Coaching practices for Best Possible Self Exercise
Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For Best Possible Self Exercise, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.
Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?
- I already know what I’m good at, but I only ever use those strengths in the same few familiar places
- I’ve got this clear, vivid picture of the person I want to become, and I love daydreaming about them
- I feel directionless and flat about the future
- I’m still grinding toward a version of "successful me" I dreamed up years ago, and it’s stopped lighting me up
- I say I want to "be healthier" or "be successful," but it’s all so vague it doesn’t pull me anywhere
Practices that may help
- Use a signature strength in a new way each day for one week
Apply one of your top character strengths to a context or relationship where you don’t normally use it.
VIA Character Strengths, Made Practical - 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 - Write about your best possible future self
Spend 15-20 minutes writing in detail about your life as it would look if everything went as well as it realistically could.
Expressive Writing (Pennebaker) - Update and revise possible selves over time
Revisit and rewrite your possible selves at least twice a year — the self you need to become changes as you grow.
Possible Selves, Made Practical - Elaborate your hoped-for possible self
Build a detailed, sensory-rich mental picture of a concrete future version of yourself — not an abstract goal, but a person.
Possible Selves, Made Practical - Build a zone-entry routine specific to your IZOF
Design your pre-performance preparation to reliably produce the specific emotional state your IZOF requires.
The Zone of Optimal Functioning: Hanin’s IZOF Model - 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 - Map your personal Ideal Performance State
Identify the exact mental, emotional, and physical conditions under which you perform at your best.
The Ideal Performance State, Made Practical - Build state-access rituals that reliably produce your IPS
Design a repeatable ritual sequence that consistently moves you into your Ideal Performance State.
The Ideal Performance State, Made Practical - Set goals that build on your signature strengths
Design goals that let your top strengths be the primary vehicle rather than your weak spots.
VIA Character Strengths, Made Practical
Related concerns
- Become The Person You Want To Be
Identify one specific behavior your hoped-for self does that you can do today — then do it.
Build a behavioral bridge to the possible self
- Behavioral Bridge Possible Selves
Identify one specific behavior your hoped-for self does that you can do today — then do it.
- Hazel Markus Possible Selves
Hazel Markus’s possible-selves framework holds that motivation is driven not only by who we are now but by vivid mental representations of who we could become — including hoped-for and feared future selves. These cognitive structures provide direction and energy for behavior, and deliberately developing them is a tractable approach to sustained motivation.
- Ideal Performance State Loehr Schwartz
The Ideal Performance State (IPS) is Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz’s term for the specific combination of physical, mental, and emotional activation at which a performer reliably produces peak output. The IPS is individual-specific — what energizes one performer paralyzes another — and is accessed through deliberate energy management rather than through hoping to "get in the zone."
- Ideal Self Vs Actual Self
Distinguish between aspirational standards that stretch you and perfectionist standards that only punish you.
Recalibrate ideal-self standards when they are unreachably high
- Peak Performance State
The Ideal Performance State (IPS) is Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz’s term for the specific combination of physical, mental, and emotional activation at which a performer reliably produces peak output. The IPS is individual-specific — what energizes one performer paralyzes another — and is accessed through deliberate energy management rather than through hoping to "get in the zone."
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