Coaching practices for Meditations as Marcus Practiced it with My Partner

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 with My Partner, 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
  • 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
  • I’ve been turning the same question over in my head for days and just looping
  • Whenever I write anything down, part of me is quietly performing for some imagined reader, so it comes out polished and dishonest

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. 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
  5. 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
  6. 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
  7. 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
  8. 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
  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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