About António
“Mental reprogramming assistant!” That was the answer he gave when a well-known young woman from Portuguese TV pointed a microphone at him and asked what he did for a living.
Meaning what, exactly?
Some time ago, on a beautiful sunny day on a street in Lisbon, I sat down on the end of an inviting park bench. I breathed deeply, closed my eyes, and stayed like that for a while.
When I opened my eyes again there were strange people around me and a smiling young woman was pointing a microphone at me. Still recovering from the surprise, she fired away:
“Good morning! Awake?”
“Y… es…”, I answered.
“What's your name? What do you do?”
“António Cordeiro. I'm a mental reprogramming assistant.”
“Meaning what, exactly?”, asked the confused young woman with the microphone.
It is a good question, and it is still the best way I have found to describe this. I don't program anyone. I help people notice the program already running, and discover that another one can be written.
The path
At thirteen I founded a rugby club. I brought together a group of children, and that was where my journey in leadership began. I played, ran, organised and coached that demanding sport for several years. While still at university I began my professional life in sports training and management.
Later the entrepreneurial energy began to show: I resigned and moved on to my first private venture, designing, setting up and running a chain of pizzerias. It was an important period, marked too by a spell on the board of the National Association of Young Entrepreneurs.
In 2009 everything changed. I began my coaching certification and, shortly afterwards, devoted myself professionally to studying, using and teaching a powerful tool for behavioural development: the Enneagram.
It was also the year I began studying a non-dualist teaching of deep personal transformation called A Course in Miracles.
Why these things belong together
People often ask me how the Enneagram and A Course in Miracles fit into the same practice. For me, they fit because they look at different and complementary levels of the same transformation.
The Enneagram helps us recognise personality: the patterns we repeat, what triggers them, and how they shape our relationship with ourselves and with others. It shows us how we appear to work.
A Course in Miracles takes us deeper and asks a different question: what if what we are observing and trying to transform is not, after all, who we really think we are? Instead of perfecting the personality, it invites us to stop identifying with it.
That is why the two paths meet so naturally. The Enneagram helps us see the pattern, and the Course helps us not to mistake the pattern for who we truly are.
One offers a map for understanding ourselves. The other points to what lies beyond the map. It is in this meeting, between knowing the personality and ceasing to identify with it, that the source of my work lies.
What now?
If any part of this journey crosses yours, there are several places where we can begin.