Coaching practices for Desire Management Philosophy

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

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

  • I want things I can’t make happen
  • A new want grabs me and I’m off chasing it before I’ve even paused
  • I keep wishing reality were different than it is
  • When I want something I get caught up in how it would feel to have it
  • I’m sure that getting this next thing will finally make me happy, but if I’m honest I was just as sure about the last few

Practices that may help

  1. The Stoic Discipline of Desire
    Pierre Hadot identified the "discipline of desire" as one of the three Stoic spiritual exercises: training yourself to desire only what is in your power (virtue, your own judgments and responses) and to be indifferent to what is not. The practice targets the root cause of most human suffering — craving things outside your control — rather than its symptoms.
  2. Apply the dichotomy of control to your desires
    Before each want, ask: is the object of this desire in my power, or outside it?
    The Stoic Discipline of Desire
  3. Examining the desire before chasing it
    Before pursuing something you want, ask whether the desire serves you or consumes you.
    Santosha: The Practice of Contentment
  4. Practice amor fati — love what happens
    Train yourself not just to accept what is given, but to want it — to find the ground for willing what occurs.
    The Stoic Discipline of Desire
  5. Cool the purchase by abstracting it
    See the item in "cool," abstract terms to drain the craving before it drives a decision.
    The Marshmallow Test and Your Money
  6. Track your desires and their outcomes over time
    Log what you wanted this week, whether you got it, and whether getting it produced what you expected.
    The Stoic Discipline of Desire
  7. Classifying desires before pursuing them
    Before pursuing a desire, classify it: is it natural and necessary, natural and unnecessary, or vain?
    Epicurean Philosophy: Practical Happiness
  8. The discipline of desire
    Confine your desires and aversions to what is genuinely up to you — your judgments and actions, not outcomes.
    The Inner Citadel
  9. Discipline desire and aversion
    Want only what’s up to you, and be averse only to what’s up to you — then you can’t be thwarted.
    The Enchiridion, as a Handbook
  10. Practice negative visualization to reset desire
    Spend five minutes imagining the loss of something you currently take for granted — then let the wanting of it become gratitude for having it.
    The Stoic Discipline of Desire

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