Coaching practices for Urge Building and Passing

Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For Urge Building and Passing, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.

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

• The first stretch always feels like grinding uphill so I bail, thinking it’s just not happening today
• Where I come alive is in the human glue
• I keep front-loading the dull foundational drills before the person I’m teaching has any sense of what it’s all building toward
• In our brainstorms someone floats something and the instinct in the room
• I think my easy runs are supposed to feel easy, but I always seem to drift into puffing too hard to talk

Practices that may help

1. Building Positive Emotions, Made Practical
   Positive emotions can be cultivated deliberately through practices that vary what triggers them: gratitude, savoring, meaningful engagement, kindness, and awe are the most studied routes. Barbara Fredrickson’s broaden-and-build theory proposes that positive emotions expand thinking and build psychological resources over time — supported by observational research, though some specific claims (like the 3:1 ratio) have not replicated. The individual practices have varying but mostly real evidence bases.
2. Broaden-and-Build, Made Practical
   Barbara Fredrickson’s broaden-and-build theory proposes that positive emotions — joy, curiosity, love, gratitude, awe — temporarily broaden thought-action repertoires (making thinking more flexible and creative) and, over time, build durable psychological resources including resilience, social connection, and cognitive flexibility. The theory is supported by experimental evidence for the broadening effect; the longer-term building effects are primarily observational.
3. Protect the ramp-up time
   Allow uninterrupted blocks long enough for flow to actually emerge.
   Flow Triggers, Made Practical
4. Lead from the relationship building domain — hold the team together
   People strong in relationship building are the glue that holds a team’s cohesion under pressure.
   Strengths-Based Leadership, Made Practical
5. Recruit and sustain engagement before demanding effort
   Connect the task to what the learner already cares about before asking them to work hard on it.
   Scaffolding: The Art of Temporary Learning Support
6. Build on others’ ideas with "Yes, and…"
   Make every idea in a group session a platform to build from, not a proposal to assess.
   Creative Confidence, Made Practical
7. Train at conversational pace for aerobic base
   Keep effort low enough to speak in full sentences — the sweet spot for building aerobic capacity.
   The Talk Test: Gauge Exercise Intensity Without a Monitor
8. Building Resilience, Made Practical
   Resilience is not a fixed trait you either have or lack — it is the product of protective factors that can be strengthened: supportive relationships, the ability to reframe, a sense of meaning, basic self-care, and realistic optimism. The research on these factors is real but largely observational, so treat them as well-supported directions rather than guaranteed formulas.
9. The Clutch State: Performing Under Pressure
   Clutch performance is the ability to maintain or exceed normal performance levels when the stakes are highest — during a decisive game, a critical presentation, or an elimination round. Unlike flow, clutch performance is effortful and aware, not automatic. Research by Lex Brawley and others distinguishes clutch from choking: the difference is not talent but the specific mental skills — confidence under pressure, focus on controllables, and a practiced response to threat — that can be deliberately trained.
10. Buffer and overflow blocks
    Schedule empty buffer time to absorb overruns and the unexpected.
    Time Blocking, Made Practical

Describe your situation in your own words to search the complete practice library.