Review the day following your feelings
Walk back through the day in sequence, tracking the emotional quality of each moment.
Key takeaways
- What it is: Walk back through the day in sequence, tracking the emotional quality of each moment.
- Why it works: Ignatius prescribed reviewing the day through felt movements — consolations (feelings of life, connection, alignment) and desolations (feelings of flatness, isolation, or being drawn away from what matters) — rather than purely through events. Emotions carry information about value-alignment that event-recall alone misses: what energized or deflated you reveals what genuinely matters, not just what happened. This is an affective-information approach to self-knowledge, consistent with the idea that feelings are signals rather than noise.
- Evidence: Plausible mechanism, limited direct outcome data.
- Avoid: Reviewing events and actions rather than feelings — this produces a behavioral ledger rather than self-knowledge. The feelings are where the information about alignment lives.
Why it works
Ignatius prescribed reviewing the day through felt movements — consolations (feelings of life, connection, alignment) and desolations (feelings of flatness, isolation, or being drawn away from what matters) — rather than purely through events. Emotions carry information about value-alignment that event-recall alone misses: what energized or deflated you reveals what genuinely matters, not just what happened. This is an affective-information approach to self-knowledge, consistent with the idea that feelings are signals rather than noise.
How to do it
- 1Move through the day roughly in sequence, hour by hour or episode by episode.
- 2At each moment, notice the feeling tone: did this bring life and alignment, or flatness and distance?
- 3Do not yet evaluate or judge — just map the emotional topography of the day.
- 4Pay special attention to moments that still carry a charge: these typically contain the most relevant information.
What the evidence says
MechanisticAffect as information — the principle that emotional responses reliably signal value-relevance — is well-grounded in psychological theory and consistent with affect-labeling research, which shows that naming emotions reduces their intensity and increases self-clarity. The Ignatian consolation/desolation taxonomy is a spiritual framework, not an empirical one.
Honest caveat: The broader "affect as information" literature supports tracking feelings as a route to self-knowledge; the specific Ignatian categories are a devotional framework, not a psychological taxonomy.
- — Schwarz & Clore (1983), mood, misattribution and judgments of well-being, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
Common mistake
Reviewing events and actions rather than feelings — this produces a behavioral ledger rather than self-knowledge. The feelings are where the information about alignment lives.
IX Coach guides you through a day-walk that tracks emotional quality at each stage, helping you distinguish consoling from desolating experiences so patterns become visible over time.
Practice this with IX Coach →