Coaching practices for What Makes a Good Life

Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For What Makes a Good Life, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.

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

  • On paper my life looks fine and I can’t point to anything that’s wrong, but I have this nagging sense it isn’t actually going well
  • I keep telling myself I’ll make real time for the people I love once I hit the next work milestone, and that milestone never stops moving
  • Some days go by where I never once actually connect with another human
  • My life is comfortable and on paper I’m fine, but it feels hollow and I can’t figure out why
  • I’m busy every single day and somehow none of it adds up to anything

Practices that may help

  1. The Good Life: Lessons from the Harvard Study
    The Harvard Study of Adult Development — the longest longitudinal study of adult life, directed today by Robert Waldinger — found that the strongest predictor of long-term health and happiness is the quality of our relationships, not wealth or fame. It is real, decades-long research, but it is observational: it shows relationships and wellbeing move together, which is strong but not proof of pure cause.
  2. Periodic eudaimonia audit: are you actually flourishing?
    Periodically evaluate your life against the conditions Aristotle thought were necessary for genuine flourishing — not just your feelings about it.
    Aristotelian Eudaimonia: Flourishing Through Virtue
  3. Investing in people over status
    Direct discretionary time and energy toward relationships, not just career and acquisition.
    The Good Life: Lessons from the Harvard Study
  4. One warm connection a day
    Make at least one genuine, attentive contact with another person each day.
    The Good Life: Lessons from the Harvard Study
  5. Measure flourishing, not just happiness
    Regularly ask: am I flourishing as a human being — using my capacities well — or just feeling okay?
    Virtue Ethics, Made Practical
  6. Habit 2: Begin with the end in mind
    Define what success looks like before you act, guided by a personal mission.
    The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Made Practical
  7. Peak experience analysis
    Study your life-line high points for the values and conditions they share — they reveal what fully alive looks like for you.
    The Life Line Exercise
  8. Define your Rich Life before designing your spending
    Decide what genuinely brings you joy or meaning before allocating a single dollar.
    Conscious Spending Plan, Made Practical
  9. Identifying and protecting your core meaningful activity
    Identify the activities that express your best capacities, and structure your day so they get your best hours, not your scraps.
    Aristotelian Eudaimonia: Flourishing Through Virtue
  10. Set lifestyle anti-goals to protect daily experience, not just outcomes
    The quality of your daily experience matters — define the daily conditions you refuse to accept, not just the outcomes.
    Anti-Goals: Defining Success by What You Refuse to Accept

Related concerns

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

Practice this with IX Coach

Try this practice