Coaching practices for Action Identity Landscape

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

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

  • I can recount exactly what happened
  • I’ve got these very different visions of my life on paper and I’m staring at them wondering what’s actually me underneath all of them
  • I can hold the intention to be a certain way in my head all morning, but the second I’m standing in the actual spot
  • There’s a story I tell about my past
  • I slipped once and now my whole head is going "see, you’re not really that person, why even bother"

Practices that may help

  1. Landscape of Identity and Action Questions
    Use two question types to map both what the person DID (action) and what that reveals about who they ARE (identity).
    Narrative Therapy: Rewriting the Stories That Define You
  2. Narrative Identity, Made Practical
    Dan McAdams’ narrative identity theory holds that identity itself is a personal myth — an internalized, evolving story that integrates your past, present, and imagined future into a coherent sense of self. The structure and tone of that story (whether it moves toward redemption or contamination, agency or communion) predicts psychological well-being, and the story can be deliberately revised. Evidence is primarily observational but robustly consistent.
  3. Build a coherent narrative across your three plans
    Find the values and themes that appear across all three plans — they are your non-negotiables.
    Odyssey Plans: Designing Three Alternative Futures
  4. Prime your identity with environmental cues
    Place objects, images, or phrases that represent your desired identity in the spaces where the relevant behavior happens.
    Identity Priming, Made Practical
  5. Revise your life narrative when it limits you
    Identify and reauthor the story you tell about your past that constrains what you believe is possible.
    The Life Crafting Intervention: Scripting Your Future Self
  6. Respond to identity threats without self-concept collapse
    When you act against your identity, treat it as a behavior question, not a character verdict.
    Identity Priming, Made Practical
  7. Borrow an identity temporarily by asking "what would [person] do?"
    Temporarily adopting a role model’s identity in a specific context lowers the friction of acting as they would.
    Identity Priming, Made Practical
  8. Journal as the person you are becoming, not the person you have been
    Writing from your desired identity’s perspective, even tentatively, strengthens its psychological availability.
    Identity Priming, Made Practical
  9. Identity Priming, Made Practical
    Identity priming is the finding that briefly activating a self-concept (e.g., "I am someone who values health") before a decision increases the chance of behavior consistent with that identity. Effects are real but modest and context-dependent; they are most reliable when the identity is already part of how you genuinely see yourself.
  10. Build a behavioral bridge to the possible self
    Identify one specific behavior your hoped-for self does that you can do today — then do it.
    Possible Selves, Made Practical

Related concerns

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

Practice this with IX Coach

Try this practice