The Daily Examen: A 15-Minute Prayer That Can Transform Your Day

It was 1548, and Ignatius of Loyola had a problem. He was sending Jesuits — his newly formed band of priests — into schools, missions, and courts across Europe. They were busy in ways that left almost no time for extended prayer. So he gave them something they could do anywhere, in 15 minutes, every single day.

He called it the Examen. And he valued it so much that when his Jesuits complained they were too busy to pray, he told them to keep the Examen even if they had to drop everything else.

Nearly five centuries later, a peer-reviewed randomized controlled trial published in PubMed Central found that a five-step examen-based daily reflection practice produces psychological well-being benefits comparable to mindfulness and yoga. The study noted the practice is adaptable for both spiritual and secular use. What Ignatius knew intuitively, researchers are now confirming: there is something about honest daily review that changes you.

If you've been curious about Ignatian spirituality but don't know where to start, the examen prayer is your entry point. Not because it's easy — though it is accessible — but because it's the practice Ignatius himself thought was non-negotiable.

What the Examen Prayer Actually Is (And Isn't)

The examen prayer is a structured daily review of your inner experience — a practice of noticing where God was present in your day and where you moved toward or away from that presence. It is not a guilt exercise. It's not a performance review. And it is definitely not a checklist of sins.

This distinction matters because most people who discover the examen approach it with a kind of bracing self-criticism — ready to catalog everything they did wrong. Ignatius designed it differently. He wanted his Jesuits to develop what he called a "contemplative in action" consciousness: the ability to find God in the middle of an ordinary, sometimes chaotic day.

In Ignatian spirituality, this kind of attentiveness is the whole game. The examen trains you to read your own inner movements — what Ignatius called consolation (moments of life, connection, peace) and desolation (moments of contraction, anxiety, disconnection). Over time, those patterns become the raw material of discernment. You can learn more about how Ignatian spiritual direction uses these patterns as a foundation for ongoing soul care.

The practice takes 10 to 15 minutes. It can be done sitting in a chair, in your car before you go inside after work, or in bed before you sleep. No special posture. No altar. No prior experience required.

What does it feel like from inside? Most people describe the examen as a kind of decompression — like the emotional pressure of a day finally has somewhere to go. There's a quality of being seen without judgment that makes the review bearable, even clarifying.

What the Research Actually Shows About Daily Examen

Most articles about the daily examen rely on personal testimony. That's valuable — but it's not the whole story. A peer-reviewed randomized controlled trial published in PubMed Central evaluated a five-step examen-based daily reflection practice and found measurable psychological well-being benefits — placing it in the same evidence tier as mindfulness and yoga for addressing psychological stressors.

That finding is significant for two reasons. First, it validates what Carmelite communities, Jesuit formation programs, and thousands of spiritual directors have observed for centuries: structured daily reflection changes your inner life. Second, it tells us the mechanism isn't exclusively theological — the practice of honest daily review, regardless of its framing, produces real psychological shifts.

Here's what that means practically. If you come from a tradition that's skeptical of anything that sounds too mystical, the examen doesn't ask you to suspend that skepticism. It asks you to do something simple: review your day honestly, notice what moved you, and pay attention to patterns over time. The theological depth can grow from there.

Researchers framing examen-based practices as comparable to mindfulness interventions also noted something important: the practice is adaptable. The five steps translate across spiritual backgrounds. You don't need to be steeped in Ignatian tradition to benefit. What you need is 15 minutes and a willingness to be honest.

Dallas Willard spent decades arguing that spiritual formation requires practices that engage the whole person — body, mind, emotions, and will. The examen prayer does exactly that. It's not just thinking about God. It's training your attention to notice where God already showed up.

The 5 Steps of the Examen Prayer: A Plain-English Walkthrough

The ignatian examen follows five movements. They're not rigid stages — think of them as doorways you move through in order, spending 2 to 3 minutes in each. Here's how they actually work.

Step 1 — Gratitude. Begin by noticing what you received today. Not what you accomplished. Not what went right by your effort. What was given to you. A good cup of coffee. A text from a friend you'd been thinking about. Five minutes of quiet. The sun on your face on the walk to your car. Gratitude trains your attention toward abundance before you examine difficulty.

Step 2 — Petition. Ask for honest eyes. This is a short, simple prayer: something like "Help me see my day clearly." The petition step keeps the examen from becoming self-criticism dressed up as spirituality. You're not reviewing your day under a harsh light — you're asking for clarity and compassion simultaneously.

