Coaching practices for Life Review with Coach
Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For Life Review with Coach, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.
Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?
- I start each coaching conversation from scratch and never circle back to what the person said they’d do last time
- I do these life check-ins alone in my head and then quietly let them slide, and I think if I actually said the low scores out loud to someone who’d remember, I couldn’t just keep ignoring them the way I always do.
- Looking back, I see how much of who I am came from specific people
- I want to look back from the very end of my life and ask honestly what I actually did with my time
- My conversations just sort of trail off when the time runs out, and people leave with a polite thanks
Practices that may help
- Life Review and Reminiscence Therapy
Robert Butler proposed that systematically reviewing one’s life narrative — organizing memories into a coherent story, reconciling conflicts, and identifying what has mattered — is a natural developmental task that, when done consciously, produces ego integrity, reduced depression, and greater life satisfaction. Randomized studies in older adults find moderate positive effects; the practice is also used meaningfully across adulthood, not only at end of life. - Close the GROW loop with session review
At the start of the next session, review what was committed and what actually happened before setting a new goal.
The GROW Coaching Model, Made Practical - Use the wheel as a relationship check-in, not just a solo exercise
Sharing your wheel with a partner, coach, or trusted friend turns a self-assessment into a conversation and a commitment.
The Wheel of Life, Made Practical - Acknowledge the people who made you who you are
Name and express gratitude to the specific people whose influence shaped your life.
Life Review and Reminiscence Therapy - Write a brief final accounting
Write as if you’re reporting on your life: what did you do with your time?
Memento Mori: Using Mortality Awareness to Focus What Matters - Close with "What was most useful for you?"
The closing question turns the conversation into a learning that sticks — and teaches you what is actually valuable.
The Coaching Habit: Seven Questions to Be More Coach-Like - Replace performance review conversations with feedforward conversations
In coaching conversations, ask "what could you do differently?" instead of "what went wrong?"
Feedforward: Future-Focused Feedback That Actually Changes Behavior - The Life Line Exercise
The life line exercise is a narrative reflection tool that asks you to map your life visually — high points, low points, and turning points — on a timeline. It surfaces the implicit story you have been telling yourself about your life, makes that story revisable, and identifies the experiences that most shaped your current values and patterns. Evidence is primarily clinical and observational; it is an established coaching and therapy tool with a solid mechanistic rationale. - Peak experience analysis
Study your life-line high points for the values and conditions they share — they reveal what fully alive looks like for you.
The Life Line Exercise - Obstacle anticipation before close
Before ending, ask "what could get in the way?" and pre-plan the response.
The GROW Coaching Model, Made Practical
Related concerns
- Life Review Exercise
Robert Butler proposed that systematically reviewing one’s life narrative — organizing memories into a coherent story, reconciling conflicts, and identifying what has mattered — is a natural developmental task that, when done consciously, produces ego integrity, reduced depression, and greater life satisfaction. Randomized studies in older adults find moderate positive effects; the practice is also used meaningfully across adulthood, not only at end of life.
- Annual Review With Coach
At the start of the next session, review what was committed and what actually happened before setting a new goal.
Close the GROW loop with session review
- Brief Coaching Conversations
In coaching conversations, ask "what could you do differently?" instead of "what went wrong?"
Replace performance review conversations with feedforward conversations
- Coaching Acknowledgment Technique
Ask questions far more often than you offer statements — the coachee’s thinking is the product.
Maintain a high question-to-statement ratio throughout GROW
- Coaching Check In Tool
Sharing your wheel with a partner, coach, or trusted friend turns a self-assessment into a conversation and a commitment.
Use the wheel as a relationship check-in, not just a solo exercise
- Coaching Closing Conversation
The closing question turns the conversation into a learning that sticks — and teaches you what is actually valuable.
Close with "What was most useful for you?"
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