Coaching practices for Identify Virtues to Develop

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

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

  • I’ve got a list of my strengths but it reads like a flat personality quiz
  • I want to become a better person but "be better" is too vague to act on
  • I keep trying to fix one trait
  • I want to actually become a better person, not just vaguely intend to, but "be better" is so fuzzy I never know what I’m working on
  • I work on my character all in my own head, by my own standards, and it stays abstract and unproven

Practices that may help

  1. Connect individual strengths to the broader virtues they serve
    Understand which of the six VIA virtues your signature strengths express, and what that reveals about your character.
    VIA Character Strengths, Made Practical
  2. Identify the virtues you most need to cultivate
    Name the three character traits whose absence most limits you — those are your practice targets.
    Virtue Ethics, Made Practical
  3. Practice virtues as interconnected, not separate
    When a virtue feels absent, look for which related virtue is also being neglected.
    Virtue Ethics, Made Practical
  4. VIA Character Strengths, Made Practical
    Peterson and Seligman’s VIA Classification identifies 24 character strengths organized under six virtues, and multiple randomized trials find that using your top "signature strengths" in new ways reliably increases well-being and decreases depressive symptoms. The effect is most robust when strengths are deployed in engaged, relational ways — not just recognized but actively applied.
  5. The virtue audit
    Ask which of the four Stoic virtues you exercised — and which you neglected — today.
    The Stoic Daily Review
  6. Embed your virtues in a practice community
    The virtues needed for excellence in any serious practice (craft, sport, relationship) are real virtues — find the practice that calls them out.
    Virtue Ethics, Made Practical
  7. Choose and study role models deliberately
    Select a specific person whose character in a specific domain you want to internalize, and study how they act — not just what they say.
    Virtue Ethics, Made Practical
  8. Choose a character role model and study their biography
    Find a person — living or historical — whose eulogy virtues you admire and study how they built them.
    The Eulogy Virtues: Building a Life of Character
  9. Take the VIA survey and identify your signature strengths
    Discover your top five to seven character strengths using the validated VIA survey.
    VIA Character Strengths, Made Practical
  10. Cultivate virtue through deliberate habituation
    Do the virtuous action — even imperfectly, even without the feeling — until the disposition follows.
    Virtue Ethics, Made Practical

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