Coaching practices for Play and Wellbeing
Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For Play and Wellbeing, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.
Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?
- Every hour of my life is justified by output now, and the second I do something just for the fun of it a voice says I should be working
- My partner and I have become roommates who just handle logistics
- The second I sit down to rest or do something just for fun I feel guilty, like I haven’t earned it
- On paper my life looks successful
- I can’t remember the last time I really laughed or did something just for the fun of it
Practices that may help
- Protect play and creativity as broadening-state generators
Play is not time away from serious work — it is the state in which the broadened thinking that solves serious problems is most available.
Broaden-and-Build, Made Practical - Make bids for shared enjoyment, not just support
Invite your partner to enjoy something together — playfulness and delight are also bids.
Turning Toward: The Daily Practice That Builds Relationship Resilience - Cultivate rest and play
Treat rest and purposeless play as essential to a wholehearted life, not as laziness.
The Gifts of Imperfection, Made Practical - Audit your life against PERMA
Check well-being across all five pillars — emotion, engagement, relationships, meaning, accomplishment.
Positive Psychology, Made Practical - Use genuine play or laughter as a fast ventral on-ramp
Play and laughter are among the fastest physiological routes into the safe-and-social state.
Ventral Vagal Activation: Accessing the Safe-and-Social State - Meaningful engagement
Spend regular time doing something that generates both positive emotion and a sense of purpose.
Building Positive Emotions, Made Practical - Invest in what research shows moves the set point
Prioritize relationships, autonomy, and meaning — the three factors most reliably linked to lasting wellbeing gains.
The Hedonic Treadmill, Made Practical - Engage in safe rough-and-tumble play
Wrestling, chasing, and physical silliness build the regulation capacity that calm activities cannot.
Special Time (Lawrence Cohen — Playful Parenting) - 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 - Identify the drag domain — the one pulling everything else down
One chronically low domain often functions as a ceiling on satisfaction in all the others.
The Wheel of Life, Made Practical
Related concerns
- Vast Content Wellbeing
Watch content that conveys genuine vastness — deep space, ecosystems, historical scale — with full attention rather than as background.
Use documentary and large-scale art to trigger awe
- Five Elements Of Well Being
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.
- Five Pillars Of Wellbeing
Check well-being across all five pillars — emotion, engagement, relationships, meaning, accomplishment.
Audit your life against PERMA
- Goal Disengagement Wellbeing
Treat disengagement between performances as a skill to develop, not an indulgence to manage.
Oscillate deliberately between full engagement and full recovery
- How To Improve Well Being
Awe — the emotion triggered by encountering something vast that challenges your current mental frameworks — reliably reduces self-focused thinking, lowers inflammatory markers in some studies, increases prosocial behavior, and expands the perceived sense of time available. Dacher Keltner’s research shows awe is more accessible than people think and can be deliberately cultivated without waiting for once-in-a-decade peak experiences.
- How To Increase Wellbeing
Prioritize relationships, autonomy, and meaning — the three factors most reliably linked to lasting wellbeing gains.
Invest in what research shows moves the set point
Describe your situation in your own words to search the complete practice library.