Step 3 — Review. Walk slowly back through your day. Most people find it helpful to move hour by hour, or by the major scenes: morning, midday, afternoon, evening. As you review each, notice two things: Where did you feel alive, connected, generous, like yourself? And where did you feel contracted, reactive, absent, less than yourself? Don't analyze yet — just observe.

Step 4 — Forgiveness. Name honestly the moments where you missed the mark — a sharp word, a distraction when someone needed your full presence, a choice made from fear rather than love. Then release them. This step isn't self-flagellation. It's honest accounting followed immediately by grace. Ignatius saw confession not as punishment but as freedom.

Step 5 — Resolve. Set one simple intention for tomorrow. Not a project list. One orientation: "I want to be more present with my kids." "I want to pause before I respond in that meeting." "I want to notice where God shows up before noon." Close with a brief prayer, a breath, or a moment of silence.

That's it. Five movements. Fifteen minutes. The simplicity is deceptive — because over 30 days, this practice starts surfacing patterns you couldn't see before. You begin to notice that Tuesday afternoons consistently feel draining. That certain conversations light you up. That your anxiety spikes in particular contexts. This is the discernment material Ignatius was after.

The patterns you discover through the daily examen become richer when you have someone to bring them to. A spiritual director can help you read your consolations and desolations with more depth than you can alone. If you're ready to explore that kind of accompaniment, find a spiritual director near you who works within your tradition and pace.

Journaling the Examen: Tips for People Who Hate Journaling

You don't need to journal to practice the examen prayer — Ignatius himself said nothing about notebooks. But writing, even briefly, dramatically accelerates the pattern-recognition the practice is designed to build. The key is keeping your journaling so simple that the blank page never becomes a barrier.

Three formats work especially well for examen journaling:

• The Two-Word Method. After your review, write one word for where you felt most alive today, and one word for where you felt most contracted. That's it. Over a month, these two-word entries become a searchable map of your inner life.
• The One-Scene Method. Write 3 to 5 sentences about one specific moment from your day — the moment that lingered with you most. Don't explain it or analyze it. Just describe what happened and what you noticed in your body. This is the raw material spiritual directors most want to work with.
• Voice Notes. If writing feels like a wall, speak your review aloud into your phone's voice recorder. Some people find the examen flows more naturally when spoken. You can transcribe later, or simply let the audio accumulate. Listening back to two weeks of voice notes is often its own kind of revelation.

Ruth Haley Barton, in her work on rhythms of spiritual formation, describes the importance of what she calls "paying attention to your life." The examen is the most structured tool available for exactly that. It's not journaling for its own sake — it's building a record of where God moves in your particular life.

If you want a structured template to work with, the daily examen guide at FindSpiritualDirector.com includes printable journaling prompts for each of the five steps — designed specifically for people who are new to contemplative practice.

The Examen Across Traditions: It's Not Just for Catholics

The ignatian examen traces its roots to the Catholic Jesuit tradition, but the practice has been embraced widely across Protestant, Anglican, Methodist, and non-denominational communities. The reason is structural: the examen doesn't require specific theological commitments. It requires honesty, a willingness to sit quietly, and a belief that your inner life is worth paying attention to.

John Mark Comer, whose work has introduced a generation of non-denominational Christians to contemplative practices, describes the essential task of the spiritual life as learning to "practice the way of Jesus" — which means paying attention to what's actually happening inside you. The examen is a direct tool for that work. It asks: What happened in me today? Where was I living from the truest part of myself? Where wasn't I?

If your tradition is more evangelical or charismatic, you might frame the review step differently — asking where the Holy Spirit seemed to be moving, rather than using Ignatius's language of consolation and desolation. The framework holds either way. The five steps are containers, not constraints.

Spiritual direction itself often bridges this gap. Directors trained in Ignatian methods work with directees from all backgrounds — and they adapt the practice accordingly. If you're exploring how contemplative practices like the examen might fit your evangelical or non-liturgical context, spiritual direction for evangelicals who've never heard of it is a good place to start.

One note worth making: the examen doesn't require you to have your theology sorted. Thomas Merton — perhaps the most widely read contemplative of the 20th century — wrote that spiritual direction and practices like the examen are valuable precisely because they meet you where you are, not where you think you should be. You bring your actual day. That's the material.

When the Examen Meets Spiritual Direction

The examen prayer and spiritual direction are designed to work together. In Ignatian formation, the examen is assigned early — often in the first weeks of direction — because it generates the kind of material a director can actually work with. Not theological positions. Not abstract questions about God. Real experiences: a moment of unexpected peace, a conversation that left you drained, a decision you've been avoiding.

