Coaching practices for Meditations as Marcus Practiced it During Conflict

Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For Meditations as Marcus Practiced it During Conflict, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.

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

  • I know exactly how I want to handle things when I’m calm, and then the moment hits and I forget all of it
  • I’m never actually in what I’m doing
  • The noise and demands of everyone around me get inside my head until I have no peace anywhere
  • I read all the Stoic ideas and nod along, but the moment real life pushes on me I crumble exactly the same as before
  • I know who I’m going to deal with today

Practices that may help

  1. Meditations, as Marcus Practiced It
    Meditations was Marcus Aurelius’ private journal — a set of self-directed exercises for keeping his judgment steady while running an empire: writing to himself, rehearsing the day’s difficult people, separating events from his opinions about them, and remembering how small and brief it all is. The strongest evidence for these is their direct line into cognitive behavioral therapy and into expressive-writing and self-distancing research.
  2. Write to yourself (the Meditations method)
    Keep a private notebook where you argue yourself back to your own principles, in your own words.
    Meditations, as Marcus Practiced It
  3. Do the task in front of you, fully
    Treat each present action as if it were your last, with full attention and no half-measures.
    Meditations, as Marcus Practiced It
  4. Retreat to the inner citadel
    When the world presses in, withdraw into your own mind — the one place no one can occupy.
    Meditations, as Marcus Practiced It
  5. Daily training of the ruling faculty
    Treat every day’s difficulties as training material for strengthening the ruling faculty.
    The Inner Citadel
  6. Premeditate the difficult people
    Each morning, expect to meet the ungrateful, the arrogant, and the dishonest — and pre-decide your response.
    Meditations, as Marcus Practiced It
  7. Write to yourself, not for an audience
    Keep a private record of philosophical self-argument, not a performance or a diary.
    The Stoic Daily Review
  8. Strip the event to the bare facts
    Describe what actually happened without the story you’ve wrapped around it.
    Meditations, as Marcus Practiced It
  9. Prosoche — the practice of attention
    Maintain constant, vigilant attention to your own thoughts, judgments, and impulses as they arise.
    Pierre Hadot’s Spiritual Exercises
  10. The written dialogue — inner dialogue as philosophical exercise
    Write a dialogue between yourself and an imagined wise interlocutor on a question you are genuinely struggling with.
    Pierre Hadot’s Spiritual Exercises

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