▶ IGNATIAN (JESUIT, BUT WORKS SECULAR)·10–15 MIN

THE EXAMEN

Five-step Ignatian end-of-day review — what was given, what was missed, what to take into tomorrow.

What this is

Ignatius of Loyola asked his Jesuits to do this twice a day. It survived 500 years because it works on its own terms even if you strip out the theology. The Examen is a structured noticing. It's not a journal entry, it's a five-step inventory you do in your head or in a few sentences — gratitude, awareness, response, what to repent, what to ask for tomorrow.

Steps

1.Become aware of where you are. A breath. Settle.
2.Gratitude: what came to you today that wasn't owed? Name it specifically. Three things if you can.
3.Review the day in scenes. Walk through it from waking to now. Where did you feel alive? Where did you feel hollow? Don't analyze — just notice.
4.Where did you fall short of who you want to be? Don't berate. Just notice the gap between intention and act.
5.Look toward tomorrow. What's one thing you'd want to bring different attention to? Hold it lightly.

▸ AFTER

Are there patterns across multiple days' Examens? What do they suggest you actually care about — versus what you say you care about?

Reflections you write below are saved to your trajectory — Claude reads the prose and adds a small dimensional shift to your map, the same way it does for daily dilemmas and diary entries.

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More on this practice

Ignatius of Loyola wrote the Spiritual Exercises in the 1520s for Jesuit novices, but the daily Examen was the practice he most insisted should outlive their training. He recommended it twice a day, around midday and at bedtime, fifteen minutes each time. The structure was deliberately simple — gratitude, awareness, response, sorrow, hope — because it had to be done by tired people without much equipment.

What survives in the practice when you strip out the theology is a structured noticing. Most days dissolve into impressions; the Examen catches them before they leave. People who do it consistently for a few weeks tend to notice they've been over- or under-investing in something they hadn't seen — a relationship that's been running on goodwill they never restocked, a worry they kept bringing up that they could have actually addressed.

It pairs naturally with morning intentions. Examens at night reveal what tomorrow's morning intention should be. After a month or two, the loop produces a different texture of day — you're a little less swept along, a little more present to what's actually happening.

Common pitfalls

Turning step 4 (where you fell short) into self-flagellation. Notice; don't berate. The point is awareness, not performance.
Skipping gratitude because you're tired. Gratitude is the load-bearing step — without it the rest curdles.
Doing it in your head instead of writing. Holding the structure in memory while you walk through the day is harder than it sounds; a notebook helps for the first month at least.

A worked example

Eight thirty p.m., kitchen table, ten minutes. Gratitude: warm shower, good bread, the friend who called unprompted. Review: the morning was good, mid-afternoon dipped — you were curt with someone who didn't deserve it. Awareness: the curtness was downstream of skipping lunch and arriving at the meeting hungry. Response: tomorrow, eat lunch. That's it. The Examen is the boring sequence of small adjustments that accumulate into a life less driven by avoidable friction.

Thinkers in this lineage

Ignatius of Loyola — Spiritual Exercises (1548) — the Examen is part of the broader month-long retreat program.
Karl Rahner — 20th-century Jesuit who reframed the Examen for modern consciousness.
James Martin — Contemporary Jesuit whose 'The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything' has the cleanest plain-English account.

Where to read further

The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything
James Martin · 2010
The Examen explained for non-religious readers without losing its substance.
Spiritual Exercises
Ignatius of Loyola · 1548
The original. Dense, theological, but the Examen is in part 1 if you want to read just that.

Pairs well with

Kindred practices

Morning pages — Julia Cameron's longer-form journaling cousin — fewer rules, similar daily-noticing function.
Naikan — Japanese Buddhist practice with an interestingly inverted structure — what did I receive, what did I give, what trouble did I cause.

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