Exclusive Interview with Robert A. Grigore, the Founder of Grigore Counselling

Table of Contents

Tell us your name and a little about yourself.

I’m Robert A. Grigore, MCP, RCC. I’m a Registered Clinical Counsellor, a Certified EMDR Therapist, published author, and the owner and CEO of Grigore Counselling.

I’m also a new father to a beautiful little boy, and am blessed to be in a loving relationship with my best friend.

What exactly does your company do?

We deliver premium EMDR psychotherapy to executives and entrepreneurs, as well as their teams and families.

EMDR is an accelerated form of neurological processing that allows the brain to work through experiences that were not properly processed due to the situation being overwhelming for the individual. These experiences create the bedrock for negative beliefs, thought patterns, uncomfortable emotions, and are responsible for self-sabotaging behaviours.

We eliminate the worst thoughts, negative beliefs, distressing feelings, and unwanted (sometime’s not so secret) self-sabotaging behaviours of our clients. And we do it incredibly quickly—in as little as a single weekend.

Our results last and are guaranteed.

How did you find your definition of success? What is it?

For me, success is multifaceted. At the core success is about leading a meaningful existence. It’s making the most of my life with the time I have left.

I have the incredible privilege of being able to deeply transform someone’s life in a very short time. This allows me to see my existence as having an immediate impact on another person’s life.

I know that we are social beings and meaning is often created when being in service to others.

I also cannot deny that my definition of success is tied to finances. I really believe that money is a basic human necessity. Without it, we can’t live comfortably and have a large impact on the world—unless of course we’re Gandhi!

Having enough finances that I can live comfortably allows me to be more free with my creative spirit and manifest all sorts of opportunities to better the world (such as philanthropy), and it allows for a more “relaxed” freedom to enjoy time with my family.

What’s the biggest factor that has helped you be successful?

Support from my family. Specifically my wife and my father. Whenever I’ve had an idea and shared it with my wife—regardless of how big or how extreme—she’s never doubted me.

As for my father, he’s helped support me financially when I was still exploring ideas for my career and even when I was just blowing money away partying and being immature. He always had faith that I would eventually figure it out. I can never thank him enough for that trust in me. I’ve since vowed to provide my children with the same opportunities to explore their world and their place in it (with a healthy dose of appropriate emotional and financial guidance from me of course).

What were the biggest challenges you have faced, and how did you overcome them?

My biggest challenge when it all comes down to it, has been me. My own negative beliefs that I was “not good enough,” “worthless,” that I “didn’t deserve love or success,” ultimately caused me to spend many years struggling in toxic relationships and had held me hostage to addictions and self-doubt.

I overcame my negative beliefs and eliminated my addiction to drugs with EMDR. Although it took many years in therapy (first talk therapy for 4+ years, then EMDR therapy for 2+ years), it was the best choice I could have made for myself.

What are your success habits?

That’s a great question. Obviously first and foremost having my neurological foundation cleared of negative beliefs that would otherwise cause me to doubt myself is my bedrock. Next, I start my day between 5:00 am and 5:30 am, where I spend about one hour with my son as he plays (this time is devoted almost entirely to spending time bonding with him, and making sure he knows how much I love him).

Next, I hit the gym around 7:00 am, and when I’ve completed my workout, I pull out my phone and read my professional and personal mission statements back to myself. Included are goals related to business, finances, philanthropy, and relationships, as well as positive affirmations (these have real clout now, because there’s no inner critic in the back of my mind doubting the validity of my personal statements).

After the gym, I eat breakfast with my family, get ready for work and head to the office. Depending on my workday (i.e. whether I’m conducting a One & Done treatment or working on my business), I have clearly defined goals where I spend the most time on the tasks that will have the most impact on my business.

When it’s time to come home (a little earlier these days due to having an infant who’s bedtime routine takes precedence), I put work away and turn my phone on silent. I like to leave work at work and use the time when I’m at home to be fully engaged with my family–during dinner, bathtime, bedtime, and then my wife and I spend a couple of hours together (it’s the only time we have really).

In general, during product/service building and launch periods, my wife understands that I will need to be dedicated 6 days per week to work, and that we will have only one day per week to relax together. During periods of implementation and rest, we may take a family trip, for a couple of weeks, or just relax together and my workload will decrease a little bit so that I can recharge.

Finally, I am always engaged with some sort of personal or professional development. I maintain therapy, supervision, and consultation sessions, and I’m always connected with learning from a business coach or a mentor who is further ahead than me, or is doing something that I want to learn how to do.

What mistakes have you made along the way?

How much time do we have? No seriously, I think there’s no real “mistakes” in life. Every experience led me to where I am today, and had I changed anything from the past, who knows who or where I’d be today?

Looking back on my past self, I can definitely see how much emotional pain I was in and the lack of clarity as to where the pain was coming from, and how to change it. I probably could have started therapy earlier, and I could have learned more practical skills with money.

What is the best advice you can give?

#1 trust yourself.

