Coaching practices for Existence Precedes Essence
Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For Existence Precedes Essence, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.
Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?
- I keep saying "that’s just who I am"
- I’m always living for the next thing
- I walk into conversations already deciding "they’re just like that," and they reliably prove me right
- I keep telling myself "this is just how I am, I always end up here," like the pattern is some fixed thing built into me
- I keep telling myself life really starts once I get through this next thing, and meanwhile I’m either replaying something I can’t change or bracing for something that hasn’t happened
Practices that may help
- Take seriously that you have no fixed nature
Stop treating your personality, role, or past as a given — you are always in the process of defining yourself.
Existentialism and Radical Choice - Existentialism and Radical Choice
Jean-Paul Sartre’s existentialism holds that human beings have no fixed nature — "existence precedes essence" — and are therefore radically free to define themselves through their choices. The practical implication is that you cannot hide behind role, instinct, or circumstance: you are always already choosing, including when you tell yourself you have no choice. This is philosophical rather than clinical; its overlap with ACT and CBT is real but indirect. - Be fully present without hoping for something else
Camus advocates full presence in the actual moment — not as a way to escape it but as its own form of aliveness.
Absurdism and the Practice of Meaning Despite - Interdependence as a daily relational practice
See every interaction as a mutual arising — you are not encountering a fixed person but a process that is partly shaped by your presence.
Dependent Origination: How Suffering Arises and Ceases - Nagarjuna's insight: no link exists independently
Each link in the chain is empty of inherent existence — which means the chain has no necessity, only conditionality.
Dependent Origination: How Suffering Arises and Ceases - Essentialism, Made Practical
Greg McKeown’s Essentialism is the disciplined pursuit of less but better: instead of trying to do it all, you ruthlessly distinguish the vital few from the trivial many and then design your life around the few. The core moves — protecting time to discern, embracing trade-offs, and building in slack — are well grounded, even though the philosophy itself is a practitioner synthesis. - Return to the present as the only moment of action
Epictetus, Seneca, and Marcus all return to the same point: you can only act now — stop deferring life.
Philosophy as a Way of Life - Reason up from the parts, not by analogy
Build the solution from the fundamentals you kept, rather than copying an existing template.
First-Principles Thinking, Made Usable - Open with a concrete story, not with your framework
Lead with a specific, sensory narrative before introducing any abstraction.
The Curse of Knowledge: Why Experts Struggle to Teach - Define yourself by actions, not intentions
You are not your intentions or your self-image — you are the accumulation of what you actually do.
Existentialism and Radical Choice
Related concerns
- Bad Faith Sartre
Notice when you are treating yourself as a thing determined by role, instinct, or expectation — and claim the choice.
Spot bad faith in yourself
- Essentialism When Starting Out
Start with a story, name the principle, then return to a new application.
Cycle from concrete to abstract and back
- Existence Precedes Essence Practice
Make your practice your philosophy — not a separate reading life and a separate daily life.
Live what you study
- Existentialism Sartre
Jean-Paul Sartre’s existentialism holds that human beings have no fixed nature — "existence precedes essence" — and are therefore radically free to define themselves through their choices. The practical implication is that you cannot hide behind role, instinct, or circumstance: you are always already choosing, including when you tell yourself you have no choice. This is philosophical rather than clinical; its overlap with ACT and CBT is real but indirect.
- How To Apply Existentialism
Jean-Paul Sartre’s existentialism holds that human beings have no fixed nature — "existence precedes essence" — and are therefore radically free to define themselves through their choices. The practical implication is that you cannot hide behind role, instinct, or circumstance: you are always already choosing, including when you tell yourself you have no choice. This is philosophical rather than clinical; its overlap with ACT and CBT is real but indirect.
- Radical Responsibility Sartre
Own every choice completely — including its unintended consequences and the unchosen conditions within which you chose.
Take radical responsibility for your choices
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