Coaching practices for Examine Beliefs Together

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

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

• I catch myself saying things like "I’m just not creative" or "I need people to approve of me" as if they’re plain facts, and I’ve never once stopped to ask what I even mean by them
• There’s one thing I’m sure about and have built a lot of my life around, and lately I’ve been afraid to actually interrogate it
• I can argue myself out of the bad belief on paper and still feel it in my gut the second I’m around people
• I’m good at picking apart everyone else’s reasoning, but when it’s my own belief I never run the same questions on it
• There are things I just treat as obviously true and run my whole life on, and when I actually stop and ask myself why I believe them, I realize I can’t point to a single real reason

Practices that may help

1. Question your own assumptions with Socratic rigor
   Take a belief you hold confidently and submit it to the Socratic question: "What do you actually mean by that?"
   The Examined Life
2. Practice elenchus — cross-examine your own beliefs
   Pick one confident belief and interrogate it as Socrates would: What do you mean? How do you know? What would refute it?
   The Socratic Method, Made Practical
3. Behavioral experiments to test core beliefs in vivo
   Design a real-world action that tests the core belief, then observe what actually happens.
   The Downward Arrow: Uncovering the Core Beliefs Behind Distress
4. Apply Socratic questioning to your own thinking (not just others’)
   Use the same question types on your own beliefs that you would use to probe someone else’s.
   Socratic Questioning
5. Turn the "why" on your own assumptions
   Apply the same "why do I believe this?" scrutiny to your existing beliefs, not just new facts.
   Elaborative Interrogation: Ask "Why Is This True?"
6. Engage in genuine philosophical dialogue
   Have a conversation with the goal of getting clearer together, not of winning or validating.
   The Examined Life
7. Testing a core belief with historical evidence
   Once you have a core belief, survey all your history for evidence that contradicts it.
   The Downward Arrow: Uncovering the Core Beliefs Behind Distress
8. Use Socratic questioning to test each belief
   Interrogate every claim with “how do I know this is true?” until only bedrock remains.
   First-Principles Thinking, Made Usable
9. Conduct a regular examined-life audit
   Periodically ask: which of the beliefs I am living by have I actually examined, and which am I just inheriting?
   The Socratic Method, Made Practical
10. Reviewing the Results and Extracting the Learning
    Explicitly connect what happened to what you believed — and update the belief accordingly.
    Behavioral Experiments: Testing Beliefs in the Real World

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