Coaching practices for Broaden and Build After a Loss
Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For Broaden and Build After a Loss, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.
Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?
- It’s been long enough that I can quietly admit something in me has shifted since they died
- I want their life to keep meaning something in the world, not just end
- When everything fell apart, a few people really showed up for me and we got so much closer
- What I went through cracked open everything I used to take for granted about how life works and what it’s for
- When I think about that hard chapter I swing between “it was pure loss” and “it was secretly a gift,” and neither one feels honest
Practices that may help
- Broaden-and-Build, Made Practical
Barbara Fredrickson’s broaden-and-build theory proposes that positive emotions — joy, curiosity, love, gratitude, awe — temporarily broaden thought-action repertoires (making thinking more flexible and creative) and, over time, build durable psychological resources including resilience, social connection, and cognitive flexibility. The theory is supported by experimental evidence for the broadening effect; the longer-term building effects are primarily observational. - Look honestly for what has grown or changed for the better
Without minimising the loss, notice any growth, change, or perspective that has emerged from it.
Meaning Reconstruction in Grief, Made Practical - Carry forward the person’s legacy in your own life
Identify values, projects, or commitments the person cared about and carry them forward yourself.
Continuing Bonds in Grief, Made Practical - Recognize and reinvest in deepened relationships
Notice which relationships grew closer through the hardship, and deliberately invest back in them.
Benefit-Finding: Locating Meaning and Growth in Adversity - Domain 4 — Spiritual or existential change
Confronting limits and mortality can deepen or reshape your sense of meaning and the sacred.
Post-Traumatic Growth, Made Practical - Name the genuine benefits — without erasing the cost
List specific real positives that came from a hard experience while still acknowledging what it cost.
Benefit-Finding: Locating Meaning and Growth in Adversity - Affirm a different value after a failure
When you fail in one area, actively invest in a domain where you know you contribute.
Self-Affirmation Theory, Made Practical - Reframing loss as transformation
When something ends or is lost, practise asking what it is becoming rather than only mourning what it was.
Zhuangzi and the Practice of Perspective Shift - Map the assumptive world the loss disrupted
Identify which of your core beliefs about life, self, and the future the loss has challenged.
Meaning Reconstruction in Grief, Made Practical - Task 3: Adjust to a world without the person
Actively develop new skills, roles, and identity elements to navigate the changed life.
Worden’s Tasks of Mourning, Made Practical
Related concerns
- New Possibilities After Loss
When an old path is closed off, genuinely new directions and priorities can open.
Domain 2 — New possibilities
- Awe And Well Being After A Loss
Without minimising the loss, notice any growth, change, or perspective that has emerged from it.
Look honestly for what has grown or changed for the better
- Find Your Why After A Loss
Without minimising the loss, notice any growth, change, or perspective that has emerged from it.
- How To Move On From Losing A Loved One
When something ends and you feel grief, recognise that the grief is proportional to the love — and let it be both.
Treating grief as a form of gratitude
- Meaning After Loss
Identify which of your core beliefs about life, self, and the future the loss has challenged.
Map the assumptive world the loss disrupted
- Motivational Interviewing After A Loss
Motivational interviewing (MI) is a collaborative conversation style that strengthens a person’s own motivation for change by drawing out their reasons rather than supplying them. Meta-analyses find small-to-moderate effects across health behaviors — modest on average, but reliably better than confrontational or advice-giving styles, which can backfire.
Describe your situation in your own words to search the complete practice library.