Coaching practices for I Keep Running This Other Life in My Head Imagining How Amazing or How Awful it Would Be but It's All Guesswork I Have No Idea What an Ordinary Day in it Actually Feels Like and the People Already Living it Could Just Tell Me
Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For I Keep Running This Other Life in My Head Imagining How Amazing or How Awful it Would Be but It's All Guesswork I Have No Idea What an Ordinary Day in it Actually Feels Like and the People Already Living it Could Just Tell Me, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.
Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?
- I keep running this other life in my head, imagining how amazing or how awful it would be, but it’s all guesswork
- There’s this other life I daydream about constantly, but it stays a fantasy in my head
- I’m running endless mental simulations of how this big choice will feel and convincing myself I already know
- I’m paralyzed between two paths, treating it as this irreversible all-or-nothing leap I have to be certain about first
- When I try to picture my future it stays abstract and far away
Practices that may help
- Run prototyping conversations before committing to a plan
Talk to people already living your Plan B or C before you decide whether to pursue it.
Odyssey Plans: Designing Three Alternative Futures - Prototype with conversations and experiences
Test a possible path cheaply — talk to someone living it, or try a small slice — before betting on it.
Designing Your Life, Made Practical - Ask people who’ve been there instead of imagining it
Other people’s actual experiences predict your future feelings more accurately than your own imagination.
Affect Forecasting: Why You Mispredicted How You’d Feel - Run a small experiment before committing to Plan B or C
Design the smallest possible real-world experience that would tell you something true about a plan before you commit to it.
Odyssey Plans: Designing Three Alternative Futures - Write a best-possible-life narrative
Write a detailed story of your life in 10 years if everything went as well as it possibly could.
The Life Crafting Intervention: Scripting Your Future Self - Draft three genuinely different five-year plans
Sketch three distinct five-year lives — not variations on the same theme, but genuinely different directions.
Odyssey Plans: Designing Three Alternative Futures - Dreamline — cost your ideal life
Calculate the monthly cost of the life you actually want, not an abstract rich fantasy.
Lifestyle Design, Made Practical - The best-possible-self exercise
Regularly write a vivid picture of your life going as well as it realistically could.
Optimism Training: Building Realistic, Flexible Optimism - Write vivid imagined future scenes
Extend your life story into the future with specific, felt scenes — not just goals.
Narrative Identity, Made Practical - Draft three Odyssey Plans
Sketch three different five-year lives — not variations on one, but genuinely divergent paths.
Designing Your Life, Made Practical
Related concerns
- When Designing Your Life Prototyping Conversations Experiences
Test a possible path cheaply — talk to someone living it, or try a small slice — before betting on it.
Prototype with conversations and experiences
- How To Imagine Your Future
Write a detailed story of your life in 10 years if everything went as well as it possibly could.
Write a best-possible-life narrative
- When Designing Your Life Odyssey Plans
Sketch three different five-year lives — not variations on one, but genuinely divergent paths.
Draft three Odyssey Plans
- Design Thinking Life Planning
Bill Burnett and Dave Evans’ Stanford method treats your life like a design problem: you don’t "find" the one right answer, you prototype your way toward several good ones. The core moves — reframing stuck beliefs, drafting multiple Odyssey Plans, and running small prototypes — are practitioner tools adapted from design thinking, well-reasoned but not formally outcome-tested as a package.
- Designing Your Life During A Big Change
Treat approaching life changes as scheduled opportunities for habit installation — plan before the transition, not after.
Identify and anticipate upcoming transition windows
- Designing Your Life For My Teenager
Bill Burnett and Dave Evans’ Stanford method treats your life like a design problem: you don’t "find" the one right answer, you prototype your way toward several good ones. The core moves — reframing stuck beliefs, drafting multiple Odyssey Plans, and running small prototypes — are practitioner tools adapted from design thinking, well-reasoned but not formally outcome-tested as a package.
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