Notice the feelings (consolation and desolation)

Pay attention to where you felt energized and connected versus drained and pulled away.

Why it works

Ignatius treated emotional movements — consolation (toward connection, life, your values) and desolation (toward isolation and away from them) — as information about where you are being drawn. Attending to these felt shifts surfaces what genuinely nourishes or depletes you, data that pure event-recall misses, supporting better-aligned choices.

How to do it

1. For the charged moments, ask what you felt: more alive and connected, or drained and small?
2. Treat the feelings as signals about direction, not as things to fix or scold.
3. Notice patterns over days in what consistently lifts or depletes you.

Evidence

Attending to and naming emotions is consistent with affect-labeling and emotional-awareness research; the consolation/desolation discernment framework is a contemplative tradition, not a tested model. (mechanistic)

The benefit of noticing feelings is mechanistically grounded, but the specific Ignatian discernment categories are a spiritual framework, not an empirical taxonomy.

Common mistake

Judging the feelings ("I shouldn’t have felt that") instead of reading them as information. The discernment is about noticing direction, not grading your emotions.