Coaching practices for Pierre Hadot S Spiritual Exercises During a Big Change

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

  • When I sit and try to think hard about the big questions in my life, nothing comes
  • This one thing has swollen up to fill my whole field of view
  • I’m standing at a choice where I can feel myself about to take the easy, lesser road, and abstract principles aren’t holding me
  • I keep telling myself there’s plenty of time, so the things that actually matter to me get pushed to "someday" again and again
  • I’ve been turning the same question over in my head for days and just looping

Practices that may help

  1. Pierre Hadot’s Spiritual Exercises
    Pierre Hadot showed that ancient philosophy was not primarily a set of doctrines to be believed but a collection of "spiritual exercises" — daily practices that transformed perception, desire, and action. The exercises include attention to the present moment, self-examination, meditation on death, the view from above, and physical dialogue — each designed to change not what you know but who you are.
  2. Pair philosophical practice with physical exercise
    Use a regular physical practice (walking, exercise) as the occasion for philosophical reflection — as the ancients did.
    Pierre Hadot’s Spiritual Exercises
  3. The view from above — cosmic perspective
    Zoom out to see your situation from a vast distance — then return to act more calmly within it.
    Pierre Hadot’s Spiritual Exercises
  4. Act as if sages were watching — the practice of the philosophical community
    Before any action, ask: would a person I genuinely respect — who embodies the values I aspire to — approve of this?
    Pierre Hadot’s Spiritual Exercises
  5. Philosophy as a Way of Life
    Pierre Hadot argued that ancient Greek and Roman philosophy — Stoic, Epicurean, Platonic — was not primarily a system of theories but a set of "spiritual exercises": repeated, structured practices for transforming how you perceive, judge, and live. The academic thesis is Hadot’s own and is well established in classical scholarship. The practices he describes overlap with studied mechanisms in mindfulness, CBT, and behavioral change — though that was not Hadot’s own claim.
  6. Melete thanatou — meditation on death
    Briefly contemplate your own death today to clarify what actually matters.
    Pierre Hadot’s Spiritual Exercises
  7. 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
  8. Prosoche — the practice of attention
    Maintain constant, vigilant attention to your own thoughts, judgments, and impulses as they arise.
    Pierre Hadot’s Spiritual Exercises
  9. The Pythagorean evening examination (Hadot’s version)
    Before sleep, review the day in three questions: Where did I go wrong? What did I succeed at? What remains undone?
    Pierre Hadot’s Spiritual Exercises
  10. Practice philosophy as a daily exercise
    Reserve time each day not for reading philosophy but for performing a philosophical exercise.
    Philosophy as a Way of Life

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