Coaching practices for How to Examine Your Beliefs
Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For How to Examine Your Beliefs, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.
Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?
- I’m living by a whole set of rules about how life should go, and it’s started to dawn on me that I never actually chose most of them
- 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’ve already landed on the harsh thing I believe about myself
- 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 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
Practices that may help
- 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 - 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 - 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 - 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 - 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 - Review past beliefs for what evidence did and didn’t move them
Look back at past beliefs and ask: what would have changed my mind then, and did I let it?
Falsification Thinking - 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 - 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 - 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?" - 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
Related concerns
- Examine Beliefs Together
Take a belief you hold confidently and submit it to the Socratic question: "What do you actually mean by that?"
Question your own assumptions with Socratic rigor
- Examine Beliefs
Design a real-world action that tests the core belief, then observe what actually happens.
Behavioral experiments to test core beliefs in vivo
- Examining Beliefs
Design a real-world action that tests the core belief, then observe what actually happens.
- How To Question Your Beliefs
Apply the same "why do I believe this?" scrutiny to your existing beliefs, not just new facts.
Turn the "why" on your own assumptions
- Core Belief Examination
Once you have a core belief, survey all your history for evidence that contradicts it.
Testing a core belief with historical evidence
- Cross Examine Beliefs
Pick one confident belief and interrogate it as Socrates would: What do you mean? How do you know? What would refute it?
Practice elenchus — cross-examine your own beliefs
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