Coaching practices for Decide by Your Values

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

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

• I’ve got a short list of values but they’re all just sitting there as equals, and the second two of them collide in real life
• I’m frozen on a decision where honoring one thing I care about means shortchanging another
• Under all this pressure to please people and react, I’m about to make a call that I already sense doesn’t square with who I actually want to be
• I drift through my days reacting to whatever’s loudest and I’ve lost the thread of what actually matters to me
• I’m facing a real decision and I realize I’m about to choose what my family or my role or "what one does" expects of me, not what I actually value

Practices that may help

1. Rank your top values
   Force a strict order among your finalists so conflicts resolve in advance.
   Values Clarification, Made Practical
2. Resolving a decision with two competing values
   When two values both apply, use your ranked priority to resolve the tension rather than freeze.
   Values Card Sort
3. Use the 10-year view to check values alignment
   Ask: is the 10-year version of this choice consistent with what I actually care about?
   The 10-10-10 Rule
4. Clarify values and choose them actively
   Name what genuinely matters to you — not what should matter — and make it a live choice today.
   Psychological Flexibility, Made Practical
5. Choose authentically — from your own values, not from expectation
   Make choices that reflect your actual values rather than the role others have assigned you.
   Existentialism and Radical Choice
6. Values clarification through lived evidence
   Infer your actual values from your past behaviour, not from what you wish you valued.
   Svadhyaya: Self-Study as a Daily Practice
7. The values–behavior gap check
   Audit the last week: which of your top values did your actual decisions honor?
   Values Card Sort
8. The forced-rank sort
   Write your top 20 candidate values on cards, then sort them ruthlessly until you have a ranked top five.
   Values Card Sort
9. Values Clarification, Made Practical
   Values clarification is the work of naming what matters most to you, sorting the genuine priorities from the inherited ones, and using them to guide real choices. The methods — card sorts, ranking, value-consistent action — draw heavily on values work in acceptance-and-commitment therapy (ACT), which has clinical support; living in line with your values correlates with wellbeing in observational research.
10. Values clarification: what matters most to you?
    Identify 3–5 core values — not what you should value, but what actually matters when life is stripped back.
    Values-Based Action (ACT), Made Practical

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