Coaching practices for Meditations as Marcus Practiced it When Burned Out

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 When Burned Out, 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
  • Something happened and I’ve already wrapped it in words like betrayal and disaster, and the words are doing most of the damage
  • I’ve been walking around feeling like I built everything myself and like the world owes me more, and I’ve completely stopped noticing the actual people who handed me what I have

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. Strip the event to the bare facts
    Describe what actually happened without the story you’ve wrapped around it.
    Meditations, as Marcus Practiced It
  6. Account for what you owe others
    Regularly recall, by name, the people and gifts that made you who you are.
    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. Daily training of the ruling faculty
    Treat every day’s difficulties as training material for strengthening the ruling faculty.
    The Inner Citadel
  9. Give full attention to the present action
    Do what you are doing completely — not while managing the past or planning the future.
    The Stoic Discipline of Action
  10. Prosoche — the practice of attention
    Maintain constant, vigilant attention to your own thoughts, judgments, and impulses as they arise.
    Pierre Hadot’s Spiritual Exercises

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