, there was verbal agreement that this business is something that we would pursue. At this very same meeting both Ivan and Sean identified Tim as a third member to join the team to bring this concept into a reality. Tim joined the journey without hesitation and after a series of e-mails we made plans to head to Port Noarlunga and spend most of the weekend trying to work out if it could actually work.
The weekend was an amazing part of the journey in many ways. First and foremost it was a chance to get to know one another on a more profound level. Over the course of the weekend we discovered what made each other tick and what informed us in our journeys. While there were some differences between each of us there were overwhelming similarities at the core of what we believed in. With the help of some fabulous South Australian red wine we worked hard to get clear about what we were interested in achieving through the proposed business and whether there was enough common ground to make it work. Our shared passion for working with young people, their families and others in the community, as well as our clear commitments to our families (including being able to support them while enabling us the flexibility to spend time with them), sealed the deal. We also recognised the fact that our differing backgrounds, experience and areas of expertise provided a well rounded compliment in achieving our goals. We had officially begun the journey!
The following months were challenging but fulfilling. The process of shaping Connected Self into what it has become had us all reflecting on our own connectedness and prompted us to be more deliberate in improving the consistency of being connected; both to our inner worlds as well as with our external environments. We challenged ourselves, we challenged each other and we shared our experiences frequently. We also did a massive amount of work! We have an absolute commitment to ensuring that we are clear on what Connected Self is and what principles and values underpin the work we do. Part of this was coming up with the name and logo. As Ivan had already begun a psychology practice we rode on the back of what he had progressed which was very much aligned to our shared thinking and demonstrated the innovative nature of what we wanted Connected Self to be. We then sought to establish the vision, principles, values, practice philosophy, business culture and our mission. These served as a solid platform in the development of countless policies and practice guides.
We had also started work on this website which we invested a lot of time in getting right. In our minds it was critical that the website projected the image of Connected Self that we had worked so hard to get right. Ivan did an enormous amount of work in developing the framework and uploading a huge amount of information and we have been updating it ever since to ensure it reflects the quality and 'personality' of Connected Self.
After Tim delivered the first group Rock and Water program with excellent feedback, and Ivan continued to deliver clinical services, Connected Self was finally a reality. February 2008, however, represented the official launch of Connected Self. I hope that you have enjoyed reading about the evolution of Connected Self as much as we have enjoyed living it.
A final note goes out to our fabulous families who - as always - have provided amazing support to us as throughout the establishment phase. Thanks, you're wonderful and we love you lots!
