Coaching practices for Broaden and Build During a Big Change

Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For Broaden and Build During a Big Change, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.

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

• Everything has gone flat and routine
• I’m changing and growing on my own and they’re changing on theirs, but none of it is together
• I’m about to pour a year into learning something, and I keep second-guessing whether I’m betting everything on one narrow outcome or building something that would still pay off no matter which way the future breaks.
• What I went through cracked open everything I used to take for granted about how life works and what it’s for
• I’m right in the middle of a big upheaval

Practices that may help

1. 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.
2. Cultivate curiosity as a daily emotional practice
   Curiosity is a broadening emotion that expands attentional scope and drives exploratory behavior — it can be deliberately triggered.
   Broaden-and-Build, Made Practical
3. Pursue personal growth that you share — not parallel but joint
   Growing alongside a partner or friend, rather than separately, leverages the self-expansion mechanism for both people simultaneously.
   Self-Expansion Model: How Relationships Grow (and Stagnate) Us
4. Platform thinking: build capabilities that enable many futures rather than optimizing for one
   Invest in skills, tools, and relationships that expand your adjacent possible in multiple directions rather than optimizing for a single outcome.
   The Adjacent Possible, Made Practical
5. 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
6. Use a life transition to break old environment-behavior links
   Major context changes (a move, a new job) create a rare window where old habits are disrupted and new ones are easier to form.
   Environment Design for Behavior Change
7. Narrow the scope: a smaller problem space is a richer one
   Restrict the problem to a specific user, use case, or scenario — the narrower the brief, the richer the possible solutions within it.
   Deliberate Constraints, Made Practical
8. Identify and anticipate upcoming transition windows
   Treat approaching life changes as scheduled opportunities for habit installation — plan before the transition, not after.
   The Habit Discontinuity Effect
9. Seek out awe as a broadening and self-transcending emotion
   Awe expands perceived time, reduces self-focused thought, and increases prosocial behavior — and it can be deliberately accessed.
   Broaden-and-Build, Made Practical
10. Consolidate and celebrate after a stretch goal is reached
    After hitting a stretch target, take time to stabilise the new level before stretching again.
    Stretch Goals: When Ambitious Targets Help and When They Backfire

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