Perma Activities: 10 Evidence-Based Coaching Practices
Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For Perma Activities, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.
About 2 minutes
Try it here: pick one activity for each pillar
Activities are one way to build each pillar. Name one you could do this week for each of the five, to make a plan you can start.
Which activity could you do this week for each pillar?
Practices that may help
- Seligman’s PERMA Model, Made Practical
Martin Seligman’s PERMA model identifies five pillars of well-being: Positive Emotions, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, and Accomplishment. Unlike happiness models that treat well-being as a single variable, PERMA argues these five elements are each intrinsically valued and each independently improvable. Several PERMA-targeted interventions have randomized-trial support; others are mechanistically grounded with less direct evidence. - Build meaning through contribution rather than achievement (meaning pillar)
Orient your work toward what it does for others, not just what it earns you.
Seligman’s PERMA Model, Made Practical - Run a PERMA audit of your current well-being
Rate each of the five PERMA pillars to find which is currently limiting your overall flourishing.
Seligman’s PERMA Model, Made Practical - Audit your life against PERMA
Check well-being across all five pillars — emotion, engagement, relationships, meaning, accomplishment.
Positive Psychology, Made Practical - Track mastery progress, not just outcomes (accomplishment pillar)
Measure your growth in capability over time, not only whether you hit your targets.
Seligman’s PERMA Model, Made Practical - Bring contemplative attention to ordinary moments
Practice full presence in mundane activities as a form of sacred attentiveness.
The Perennial Philosophy, Made Practical - Purpose Anchors: Keeping Meaning Accessible Day to Day
Meaning research — particularly work by Baumeister, Steger, and Frankl-influenced researchers — finds that purpose is not a permanent state but something that must be actively maintained. "Purpose anchors" are concrete prompts, rituals, and artifacts that bring a person’s larger sense of why back into attentional focus across ordinary days. - The Perennial Philosophy, Made Practical
The perennial philosophy, synthesized by Aldous Huxley from mystic and contemplative traditions across cultures, identifies a common inner core: a divine or ultimate ground underlying all existence, knowable through direct experience; an inner nature in humans capable of that knowing; and an ethics of love and compassion as the natural expression of that realization. It is not a scientific theory but a philosophical synthesis — its practices draw on contemplative traditions whose psychological effects have increasing observational and some experimental support. - Audit your day for autotelic activities
Identify which activities you lose yourself in and engineer more of them into your schedule.
Flow and Meaning: Csikszentmihalyi’s Framework - Relationship Maintenance Behaviors
Relationship maintenance behaviors are the everyday actions partners use to sustain relationship satisfaction, commitment, and closeness over time. Laura Stafford’s research identified five evidence-linked categories — positivity, openness, assurances, social networks, and sharing tasks — with positivity and assurances showing the strongest and most consistent links to satisfaction.
Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?
- I keep hitting my targets and checking the boxes, and it keeps leaving me weirdly hollow
- Something about my life feels off and I genuinely can’t name what
- On paper my life looks successful
- My whole sense of whether I’m doing well rides on outcomes I don’t fully control, so when the results are slow or disappointing I feel like I’m getting nowhere
- My everyday life — the dishes, the walk, the commute — passes in a fog while my mind is somewhere else entirely, and I want to actually be here for the plain, mundane moments instead of sleepwalking through them waiting for the parts that supposedly matter.
Related concerns
- Define Perma
The perennial philosophy, synthesized by Aldous Huxley from mystic and contemplative traditions across cultures, identifies a common inner core: a divine or ultimate ground underlying all existence, knowable through direct experience; an inner nature in humans capable of that knowing; and an ethics of love and compassion as the natural expression of that realization. It is not a scientific theory but a philosophical synthesis — its practices draw on contemplative traditions whose psychological effects have increasing observational and some experimental support.
- Meaning Through Contribution Perma
Orient your work toward what it does for others, not just what it earns you.
Build meaning through contribution rather than achievement (meaning pillar)
- Perma Acronym
Martin Seligman’s PERMA model identifies five pillars of well-being: Positive Emotions, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, and Accomplishment. Unlike happiness models that treat well-being as a single variable, PERMA argues these five elements are each intrinsically valued and each independently improvable. Several PERMA-targeted interventions have randomized-trial support; others are mechanistically grounded with less direct evidence.
- Perma Framework
Martin Seligman’s PERMA model identifies five pillars of well-being: Positive Emotions, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, and Accomplishment. Unlike happiness models that treat well-being as a single variable, PERMA argues these five elements are each intrinsically valued and each independently improvable. Several PERMA-targeted interventions have randomized-trial support; others are mechanistically grounded with less direct evidence.
- Perma H Model
Martin Seligman’s PERMA model identifies five pillars of well-being: Positive Emotions, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, and Accomplishment. Unlike happiness models that treat well-being as a single variable, PERMA argues these five elements are each intrinsically valued and each independently improvable. Several PERMA-targeted interventions have randomized-trial support; others are mechanistically grounded with less direct evidence.
- Perma Level
Martin Seligman’s PERMA model identifies five pillars of well-being: Positive Emotions, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, and Accomplishment. Unlike happiness models that treat well-being as a single variable, PERMA argues these five elements are each intrinsically valued and each independently improvable. Several PERMA-targeted interventions have randomized-trial support; others are mechanistically grounded with less direct evidence.
Describe your situation in your own words to search the complete practice library.