Coaching practices for Examining Your Conscience
Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For Examining Your Conscience, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.
Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?
- When I look at how I actually behaved today I can only ever do one of two things
- When I face where I fell short today I either wave it away as no big deal or I tip straight into hating myself over it
- Whenever I review my own day I quietly spin everything to make myself look better, and I know it
- My days just blur past and I never actually stop to look at how I showed up
- I’m living by a whole set of rules about how life should go, and it’s started to dawn on me that I never actually chose most of them
Practices that may help
- Look honestly at your responses
Face where you fell short and where you acted well, without spiraling into either.
The Daily Examen: Reviewing the Day - Face shortfalls with honest sorrow, not shame
Name where you fell short today without either minimizing it or spiraling into self-punishment.
The Ignatian Examen: Five Movements of Daily Review - Ask for clarity and honest perception
Before reviewing, pause to ask for the capacity to see honestly rather than defensively.
The Ignatian Examen: Five Movements of Daily Review - The three-point daily self-examination
End each day by asking three questions Zengzi — Confucius’s disciple — prescribed: loyalty, trustworthiness, mastery.
Confucian Self-Cultivation: The Mencius Approach - Conduct a regular examined-life audit
Periodically ask: which of the beliefs I am living by have I actually examined, and which am I just inheriting?
The Socratic Method, Made Practical - The Daily Examen: Reviewing the Day
The Examen is a short, structured evening review from the Ignatian tradition: you replay the day with gratitude and honest attention to where you felt drawn toward or away from your values, then carry one resolve into tomorrow. It is a centuries-old contemplative practice; its benefits are best described as mechanistically plausible and widely reported rather than established by controlled trials. - Apply Socratic questioning to your own thinking (not just others’)
Use the same question types on your own beliefs that you would use to probe someone else’s.
Socratic Questioning - The daily examen (end-of-day review)
Spend five minutes each evening reviewing where you were most and least true to yourself today.
Svadhyaya: Self-Study as a Daily Practice - Review the day following your feelings
Walk back through the day in sequence, tracking the emotional quality of each moment.
The Ignatian Examen: Five Movements of Daily Review - Seneca’s evening court — judge the day as an honest prosecutor
Review the day as a fair judge would: what was the evidence, what was the verdict, what is the sentence?
The Pythagorean Evening Review
Related concerns
- Honest Self Examination
Name where you fell short today without either minimizing it or spiraling into self-punishment.
Face shortfalls with honest sorrow, not shame
- Confucian Self Examination
End each day by asking three questions Zengzi — Confucius’s disciple — prescribed: loyalty, trustworthiness, mastery.
The three-point daily self-examination
- Honest Self Assessment Daily
Face where you fell short and where you acted well, without spiraling into either.
Look honestly at your responses
- Honest Self Examination Without Shame
Name where you fell short today without either minimizing it or spiraling into self-punishment.
- Ignatian Examen Five Steps
The Ignatian Examen is a five-step daily prayer and reflection practice developed by St. Ignatius of Loyola: give thanks, ask for clarity, review the day, face what fell short, and resolve what comes next. As a structured reflection method it is centuries-old and widely practiced; its benefits are supported by the broader research on gratitude, emotional review, and implementation intentions, not by trials of the Examen itself.
- Ignatian Feelings Review
Walk back through the day in sequence, tracking the emotional quality of each moment.
Review the day following your feelings
Describe your situation in your own words to search the complete practice library.