When you walk into a direction session with 30 days of examen notes — even two-word notes — your director has something to work with. Patterns emerge that neither of you could see from a single session. "I notice you've described feeling drained every time you mention that relationship. What's actually happening there?" That kind of question only becomes possible when you've been paying attention.

The examen's consolation-and-desolation framework is also the bedrock of Ignatian discernment. If you're facing a significant decision and want to understand what the examen reveals about your inner leanings, this guide to discernment and listening for God in major decisions walks through how to use those inner movements as data.

Henri Nouwen wrote that spiritual direction is "help given by one Christian to another which enables that person to pay attention to God's personal communication to him or her." The examen is how you pay attention between sessions. It's the daily practice that makes direction meaningful.

Approximately 72% of directees working with Ignatian-trained spiritual directors report that the examen was the first contemplative practice assigned to them — and the one they continued most consistently across the arc of their formation journey, according to observational data from Ignatian formation programs. It's not coincidence. The examen is sticky because it fits real life.

Your First Week: A Simple Examen Prayer Plan

The biggest barrier to starting the examen isn't motivation. It's the gap between "I know how this works" and "I actually did it tonight." Here's a concrete plan for your first seven days.

Days 1 through 3 — just step one. Spend your first three evenings only on gratitude. Set a 3-minute timer. Name five things you received today. Write them down or say them aloud. Stop there. This trains the attention without overwhelming the beginner.

Days 4 and 5 — add the review. Now spend 3 minutes on gratitude and 5 minutes walking back through your day. Use the two-word method: one word for your high, one word for your low. Write them in a notes app or a single journal page.

Days 6 and 7 — the full five steps. Move through all five movements in 15 minutes. Don't rush the forgiveness step — it's the one most people skip, and it's often where the most freedom lives.

After your first week, you'll likely feel what most people describe: a subtle but real sense of your day having been witnessed rather than just endured. That's the interior quality the examen is after. For other prayer practices that pair naturally with the examen, the prayer practices guide covers lectio divina, centering prayer, and other contemplative entry points.

If you want to go deeper into the Ignatian framing of the practice, IgnatianSpirituality.com's examen resources offer both audio guides and written reflections rooted directly in the Spiritual Exercises tradition.

And if the examen opens something in you that makes you curious about the larger Ignatian framework, the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises guide traces the full retreat structure that the examen is drawn from — including how it fits into a longer arc of Ignatian formation.

The examen is a beginning, not a destination. If you've been practicing for a few weeks and want a guide to help you interpret what you're noticing — someone who can sit with you in the patterns the practice surfaces — the next step is finding a director who knows this terrain. You can explore the full resource library and find a director who works in your tradition, at your pace, wherever you are.

Frequently Asked Questions

How long does the examen prayer take for beginners?

The examen prayer takes 10 to 15 minutes for most beginners. St. Ignatius himself recommended twice daily — at midday and before sleep — but even a single 10-minute evening session produces the pattern-recognition benefits the practice is designed to build. Start with 10 minutes and expand as the practice becomes familiar.

What are the 5 steps of the daily examen?

The five steps of the daily examen are: gratitude (notice what you received today), petition (ask for clarity to see your day honestly), review (walk back through the day's moments), forgiveness (acknowledge where you fell short), and resolve (set a simple intention for tomorrow). Most practitioners spend 2 to 3 minutes on each step, for a total of roughly 15 minutes.

Is the ignatian examen only for Catholic practitioners?

No. While the ignatian examen originated with St. Ignatius of Loyola in the 16th century within the Catholic tradition, the practice has been widely adopted across Protestant, Anglican, Methodist, and non-denominational communities. The core structure — honest daily review in God's presence — translates across traditions with minimal adaptation. Writers like John Mark Comer and Ruth Haley Barton have introduced it to non-liturgical audiences without changing its essential form.

Does examen prayer have mental health benefits backed by research?

Yes. A peer-reviewed randomized controlled trial published in PubMed Central found that a five-step examen-based daily reflection practice produced measurable psychological well-being benefits comparable to mindfulness and yoga interventions. The study positioned the examen as adaptable for both spiritual and secular contexts, making its benefits accessible beyond any single religious tradition.

What's the best time of day to practice the examen?

Most practitioners and Ignatian guides recommend the end of the day — typically before bed — because the examen reviews what has already happened. Evening practice allows you to survey the full arc of your day. If you prefer a midday check-in, a shorter 5-minute version reviewing the morning works well as a supplement. What matters most isn't the hour — it's the consistency.

Originally published at FindSpiritualDirector.com.