Stop Now: "Examen" Your Day
Ever feel like your day is a swarm of bees? Requests and obligations, emails, texts, appointments, phone calls coming at you from all directions? There's 500 year-old practice from St. Ignatius of Loyola called the Examen that can help. Curiously, the word, "examen" comes from the Latin, meaning, "a swarm of bees."
The Examen is a quick, time-tested moment of prayer to help put the swarm behind you. It's really simple. A lot of people around the world (including the new Pope) use the Examen every day to calm themselves, learn, and move on ahead of the swarm.
Chris Lowney, who went from being a Jesuit seminarian to a managing director at JP Morgan, writes about the practice for the Harvard Business Review. You just make five minutes in the middle of your day and again at the end for a quick check-in with yourself and with God. Lowney describes the practice in three steps:
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First, remind yourself why you're grateful as a human being.
Second, lift your horizon for a moment. Call to mind some crucial personal objective, or your deepest sense of purpose, or the values you stand for.
Third, mentally review the last few hours and extract some insight that might help in the next few hours. If you were agitated, what was going on inside you? If you were distracted and unproductive, why?
Need some clearer direction? The good souls at ignatianspirituality.com have created the Lunchtime Examen. You watch on your computer or phone, follow the instructions, and still the swarms.
http://ignatianspirituality.com/wp-content/uploads/LunchtimeExamen/lunchtime-examen.swf
Check out full articles on The Examen as a practice at these links:
From Fast Company Magazine:
http://www.fastcompany.com/3007253/how-pope-does-mindfulness?utm_source=twitter
From the Harvard Business Review:
http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2013/03/a_simple_ritual_for_harried_managers_and.html
And Chris Lowney's book:
http://www.amazon.com/Heroic-Living-Discover-Purpose-Change/dp/0829432957/ref=pd_sim_b_1
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