Coaching practices for Talking About Desire
Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For Talking About Desire, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.
Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?
- There are things I want that I’ve never said out loud, because saying them feels too exposed
- We share everything — same friends, same schedule, every thought as it lands — and somewhere in all that togetherness the wanting evaporated, like there’s no distance left to feel any pull across.
- A new want grabs me and I’m off chasing it before I’ve even paused
- I want things I can’t make happen
- When I want something I get caught up in how it would feel to have it
Practices that may help
- Talking about desire without killing it
Name what you want without reducing it to a problem to be solved or a complaint to be managed.
Mating in Captivity: Sustaining Desire in Long-Term Relationships - Creating space: the paradox of distance and desire
Build deliberate separateness — apart time, separate interests, separate friendships — as the condition desire needs to regenerate.
Mating in Captivity: Sustaining Desire in Long-Term Relationships - Examining the desire before chasing it
Before pursuing something you want, ask whether the desire serves you or consumes you.
Santosha: The Practice of Contentment - Apply the dichotomy of control to your desires
Before each want, ask: is the object of this desire in my power, or outside it?
The Stoic Discipline of Desire - The Stoic Discipline of Desire
Pierre Hadot identified the "discipline of desire" as one of the three Stoic spiritual exercises: training yourself to desire only what is in your power (virtue, your own judgments and responses) and to be indifferent to what is not. The practice targets the root cause of most human suffering — craving things outside your control — rather than its symptoms. - Cool the purchase by abstracting it
See the item in "cool," abstract terms to drain the craving before it drives a decision.
The Marshmallow Test and Your Money - Cool down a hot temptation by reframing it
See the reward abstractly ("just a picture of it") to drain its emotional heat.
Delayed Gratification, Made Practical - Classifying desires before pursuing them
Before pursuing a desire, classify it: is it natural and necessary, natural and unnecessary, or vain?
Epicurean Philosophy: Practical Happiness - Track your desires and their outcomes over time
Log what you wanted this week, whether you got it, and whether getting it produced what you expected.
The Stoic Discipline of Desire - Practice amor fati — love what happens
Train yourself not just to accept what is given, but to want it — to find the ground for willing what occurs.
The Stoic Discipline of Desire
Related concerns
- Desire Management Philosophy
Pierre Hadot identified the "discipline of desire" as one of the three Stoic spiritual exercises: training yourself to desire only what is in your power (virtue, your own judgments and responses) and to be indifferent to what is not. The practice targets the root cause of most human suffering — craving things outside your control — rather than its symptoms.
- How To Manage Desires
Before each want, ask: is the object of this desire in my power, or outside it?
Apply the dichotomy of control to your desires
- Desire Examination Practice
Pierre Hadot identified the "discipline of desire" as one of the three Stoic spiritual exercises: training yourself to desire only what is in your power (virtue, your own judgments and responses) and to be indifferent to what is not. The practice targets the root cause of most human suffering — craving things outside your control — rather than its symptoms.
- Do I Want What I Think I Want
See the item in "cool," abstract terms to drain the craving before it drives a decision.
Cool the purchase by abstracting it
- Epicurean Desire Reality Check
Before pursuing a desire, classify it: is it natural and necessary, natural and unnecessary, or vain?
Classifying desires before pursuing them
- How To Want What You Have
Before each want, ask: is the object of this desire in my power, or outside it?
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