Coaching practices for Ignatian Examen Five Steps

Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For Ignatian Examen Five Steps, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.

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

  • I keep starting this nightly prayer practice and then dropping it the second life gets busy, because I’ve made it this long involved thing
  • When I look back on my day it’s just a checklist of what I did, and it tells me nothing
  • When I sit down at night to look back on my day with God, I tend to jump straight to everything I did wrong
  • Whenever I review my own day I quietly spin everything to make myself look better, and I know it
  • 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

Practices that may help

  1. The Ignatian Examen: Five Movements of Daily Review
    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.
  2. 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.
  3. Practice the Examen daily and briefly
    Do a short Examen most days rather than a long one occasionally.
    The Ignatian Examen: Five Movements of Daily Review
  4. 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
  5. Become aware of God’s presence and give thanks
    Open the review by pausing, settling, and naming specific gifts from the day.
    The Ignatian Examen: Five Movements of Daily Review
  6. 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
  7. 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
  8. 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
  9. Close with a forward-looking resolve
    Choose one concrete intention to carry into tomorrow before closing the review.
    The Ignatian Examen: Five Movements of Daily Review
  10. Keep it brief and daily
    Do a short Examen most days rather than a long one occasionally.
    The Daily Examen: Reviewing the Day

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