A practical way back to yourself, built for the moment it’s happening, not an hour later.
CRI5 is five questions, in order, for the moment you start to lose yourself. They rest on one simple map: what is yours to author, and what is not. Together they are Compassionate Rational Inquiry, CRI for short: compassion first, then reason. Once you know it, it takes a few minutes: in the car, in the meeting, at the open fridge.
It works in a deliberate order, one question at a time. It begins with the body, because nothing is clear while you are flooded. Then it finds what the moment is really about: the thinking that set the reaction off, what you have made the moment mean, and the sense of yourself that suddenly feels at stake. It ends with a choice that is yours, and it stays with you after it, when the answer is no or not in yet.
All of it rests on a simple map. Everything in your life falls into one of three Circles, and only one of them is yours to author. Most of the suffering I see in coaching comes from trying to live in the other two.
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, forcing yourself to let 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.
The book is a two-week program. The first week teaches the five questions, one a day, for the moment something has already taken hold. The second week practices the return before the moment arrives: seven short morning practices, one a day, a few minutes each.
Inquiry in the moment. Practice before the moment.
Most tools help you understand a reaction later. This one is built for the car, the meeting, the open fridge, and it takes a few minutes.
A breakup, a craving, and a stalled decision look like different problems. Underneath, the same pattern is running. Once you can see it in one place, you start to see it everywhere.
Compassion first, then inquiry. It is not positive thinking, and it is not an argument with yourself.
Many methods work on the thought. CRI5 goes one layer deeper, to the sense of yourself the moment seems to put on trial, and brings you back to what was never on trial.
It ends in a choice that is yours, and it covers what most methods leave out: what to do when the answer is no, and how to wait when it is not in yet.
Eight hundred years ago, Moses Maimonides was a physician, a philosopher, and a master of the human mind, and he refused to treat these as separate worlds. He healed the body, studied how the mind falls out of balance, and wrote some of history’s deepest philosophy.
What moved me most was how he saw nature itself. For Maimonides, the order of the world and the power of reason weren’t cold facts. They were wonders, and contemplating them was a path to the Creator.
CRI grows from that conviction: understanding how your mind works, and seeing the miracle in it, isn’t separate from finding meaning. It’s the way there.
What is truly necessary is few. Desire for the unnecessary has no end.Maimonides
CRI5 is built on a lineage, and the book says at every step which idea came from where. What CRI adds is the map, the order, and the questions: how to see where you have gone, what to do first, and how to get from the feeling to a choice in a few minutes.
How the pattern forms and why it repeats.
Where your freedom lies, even when life doesn’t go your way.
An ancient teaching holds that you were made in the image of the Creator. These teachers each point to the same discovery: beneath the thoughts and stories is someone who was never lost, only covered over.
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 letting go has become one more thing you have to get right.
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.
No. CRI draws on an ancient teaching about who you are, but it asks you to believe nothing. Everything rests on reason and on sources you can read for yourself.
No. CRI5 is coaching. It focuses on the present and the future, on what happens in you now and what you choose next. It doesn’t replace therapy, and if you’re working with a therapist, the two can sit side by side. If you are in persistent, overwhelming, or unsafe distress, please see a professional first.
Both. I coach online anywhere and in person in New York.
With a 15-minute call. We talk about where you keep losing yourself, and format and fee are set then.
One-on-one, for leaders, for teams, and for coaches. Format and fee are set on a 15‑minute call.
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