Notice the feelings (consolation and desolation)
Pay attention to where you felt energized and connected versus drained and pulled away.
Key takeaways
- What it is: 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.
- Evidence: Plausible mechanism, limited direct outcome data.
- Avoid: 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.
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
- 1For the charged moments, ask what you felt: more alive and connected, or drained and small?
- 2Treat the feelings as signals about direction, not as things to fix or scold.
- 3Notice patterns over days in what consistently lifts or depletes you.
What the evidence says
MechanisticAttending 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.
Honest caveat: 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.
IX Coach helps you name the felt movements of your day and track which patterns recur, turning vague moods into usable signal about what to move toward.
Practice this with IX Coach →