Coaching practices for The Morning Questions During a Big Change
Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For The Morning Questions During a Big Change, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.
Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?
- When I check in on myself it’s always "how did the day go," and the answer always seems to ride on things outside my hands
- I’ve got a big move (or a new job) coming up in a couple of months, and I can feel it’s a rare chance to start fresh
- Ask me what life would even look like with this thing actually solved and I go blank
- My morning run, my reading habit
- One bad day and I spiral, treating it like proof I’m failing
Practices that may help
- The Morning Questions
Marshall Goldsmith’s morning questions are a daily active question routine in which you score yourself each morning on whether you "did your best" to pursue specific values-based commitments the previous day. The practice reframes self-monitoring from passive measurement ("how did X go?") to active responsibility ("did I try?"), which research on active questions suggests produces greater engagement and honest self-assessment. The evidence base is practitioner-clinical; large-scale trials are limited. - Reframe passive questions as active questions
Ask "did I do my best to...?" rather than "how was my...?" — the word "try" changes what the question measures.
The Morning Questions - Identify and anticipate upcoming transition windows
Treat approaching life changes as scheduled opportunities for habit installation — plan before the transition, not after.
The Habit Discontinuity Effect - Asking the Miracle Question
Suppose a miracle happened overnight and the problem was gone — what would be the first small sign you notice when you wake up?
The Miracle Question: Designing Your Life Without the Problem - Actively protect valuable existing habits during transitions
Deliberately transfer the cues for good habits to the new context before the disruption extinguishes them.
The Habit Discontinuity Effect - Weekly trend analysis from daily scores
Review your scores at the end of each week to spot patterns rather than reacting to single-day noise.
The Morning Questions - Exploit micro-transitions within your day as mini fresh-start moments
Use daily transition points — arriving home, finishing a meeting, taking a break — to deliberately shift behavior rather than defaulting to the old pattern.
The Habit Discontinuity Effect - Design a personal question list that matches your current growth goals
Build a short list of active questions that track the behaviors most relevant to your life right now — not a fixed template.
The Morning Questions - Bridging the Miracle to Existing Exceptions
Find moments when parts of the miracle are already happening — these reveal the solution is already partially in place.
The Miracle Question: Designing Your Life Without the Problem - Use a life transition to break old environment-behavior links
Major context changes (a move, a new job) create a rare window where old habits are disrupted and new ones are easier to form.
Environment Design for Behavior Change
Related concerns
- Atomic Habits During A Big Change
James Clear’s system says behavior change is a system problem, not a willpower problem: make a desired habit obvious, attractive, easy, and satisfying — and do the reverse for bad ones. The most load-bearing ideas (implementation intentions, friction reduction, identity-based change) are well supported in the research literature.
- Choice Overload During A Big Change
When the number of options exceeds a cognitive threshold, people become less likely to choose, less satisfied with what they chose, and more prone to regret — a phenomenon Barry Schwartz calls the "paradox of choice." Reducing options strategically and adopting a "good enough" standard are the most evidence-supported remedies.
- Context Change Habit
Change your environment to disrupt the conditioned cues that maintain an unwanted habit.
Use environmental context change to weaken existing conditioned habits
- Daily Active Questions
Marshall Goldsmith’s morning questions are a daily active question routine in which you score yourself each morning on whether you "did your best" to pursue specific values-based commitments the previous day. The practice reframes self-monitoring from passive measurement ("how did X go?") to active responsibility ("did I try?"), which research on active questions suggests produces greater engagement and honest self-assessment. The evidence base is practitioner-clinical; large-scale trials are limited.
- Daily Transitions Behavior
Use daily transition points — arriving home, finishing a meeting, taking a break — to deliberately shift behavior rather than defaulting to the old pattern.
Exploit micro-transitions within your day as mini fresh-start moments
- Goldsmith Daily Questions
Marshall Goldsmith’s morning questions are a daily active question routine in which you score yourself each morning on whether you "did your best" to pursue specific values-based commitments the previous day. The practice reframes self-monitoring from passive measurement ("how did X go?") to active responsibility ("did I try?"), which research on active questions suggests produces greater engagement and honest self-assessment. The evidence base is practitioner-clinical; large-scale trials are limited.
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