#2 be extremely careful with whom you take advice from; even your closest family members, best friends, or spouse can want the best for you, but could give you terrible and limiting advice (this is actually their negative or limited beliefs filtering how they see your actions and goals); so be careful who you intend to share new ideas with as they are so fragile in the beginning phases.

#3 this is the most important: you need to accept the responsibility for your life; you may have had negative things happen to you, and really bad luck, but it’s your job–yours alone–to learn and grow from those experiences; the best and fastest way to grow is to eliminate your negative beliefs, and process any traumatic or negative experiences from your past that keep you operating in fear, thinking small, and ultimately holding your future hostage; there are only two responses of how you interact with your world: love or fear.

What are some people that you are really influenced by, and why?

I’ve got five main sources of inspiration. Tony Robbins, Francine Shapiro, my father, my son, and my past self.

First on the business end, I love how Tony Robbins has made a massive career from devoting his life to being of ultimate service to others. Even though I recently joked that I’d love to challenge Tony to a transformational showdown, I continually find myself following in his footsteps by working towards building financial success by making incredibly deep transformations for people, and then devoting a portion of my revenue to charitable organizations (my favourite is EMDRHAP, who I describe as being like “Doctors Without Borders” except with EMDR therapists).

The late, great Francine Shapiro, who was the founder of EMDR back in 1987, completely changed my life–both professionally and personally. Without her discovery of EMDR, I would have burned out as a therapist long ago. I truly regret not thanking her for the impact she unknowingly had on my life–I sure hope there’s an afterlife.

My father continues to be a source of inspiration to me. He came from extremely humble beginnings (his mother would literally walk through ditches in Romania to scavenge bottles that she could take to the bottle deposit to make enough money to barely feed her children). My father became a supremely adored doctor in his village–the kind of doctor that had the entire town line up, crying, and thank him for his service to them when he finally left for Canada with my mother. He had to overcome a major language barrier and pass his medical exams in Canada–which he did! He then became a family physician in the town I grew up in (he’s still working!), and also a cardiovascular surgeon. The thing that impresses the heck out of me, and continues to influence my character is his commitment to humility. I’ve never heard my father brag once.

My son influences me in a major way. When I look at him, I am reminded of the type of man I need to become so that I can provide him with the type of opportunity he deserves. He continues to burn my entrepreneurial fire even brighter than it’s ever been before.

Finally, my past self influences me in a big way–it’s all positive, but I find myself feeling very emotional when I think about all the suffering he/I had to go through. From the bullying, the loneliness, the emotional confusion, the suicidal ideation, the addictions, the self-hatred, all of it–he deserves to live the type of life he only dreamed of. I find myself checking in with him at periods throughout the day, and showing him how far he’s come and what he’s able to do now. This also happens to influence my future self, because all three of us (if I can say that!) are in this together, and deserve to be happy and successful.

If you could start all over again, what would you do differently?

Well…this is a tough one, because again, everything led me to exactly where I am today, so technically, I wouldn’t do anything differently. However, if I could go back and be certain that I would still have certain parts of my life that I have now (family, career, etc.), I would go back to my early days with a message from my future self, and tell my younger self at age 3, that “There’s this type of therapy called EMDR, and you have to do it immediately).

Secondly, I would emphasize to my parents the importance of proper diet, exercise, and emotional guidance (these are areas that I felt neglected in), and demand that I learn about business and finances from an early age along with my psychology, philosophy, and artistic endeavours.

I wish I would have had the foresight or a mentor who would have helped me to save a portion of my income to invest into real estate even 10 years ago. That would have significantly changed the game for me today.

What is one piece of conventional advice that you disagree with most strongly?

I think that one of the worst pieces of advice that continues to ruin people’s lives is the statement, “Time heals all wounds.” That is completely incorrect. Distressing events leave emotional wounds (breakups or divorce, abuse, challenging childhoods, failures, humiliation, etc.), which develop negative beliefs, and over time, more and more events (big or small) attach themselves to that neurological network holding the belief system. This in turn, makes the belief system even stronger and more influential over your life.

Our beliefs help us continue on our life’s journey, but negative beliefs are like emotional cancers that just eat away our possibilities for happiness in the future. Instead of investing in time (save that by the way as it’s the most precious resource we have, and money can’t buy any more of it!!) invest in EMDR–it will SAVE you more time so you can be happy while alive. I know it sounds like I’m continually pitching myself, but regardless of whether you choose to work with me or someone else, it’s GOT to be EMDR. Nothing else comes close to healing emotional wounds–because this actually DOES heal them.

When are you closest to a state of “flow”? How do you get there?

I’m closest to a state of flow when I’m working intensely with a client. For me, I find my One & Done – Total Immersion Package to be an incredibly spiritual journey where two souls are interacting on a deep level to remove unnecessary shackles. Everyone deserves to feel free and unencumbered by past emotional weights, and be able to manifest whatever dreams they have for themselves. So when I’m helping a client to eliminate that weight, it’s such a precious moment that flies by–5 hours goes by like that! [snapping fingers].