CRI Compassionate
Rational
Inquiry

Stop losing yourself.

I spent more than ten years coaching people on the one thing they most wanted to change: first their weight, then their work, their relationships, and their decisions. The same thing kept happening. Someone would understand exactly what to do, and then the moment would arrive and the understanding would be out of reach.

That gap is where CRI5 came from: five questions you can use while the moment is still happening, not an hour later. It took me ten years and four full rewrites to make it simple without making it simplistic. It became a method I coach, a workshop I teach, and a book, Stop Losing Yourself, which is on its way.

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David Zulberg
  • Brown University, ACT Leadership Coaching
  • Harvard Leadership Coaching
  • MA, Columbia University
  • ACE Health Coach
Bestselling author, The Life-Transforming Diet

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The moments

You have done this.

You sent the message, and the reply did not come. You checked your phone. Then checked it again. Then reread what you wrote, looking for the sentence that ruined everything.

Your boss said we need to talk, and the rest of the day disappeared into those four words.

Someone you love made a choice you were sure was a mistake, and you could not settle until they changed course.

It is two in the morning. You are telling yourself you have to sleep, and every minute of trying makes it less likely.

You promised yourself not tonight. At eleven you are standing at the open fridge, already negotiating.

You made the right call at work. You still feel sick about it.

You got the promotion and were bracing for the next test before the congratulations finished.

You read their face before you say a word, to find out how you are doing today.

Your child is unhappy, and you cannot be okay until they are.

The money is fine on paper. The fear that it is not enough never leaves.

The thing you worked toward for years did not happen, and long after it was over, your mind was still arguing that it should have.

Different people. Different problems. So we treat them as different problems. We analyze the relationship, research the symptom, replay the conversation, argue with the past.

The topic was almost never the whole problem.

Try it now

Try this before you read another line.

  1. 1

    Think of the thing bothering you most right now. A person. An outcome. Something from the past. A feeling you cannot shake. Hold it for a moment.

  2. 2

    Your mind will go to the topic. What happened. Why they did it. How to fix it. How to make the feeling stop.

  3. 3

    Ask a different question instead.

What am I telling myself has to happen before I can be okay?

They must understand.This has to work out.I have to know what comes next.This feeling should stop.That should never have happened.

Notice the difference. Somewhere along the way, something you wanted became something you needed. The wanting was fine. The moment it became a need, your okayness moved into something you cannot control: a reply, a person, a past, a feeling that keeps its own schedule.

That is what I mean by losing yourself. It rarely feels dramatic. Usually it feels like caring. You check again because you care. You keep explaining because you care. From the outside, you look fine. From the inside, an ordinary day has become a negotiation with your own mind.

And the better you get at solving the topic, the easier it is to miss the pattern. Solve one, and it moves to the next. New person. New job. New worry. Same place.

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The gap

Why knowing is not enough

You are good at this when it is somebody else's life. You can see what a friend is doing long before you see it in yourself.

A client of mine had just finished a book about letting people be who they are. She could quote it. She agreed with every word. It changed nothing, because the conversation running inside her was not about him. It was about her: what his silence meant about her, and whether she could be okay without an answer.

Most of us have been given advice for this. Let go. Set boundaries. Accept what you cannot control. Much of it is wise. But tell yourself I need to let go and watch what happens. Now you are demanding that you stop demanding.

The gap between what you understand and what you can do while the moment is happening is the whole job. Advice does not close it. Practice on your own situation does. That is what the coaching is for.

The method

What CRI5 is

Five questions, asked in order. Once you know them, they take a few minutes, and they work while the moment is still happening.

The first settles the body, because you cannot examine anything clearly while you are flooded. The middle questions find what you are demanding, and what you have quietly made it mean about you. The last one returns the choice to you.

Underneath the questions is a simple map. Everything in your life falls into one of three territories, and only one of them is yours to author. Most of the suffering I see in coaching comes from placing your okayness in the other two. The method brings it back.

CRI stands for Compassionate Rational Inquiry. Compassionate, because the feeling is met before the story around it is questioned. Rational, because what feels true is not automatically true. Inquiry, because it works through questions you answer yourself, not a script you are handed.

What it is not: positive thinking, letting go, calming down, or a reason to put up with what should change. Some situations call for a boundary, a hard conversation, or leaving. The method makes you better at seeing which. Not more willing to tolerate.

The pattern has a name. I call it the IDBR loop, and it runs the same way under a breakup, a craving, and a stalled decision. In coaching you learn to catch it while it is running.

I D B R ME YOU LIFE INNER LIFE OUTER LIFE RETURN CRI 5
Three territories. One is yours. The loop runs when your okayness leaves it.
Who this is for

Different doors. The same pattern underneath.

The breakup you cannot stop replaying.Months later you are still arguing with them in your head. The loop, not the love, is what will not end.
The weight that keeps returning.You know what to eat. The block that undoes it was never about food.
The habit you quit every Monday.The habit is not the problem. What it is doing for you is, and willpower was never going to outrun it.
The decision that will not close.You have the facts. You have had them for months. What you do not have is permission to be wrong.
The block in your business.The client you cannot let go of, the hire you keep deferring, the calm you perform in every meeting.
The approval you keep checking for.Reading someone else's mood to find out how you are doing. Your okayness, parked in territory that was never yours.
The parent who cannot be okay until the child is.You would carry it for them if you could. So you carry it anyway, and it helps neither of you.
In their words

What clients and readers say

"I have seen a major change in my general mood and emotional reactions."

SarahUnited States

"I strongly recommend David and his various courses for any individual or company who wishes to invest so as to be able to develop, grow and face the challenges of the ever-developing world around us."

Rob KatzCEO, Peregrine Holdings (Pty) Ltd

"His work is a welcome source of guidance for both the professional and the layperson."

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