Coaching practices for Did My Best to Be Happy
Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For Did My Best to Be Happy, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.
Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?
- I’m hitting every productivity target and somehow feeling emptier by the week
- When I check in on myself it’s always "how did the day go," and the answer always seems to ride on things outside my hands
- My days are objectively okay but they leave almost no warm residue
- I get so wrapped up in my own head and my own problems that I go days barely looking outside myself
- I’m in the middle of something genuinely hard and I’m sick of people telling me to look on the bright side
Practices that may help
- Include a happiness question — not as an outcome goal but as a signal
Add "Did I do my best to be happy today?" to the list — not as a target, but as a daily quality-of-life sensor.
The Morning Questions - Reframe passive questions as active questions
Ask "did I do my best to...?" rather than "how was my...?" — the word "try" changes what the question measures.
The Morning Questions - Three good things (positive emotions pillar)
Write down three good things that happened today and why they happened.
Seligman’s PERMA Model, Made Practical - Deliberate acts of kindness
Perform several intentional kind acts, ideally clustered, to lift your own well-being.
Positive Psychology, Made Practical - Gratitude within difficulty
Find what is genuinely good inside a hard situation without denying the hard part.
Gratitude Journaling, Done Well - Invest in what research shows moves the set point
Prioritize relationships, autonomy, and meaning — the three factors most reliably linked to lasting wellbeing gains.
The Hedonic Treadmill, Made Practical - Three good things
Each night, write three things that went well and why — retraining attention toward the positive.
Optimism Training: Building Realistic, Flexible Optimism - Watching for the near enemy — performed joy versus genuine delight
Notice when your "happy for you" response is hollow or forced, and treat that signal as useful data.
Mudita: How to Cultivate Sympathetic Joy - Celebrate growth, not just goal attainment
Recognize progress in who you are becoming, not only whether you hit the number.
Self-Concordant Goals, Made Practical - Audit your life against PERMA
Check well-being across all five pillars — emotion, engagement, relationships, meaning, accomplishment.
Positive Psychology, Made Practical
Related concerns
- Five Elements Of Well Being
Martin Seligman’s PERMA model identifies five pillars of well-being: Positive Emotions, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, and Accomplishment. Unlike happiness models that treat well-being as a single variable, PERMA argues these five elements are each intrinsically valued and each independently improvable. Several PERMA-targeted interventions have randomized-trial support; others are mechanistically grounded with less direct evidence.
- Goal Attainment Well Being
Recognize progress in who you are becoming, not only whether you hit the number.
Celebrate growth, not just goal attainment
- Goldsmith Happiness Question
Add "Did I do my best to be happy today?" to the list — not as a target, but as a daily quality-of-life sensor.
Include a happiness question — not as an outcome goal but as a signal
- How To Improve Well Being
Awe — the emotion triggered by encountering something vast that challenges your current mental frameworks — reliably reduces self-focused thinking, lowers inflammatory markers in some studies, increases prosocial behavior, and expands the perceived sense of time available. Dacher Keltner’s research shows awe is more accessible than people think and can be deliberately cultivated without waiting for once-in-a-decade peak experiences.
- How To Increase Wellbeing
Prioritize relationships, autonomy, and meaning — the three factors most reliably linked to lasting wellbeing gains.
Invest in what research shows moves the set point
- How To Measure Well Being
Rate each of the five PERMA pillars to find which is currently limiting your overall flourishing.
Run a PERMA audit of your current well-being
Describe your situation in your own words to search the complete practice library.