Practices & Rhythms

Week 1 — Noticing Your Life · Week 2 — Noticing You

A snapshot of the shape of your life, taken honestly and without judgment.

Week 1 — the audit. Take the pulse of your life. How are the hours of your day connected (or disconnected) from your values? No adjustments yet — just notice the gap, if there is one.

Week 2 — the interior movements. Add a second layer. Note the activities, conversations, and moments that bring you a sense of life and energy (consolation) and the ones that drain you (desolation). Patterns will emerge across the week.

Week 3 — Noticing You · Week 4 — Noticing Your Life More Deeply

A structured form for the work of noticing — name each activity, then mark engagement, energy, and whether the time felt like flow.

For each named moment of the day, the worksheet asks three questions:

1. Engagement. How present were you to it? Mark a point on the LO ↔ HI gauge.
2. Energized. Did it give you energy or drain you? − through + (zero is neutral).
3. Flow. Did time disappear? Tick the box if so.

Over a week, the gauges expose patterns — what consistently lights you up versus what consistently drains you. That’s the data the contemplative work of noticing turns into self-knowledge.

Worksheet

Noticing You: Activity Log (PDF) →

Adapted with gratitude from Bill Burnett & Dave Evans, Designing Your Life (Knopf, 2017).

Week 3 — Noticing You · Week 4 — Prayer of Examen

A short prayer at the end of the day (or midday) to notice God’s presence and your response to it.

1. Be Still. Settle. Become aware of God’s presence. A line like “Lord, have mercy” can help center you. (See the awareness addendum below.)
2. Give Thanks. Ask God to bring specific gifts of the day to mind. Be concrete — the laughter at dinner, a tree, a phone call.
3. Reflect. How am I coming into this moment? What did I feel drawn to today — for good or for ill? What did I want?
4. Pray. Take one or two things from the reflection back to God. Ask: What do you want to say to me about this?
5. Hope. Look ahead — the next hours or the next day. Hold what’s coming with expectancy.
6. Surrender. A prayer of letting go. “I abandon myself into your hands, Lord; do with me what you will.”

Week 5 — Growing in Awareness · Foundations of Imaginative Prayer

A four-letter checklist for what’s already moving inside you. Used in imaginative prayer, used in silence, used in the middle of the day.

1. S — Sensations. What is your body telling you? Tension, warmth, weight, heart-rate, hunger, fatigue.
2. I — Images. What scenes, faces, or pictures are surfacing? Recent moments or memories. Don’t analyze — just see what comes.
3. F — Feelings. Which emotions are predominant right now? Name them simply — angry, anxious, glad, sad, restless, at peace.
4. T — Thoughts. What are you rehearsing, stuck on, replaying? The arguments you keep having; the to-dos that won’t let go.

The point is not to fix or change any of this. The point is to notice, gently and without judgment, what is already true — so that what surfaces can be brought into prayer rather than carried unnoticed into the next hour.

Especially useful inside imaginative prayer (Ignatian): pick a Gospel scene, place yourself inside it, and SIFT what arises — what you see, feel, want to say. The body and the imagination together are where God often meets us.

Week 6 — Praying Simply

A short prayer synced to your breathing. ~22,000 breaths a day — each one a chance to remember God is with you.

Inhale

Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God,

Exhale

have mercy on me.

Or any short phrase you’re drawn to — even a single word on the exhale (rest, here, peace). Use it before a hard meeting, after a difficult email, or whenever the day feels hectic.

Week 6 — Praying Simply

A short silent pause at the seam between one activity and the next.

From the monastic tradition. Before you stand up from the dinner table to clear the dishes — pause. Before you open the next email or walk into the next meeting — pause. A breath. A moment of God is here, in this. Gratitude for what just was; presence for what’s next.

It’s a small sip of God’s presence. Cumulatively, it reshapes the day.

A seven-day on-ramp

A gentle ramp into silence and stillness — two minutes on Day 1, ten by Day 7. Like training for a long run, not gritting your teeth through it.

1. Day I. 2 minutes.
2. Day II. 2 min. · break · 1 min.
3. Day III. 3 min. · break · 2 min.
4. Day IV. 4 min. · break · 3 min.
5. Day V. 5 min. · break · 4 min.
6. Day VI. 5 min. · break · 5 min.
7. Day VII. 10 minutes.

On break days, take a short pause — look around the room, notice what felt difficult or what sensations and images surfaced — then reset the timer.

Reminders

You don’t have to say or “pray” anything.

God doesn’t have to say or show anything.

Nothing has to happen.

You can simply notice anything there is to notice.

It’s enough to simply be with God.

When the mind drifts to thoughts or worries — that’s normal. Practice gentleness and patience with yourself. Some days it comes easily and some days it doesn’t, no matter how long you’ve been practicing.

Week 8 — Identifying Movements · Discernment of Spirits

Naming what is already moving in you — and learning to follow the movement toward life rather than the one that drains it.

The Ignatian tradition calls these two interior currents consolation and desolation. They’re not just moods. They’re directions — the deeper pull of your inner life, either toward God and life or away from it. The practice of noticing you’ve been doing in Weeks 2–4 is the soil this grows in; this week names what you’ve been noticing.

1. Consolation. Movement toward God, faith, hope, love. An increase of peace, joy, gratitude, generosity. A drawing-near — even if the circumstances are hard.
2. Desolation. Movement away. Dryness, restlessness, agitation, despair, isolation, the slow pull toward shame or hopelessness. Sometimes loud, sometimes quiet.
3. Notice the direction, not just the feeling. A hard meeting can leave you tired but still in consolation; an easy afternoon can drift you into desolation. The question is which way the deep current is moving.

Two rules of thumb

In desolation, don’t change a decision you made in consolation. Desolation lies; don’t let it rewrite what you discerned in the light.

In consolation, prepare for desolation. In desolation, remember consolation will return. Both pass. The pattern of return is itself a gift.

This is what your activity log has been collecting all along — the energized axis tracks exactly this. Week 8 gives the language; the data you’ve been gathering is the field where you’ll learn to read it.