Coaching practices for Honest Self Examination

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

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

• When I face where I fell short today I either wave it away as no big deal or I tip straight into hating myself over it
• When I look at how I actually behaved today I can only ever do one of two things
• Whenever I review my own day I quietly spin everything to make myself look better, and I know it
• My days just blur past and I never actually stop to look at how I showed up
• I catch myself dressing up the same excuses again, and I’m done softening it

Practices that may help

1. Face shortfalls with honest sorrow, not shame
   Name where you fell short today without either minimizing it or spiraling into self-punishment.
   The Ignatian Examen: Five Movements of Daily Review
2. Look honestly at your responses
   Face where you fell short and where you acted well, without spiraling into either.
   The Daily Examen: Reviewing the Day
3. Ask for clarity and honest perception
   Before reviewing, pause to ask for the capacity to see honestly rather than defensively.
   The Ignatian Examen: Five Movements of Daily Review
4. The three-point daily self-examination
   End each day by asking three questions Zengzi — Confucius’s disciple — prescribed: loyalty, trustworthiness, mastery.
   Confucian Self-Cultivation: The Mencius Approach
5. The daily accountability mirror
   Stand before a mirror and state plainly what you’re failing to do — no softening, no excuses.
   The Accountability Mirror: David Goggins’s Radical Honesty Practice
6. Share the review with someone who will ask honest questions
   A review held privately is easier to fudge; one shared with an honest questioner is harder to rationalize.
   The Annual Review (Tim Ferriss Method)
7. 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
8. Know thyself — map your actual values against your actions
   Compare what you say you value with what your behavior reveals you actually value.
   The Examined Life
9. Seneca’s evening court — judge the day as an honest prosecutor
   Review the day as a fair judge would: what was the evidence, what was the verdict, what is the sentence?
   The Pythagorean Evening Review
10. Review without self-condemnation — distinguish judgment from condemnation
    Name what you did wrong precisely, without story or self-attack — then close it.
    The Pythagorean Evening Review

Describe your situation in your own words to search the complete practice library.