Coaching practices for How to Manage Desires
Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For How to Manage Desires, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.
Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?
- I want things I can’t make happen
- A new want grabs me and I’m off chasing it before I’ve even paused
- I chase the same kinds of things over and over
- When I want something I get caught up in how it would feel to have it
- I’m sure that getting this next thing will finally make me happy, but if I’m honest I was just as sure about the last few
Practices that may help
- Apply the dichotomy of control to your desires
Before each want, ask: is the object of this desire in my power, or outside it?
The Stoic Discipline of Desire - Examining the desire before chasing it
Before pursuing something you want, ask whether the desire serves you or consumes you.
Santosha: The Practice of Contentment - The Stoic Discipline of Desire
Pierre Hadot identified the "discipline of desire" as one of the three Stoic spiritual exercises: training yourself to desire only what is in your power (virtue, your own judgments and responses) and to be indifferent to what is not. The practice targets the root cause of most human suffering — craving things outside your control — rather than its symptoms. - Classifying desires before pursuing them
Before pursuing a desire, classify it: is it natural and necessary, natural and unnecessary, or vain?
Epicurean Philosophy: Practical Happiness - Cool the purchase by abstracting it
See the item in "cool," abstract terms to drain the craving before it drives a decision.
The Marshmallow Test and Your Money - Track your desires and their outcomes over time
Log what you wanted this week, whether you got it, and whether getting it produced what you expected.
The Stoic Discipline of Desire - The discipline of desire
Confine your desires and aversions to what is genuinely up to you — your judgments and actions, not outcomes.
The Inner Citadel - Working with sensual desire (kamacchanda)
When craving or distraction toward pleasant experiences pulls you out of meditation, use anicca contemplation to see the transient quality of what is craved.
The Five Hindrances: Diagnosing and Working with Meditation Obstacles - Surf the urge instead of fighting it
Urges are waves — they rise, peak, and fall without action if you observe rather than fight them.
The Willpower Instinct: What Self-Control Actually Is - Practice amor fati — love what happens
Train yourself not just to accept what is given, but to want it — to find the ground for willing what occurs.
The Stoic Discipline of Desire
Related concerns
- Desire Management Philosophy
Pierre Hadot identified the "discipline of desire" as one of the three Stoic spiritual exercises: training yourself to desire only what is in your power (virtue, your own judgments and responses) and to be indifferent to what is not. The practice targets the root cause of most human suffering — craving things outside your control — rather than its symptoms.
- Talking About Desire
Name what you want without reducing it to a problem to be solved or a complaint to be managed.
Talking about desire without killing it
- When Stoic Discipline Of Desire Dichotomy Of Control Desire
Before each want, ask: is the object of this desire in my power, or outside it?
Apply the dichotomy of control to your desires
- Desire Examination Practice
Pierre Hadot identified the "discipline of desire" as one of the three Stoic spiritual exercises: training yourself to desire only what is in your power (virtue, your own judgments and responses) and to be indifferent to what is not. The practice targets the root cause of most human suffering — craving things outside your control — rather than its symptoms.
- Epictetus Desire Aversion
Want only what’s up to you, and be averse only to what’s up to you — then you can’t be thwarted.
Discipline desire and aversion
- Epicurean Desire Reality Check
Before pursuing a desire, classify it: is it natural and necessary, natural and unnecessary, or vain?
Classifying desires before pursuing them
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