Coaching practices for Values Action Gap

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

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

• There’s a low hum of dissatisfaction in my life I can’t pin down
• I keep telling myself I’m basically living in line with what I care about, but if I’m brutally honest about my actual behavior the last couple of weeks, I suspect I’m way further from the center than I let myself admit
• I say I value certain things, but when I look honestly at how I actually spent my week, my real priorities were something else entirely
• I’ve named my top values, but looking back at the actual decisions I made this week, I’m not sure my behavior honored a single one of them
• I keep grinding toward goals and the second I hit one

Practices that may help

1. Valued living audit: how much are you actually living your values?
   Rate both how important each value is and how consistently you have been living it — the gap is where to focus.
   Values-Based Action (ACT), Made Practical
2. Rate your current position in each domain
   Mark on each domain’s bullseye how closely your recent behavior has matched the value — honestly.
   Values Bullseye, Made Practical
3. Check action against stated values — the alignment review
   Once a week, compare your stated values to your actual choices and name the gap honestly.
   The Pythagorean Evening Review
4. Values-Based Action (ACT), Made Practical
   Values-based action in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) means choosing behaviors that are consistent with what matters most to you — your values — rather than behaviors driven by avoidance of pain or approval-seeking. ACT distinguishes values (directions, ongoing) from goals (destinations, finishable); the emphasis is on the quality of action in the present rather than outcome attainment. ACT has robust meta-analytic support; values-based action is identified as a core mechanism.
5. Action Planning
   Action planning — specifying when, where, and how you will execute a goal-directed behavior — is one of the best-supported techniques for closing the intention-behavior gap. Orbell and Sheeran’s research, along with Peter Gollwitzer’s work on implementation intentions, shows that forming specific plans reliably increases behavior over vague intentions alone, with meta-analytic effect sizes in the small-to-medium range.
6. The values–behavior gap check
   Audit the last week: which of your top values did your actual decisions honor?
   Values Card Sort
7. Link every action to a named value
   Before you begin, name the value the action expresses — not just the goal it serves.
   Committed Action, Made Practical
8. Extending non-harming to daily choices
   Apply the ahimsa lens to one domain of daily life — diet, speech, consumption — and make one concrete adjustment.
   Ahimsa: Non-Violence as a Daily Practice
9. Committed Action, Made Practical
   Committed action — a core ACT process developed by Steven Hayes — means taking concrete, repeated steps toward what you value even while discomfort is present, rather than waiting for the feeling of readiness. It is the behavioral spine of ACT, which has substantial randomized-trial support across anxiety, depression, chronic pain, and other conditions.
10. Use the bullseye to resolve competing values
    When two values pull in different directions, the bullseye shows you which domain is most neglected and most in need of attention.
    Values Bullseye, Made Practical

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