This workday examen[1] is meant to incorporate and integrate your whole person: heart, mind, soul, and strength. Translation: your affective/emotional, cognitive/intellectual, relational/social, and embodied/physical being. All of this taken together—roughly—adds up to your spiritual life.
Set aside just 10-20 minutes—during your lunchbreak or at the end of the workday—to complete this spiritual exercise. Pay especially close attention to your awareness of God and your emotional states—which includes feeling your bodily reactions, acknowledging the pace of your heart and mind, and observing any spontaneous thoughts as they arrive. Finally, remember: the examen is not merely a moral exercise (though it has a moral dimension); it is also, if not primarily, concerned with your God-awareness.
Rest:
Literally stop working. Allow yourself to become aware of God’s presence and His love for you. Let your mind and your body be gathered into the present moment.
Request:
Ask for the Holy Spirit’s help as you reflect upon your workday.
Review:
Think back on your day and your work so far, recalling the events. Pay special attention to your emotions. Does anything stand out as significant or particularly meaningful? Consider your interactions and/or conversations with co-workers, customers, and/or clients? Have you made any important decisions? Mistakes? Taken any risks? Have you acted with integrity, honesty, and diligence today?
Repent:
Turn away from sin. Be done with any selfishness, bitterness, self-pity, callousness, or carelessness which is currently standing in the way of good work, well done for the good of others and the glory of God.
Receive:
There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. The grace and mercy of Jesus is for you too. His life is now your life, so that you may walk in and work with righteousness.
[1] Based on the Ignatian Exercise of Examen.