Aaron Cuha: 10 Evidence-Based Coaching Practices

Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For Aaron Cuha, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.

Practices that may help

1. Practise including the other person in your self-concept
   Close relationships develop when you genuinely incorporate the other’s perspectives and resources into how you think — not just spend time with them.
   Self-Expansion Model: How Relationships Grow (and Stagnate) Us
2. Cognitive Restructuring: The CBT Method for Changing Unhelpful Thoughts
   Cognitive restructuring, the core skill in Aaron Beck’s Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, teaches you to identify automatic negative thoughts, examine the evidence for and against them, and replace distorted thinking with more accurate interpretations. Meta-analyses of CBT consistently show medium-to-large effects on depression and anxiety — the evidence base is among the strongest in psychotherapy.
3. Mussar chevruta: partnered accountability
   Practice with a Mussar partner who holds you honest and observes what you cannot see in yourself.
   Mussar: The Jewish Path of Character
4. After-Action Review: The US Army’s Tool for Continuous Learning
   An after-action review (AAR) is a structured debriefing developed by the US Army that asks four questions after any event: What was supposed to happen? What actually happened? What caused the difference? What do we do differently next time? Applied consistently, AARs build a culture of learning from experience rather than simply moving on. The evidence base is primarily observational and practice-based; experimental studies are limited but supportive.
5. Atomic Habits, Made Practical
   James Clear’s system says behavior change is a system problem, not a willpower problem: make a desired habit obvious, attractive, easy, and satisfying — and do the reverse for bad ones. The most load-bearing ideas (implementation intentions, friction reduction, identity-based change) are well supported in the research literature.
6. Mussar vaad: group practice and teaching
   Join or form a small Mussar study group for shared learning, honest feedback, and communal accountability.
   Mussar: The Jewish Path of Character
7. Cultivate awareness as your primary creative tool
   Pay unusually close attention to what you notice, what you feel, and what catches you — these are the raw material.
   The Creative Act: Rick Rubin’s Approach to Making
8. Separate judgment from analysis in the debrief
   The AAR only produces learning when the analysis phase is free of performance judgments.
   After-Action Review: The US Army’s Tool for Continuous Learning
9. Activate unity — shared identity before the message
   Establish genuine shared identity with your audience before presenting your position.
   Pre-Suasion, Made Practical
10. Mental Models: Charlie Munger’s Latticework Approach
    Charlie Munger argued that clear thinking requires a collection of models from multiple disciplines — a latticework — because any single mental model warps reality by over-predicting the phenomena it explains best. The approach is practitioner philosophy rather than empirically tested method, but it is grounded in real findings about cognitive biases, analogical reasoning, and multi-causal thinking.

Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?

• We share a roof and a calendar but it feels more like two people running parallel lives than one shared one→
• When I work on myself alone I drift and let myself off the hook→
• On my own I can stay patient and humble, but put me in a room of people and the real version of me comes out→
• My days blur past on autopilot and when I finally sit down to make something the well is dry→
• Every time I try to look back at what went wrong it just turns into me beating myself up→

Describe your situation in your own words to search the complete practice library.